Question M.2 NVMe SSD stops working, continues working after powercycle, no S.M.A.R.T errors but many errors in Event Viewer ?

[Computurtle]

I'm having a really frustrating issue with 1 of my M.2 SSDs and I suspect it is probably just faulty, however I would like to confirm before going and buying a new one.

My ADATA SX6000NP has recently started failing very often, but the weird part is that most the time a simple restart or powering off and on my PC fixes the issue momentarily so the drive isn't completing failing. After an arbitrary amount of time or a random trigger the drive will stop working, showing up as an Unknown Uninitialised drive Disk Manager causing any applications located on it to crash, the drive still shows up in Windows and I can view the first layer of folders, clicking on the a folder or trying to launch an application gives an error. Occasionally restarting the PC it will not show up in the BIOS. Usually a power cycle makes it show back up and work again for a bit.

I switched positions with my second M.2 drive and it seemed to work more consistently but the same thing eventually happens. S.M.A.R.T shows no warnings however Event Viewer shows plenty of warnings with IDs 50, 51, 140 and 1000, 1005 when an application crashes that was located on said drive. And just as I checked to confirm the IDs I've now seen 11 and 129 which are to do with RAID? I can confirm the BIOS is set to ACHI and not RAID.

I have tried many different things to fix it along the lines of CHKDSK and WMIC, Updating drivers (where possible) and firmware etc. (it should be noted this drive had been working fine for about 3 years now). I have used ADATAs SSD toolbox to check the health and (when it's working for those couple minutes) the health is +90% with under 10TB total bytes written. And like I said I checked S.M.A.R.T with everything reporting OK.

Is this just a dying drive? Should I just try and save all my data before it fully dies and bite the bullet and replace it? Or is there a silver bullet I could try? If I should replace it, what M.2 NVMe SSD would you recommend?

(Note: this is within the 5yr warranty but I've lost my receipt .-. and don't want to send this all the way to Taiwan.)

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

We're going to need a little more information. When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

If you're on Windows 10, include the OS version(not the edition). What BIOS version are you on at the time of writing for your motherboard? Apart from the make and model, please include the age of the PSU. As for your SSD's RMA, if you can't provide a proof pf purchase, I'm afraid you don't have warranty to speak of. I'd definitely go ahead and migrate any and/or all mission critical data off of the SSD if you're able to.

and don't want to send this all the way to Taiwan
I don't think it'd go all that way. Where are you located?

 

[Computurtle]

We're going to need a little more information. When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list them like so:

My bad, no worries will do that now!

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600x
Motherboard: MSI X370 GAMING PRO CARBON ATX
RAM: 2x8gb Trident Z RGB 3200MHz
SSD1: ADATA SX8200NP 240GB (Windows OS)
SSD2: ADATA SX6000NP 512GB (Problematic Drive)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB
GPU: GALAX GTX 1060 6GB OC
PSU: Silverstone Strider Platinum 550 W 80+ Platinum (3+ Years Old)
Chassis: NZXT H440 Black/Green
OS: Windows 10 Pro (20H2)
BIOS: Version E7A32AMS.1NX (7/7/2020)

and don't want to send this all the way to Taiwan
I don't think it'd go all that way. Where are you located?

I'm located in Australia, I only mentioned this because ADATA support said that if I couldn't get it fixed I would have to send it to them (in Taiwan).

 

[Computurtle]

Just a little update,

I started transferring any files I could not easily replace to my HDD for backup and restoration once I get a new SSD, however I also started transferring some games because living in Australia means SSD > HDD transfer speeds are way faster than redownloading the games.

I tried transferring Halo Infinite and Halo MCC, Infinite transferred over in full and halfway through MCC it stopped (due to the drive "disappearing"), I tried re-transferring it again after a power off/on and got a little further before it stopped again, the MCC folder is just too large to get through. However when I tried transferring Ubisoft Game Launcher, it consistently caused the drive to "disappear" when it reached the file "uplay_r264.dll", I am not sure if this has any significance but thought I would mention it.

At this point I have transferred everything mission critical and would be OK with the drive outright dying completely, I can deal with waiting for some games, launchers and applications to re-download. I consider this drive faulty and not some sort of software issue and plan to get a replacement drive tomorrow. If however it is a software issue and the (according to S.M.A.R.T and SSD Toolbox) perfectly healthy drive can be fixed, I'm still open to any and all suggestions as later down the road I wouldn't mind giving this drive to my partner for her future PC, just to save on some $$ (I plan to give her my other working drive eventually).

Right now I am tossing up between getting a fairly decent Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 1TB (Gen3x4) as just a cheap replacement OR getting a WD Black 850 1TB (Gen4x4) and a new x570 motherboard with 2x M.2 slots.
(Keep in mind I still have a perfectly fine ADATA SX8200NP 240GB (Gen3x4), if I go with the former option, I'd put that drive into the Gen2 slot on my current motherboard and the 970 EVO in my Gen3 slot, if I go with the latter option, I would put the Gen3 into the CPU slot which would only support Gen3 on my 2000 series Ryzen and obviously the Black 850 into the chipset Gen4 slot. My end goal is to have 2x Gen4 SSDs and a 3000 series Ryzen so both SSDs can be at full Gen4 speed, the former option is more expensive in the end but would give me 2 SSDs to give to my partner, which she thinks she probably wouldn't need. Any thoughts?)