[SOLVED] M.2 suddenly stopped being detected in BIOS and windows repair

[StoneyTheBear]

I have a 2 year old 2TB adata xpg sx8200, this is my only drive atm and my mobo is an msi b450 gaming pro carbon ac.

Yesterday I left my PC with a pretty heavy game running to speak to my housemates, I was gone for about 20-30 minutes and when I came back my PC was sat at the BIOS. I was pretty concerned but just restarted my PC, where it just immediately went back to the BIOS again.

I looked through all the boot overrides and there was nothing there whatsoever. I changed from UEFI to CSM (legacy + uefi), as I feel like a month or two ago I realised it was set to CSM and changed it to UEFI, did nothing, I reset my BIOS settings, again nothing.
I read you can use bootrec through windows repair, so I flashed a usb and gave it a shot but I kept getting access denied when trying /fixboot. I tried using the built in repair startup, but it couldn't diagnose the problem.
I tried flashing my usb with a partitioning tool called PA Assist, but as you can prolly guess that didn't find my drive. I then put it into one of my housemate's m.2 slots, wasn't detected on their pc. I gave up for a bit at this point.

This morning, I decided to keep trying and power cycled my ssd which didn't work (not entirely sure I did it right tho) then updated my mobo as it was 1 version out of date. After my pc restarted, instead of being taken to the bios I just got an error warning me that an operating system wasn't found. I thought I struck gold, fiddled with something in the bios (can't remember, maybe secure boot or swapping to/from uefi), restarted and was now met with an error telling me to reboot and select a proper boot device. Although the 2 errors were basically saying the same thing, they seemed to be separate from each other so I hoped this was some sort of progress.

I think at this point I realised I had a 2nd m.2 slot, so I swapped it across and still nothing, except that error was gone (and hasn't appeared since, but I haven't put it back into the original slot yet).

Anyone got any ideas at all? I can RMA it as a last resort but I'd rather not bc I've got some personal stuff and projects that I've been meaning to back up on there.
I've ordered a temp drive (that I plan on returning) so I can at least use the machine and maybe try more fixes. After I've exhausted all my options I'm gonna try bake it just to see if it works.

*sorry for the wall of text, wanted to put everything I did, in order down to maybe make things easier

**I just left the PC powered on without the ssd in for about an hour, plugged it back in to my 2nd slot to give it another shot and now my bios is recognising the drive?? I still can't actually use the boot override to boot into the windows boot manager though

***I restarted the PC and now it isn't being detected by the BIOS again

 

[Lutfij]

What game was left taxing the system when you went away for a word...? Given how it was the only storage drive, it likely conked out with the taxation and the wear and tear over 2 years. Often times if an OS goes missing on an SSD, it's time for the SSD to be replaced(if under warranty period, then RMA'd) since OSes don't wipe themselves out, well technically they can if an update went sideways whereby the OS is corrupt.

You could plonk the culprit SSD onto a compatible M.2 slot on another (donor)motherboard(neighbors) and see if the SSD comes up there, prior to RMA'ing.

After I've exhausted all my options I'm gonna try bake it just to see if it works.
Last time someone tried reflowing their GPU, they ruined the sticker on said device. User did so since their warranty period had expired. In your case, tarnishing the label/stickers on the drive can and will result in voiding of warranty.

 

[StoneyTheBear]

What game was left taxing the system when you went away for a word...? Given how it was the only storage drive, it likely conked out with the taxation and the wear and tear over 2 years. Often times if an OS goes missing on an SSD, it's time for the SSD to be replaced(if under warranty period, then RMA'd) since OSes don't wipe themselves out, well technically they can if an update went sideways whereby the OS is corrupt.

You could plonk the culprit SSD onto a compatible M.2 slot on another (donor)motherboard(neighbors) and see if the SSD comes up there, prior to RMA'ing.

After I've exhausted all my options I'm gonna try bake it just to see if it works.
Last time someone tried reflowing their GPU, they ruined the sticker on said device. User did so since their warranty period had expired. In your case, tarnishing the label/stickers on the drive can and will result in voiding of warranty.

It was warhammer 2 with about ~300 mods on. Is it that common for SSDs to conk out after just about 2 years? I thought they had a limited amount of read and writes but I figured it should last longer than that, I think the manufacturers warranty is for 5 years as well.
I tried putting it into my friend's PC but it wasn't detected there either.

idk if you saw my edits, but I put the ssd back in my pc after it being on for about an hour and it was detected by the mobo, but I couldn't actually boot into the windows boot manager. It stopped being detected when I restarted my PC again