Question Silicon Power A55 M.2 SATA SSD has gone nuts ?

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CountMike

CountMike

Titan
Oct 31, 2015
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I had it for couple of years on an adapter to PCIe bus. Worked fine until few days ago when it suddenly refused to delete any data on it. That is only fault with it. HW checks out in multiple test programs. It can be read and written to properly just nothing can delete anything from it. Deleting partition multiple ways, formatting and even Safe erase seem to work but every time it's accessed again, all data is still there.

I suppose that firmware is at fault so I'd like to flash same or other version like I did to flash some other SSDs and HDDs. I found and used SP programs for it. SSD SP_Toolbox_V4.0.8-20250122 and Firmware update software_103_Release, but.... Toolbox checks it as normal, no problems and FW updater doesn't find any new FW to update nor has it an option to include any.
 
At that point I'd assume the thing is failing, although I couldn't explain why it would behave that way. Some drives do have a read-only failure mode, but you shouldn't be able to write any files to it. You can't even delete individual files? Can you try it in another machine?

Oh, also since it's SATA, that means the adapter is an actual controller card, so I suppose it could be the adapter. If you can get another one, or use a port on the motherboard, that might make a difference. Why are you using an adapter? Even small motherboards have a few SATA ports.
 
evermorex76 said:
At that point I'd assume the thing is failing, although I couldn't explain why it would behave that way. Some drives do have a read-only failure mode, but you shouldn't be able to write any files to it. You can't even delete individual files? Can you try it in another machine?

Oh, also since it's SATA, that means the adapter is an actual controller card, so I suppose it could be the adapter. If you can get another one, or use a port on the motherboard, that might make a difference. Why are you using an adapter? Even small motherboards have a few SATA ports.
Click to expand...
I's in M.2 format and my MB has M.2 slots only for NVMe. Although it's in PCIe adater it still uses a SATA data cable.
Can't delete anything from it. even tried with Linux. All was fine until few days ago.
Now I need to flash new firmware to see if that fixes it.
 
CountMike said:
I's in M.2 format and my MB has M.2 slots only for NVMe. Although it's in PCIe adater it still uses a SATA data cable.
Can't delete anything from it. even tried with Linux. All was fine until few days ago.
Now I need to flash new firmware to see if that fixes it.
Click to expand...
Ah, so the "adapter" is nothing more than a physical carrier, not a PCIe adapter, though maybe it pulls power. What is the model of it?

M.2 slot 3 on that motherboard supports SATA. It's the one closer to the rear on the bottom, not Blazing or Hyper. It's shared with the regular SATA port 3 so you can't use both at the same time.

I would absolutely make a backup of any important data before doing anything because there's a chance you'll make it completely unreadable.
 
evermorex76 said:
Ah, so the "adapter" is nothing more than a physical carrier, not a PCIe adapter, though maybe it pulls power. What is the model of it?

M.2 slot 3 on that motherboard supports SATA. It's the one closer to the rear on the bottom, not Blazing or Hyper. It's shared with the regular SATA port 3 so you can't use both at the same time.

I would absolutely make a backup of any important data before doing anything because there's a chance you'll make it completely unreadable.
Click to expand...
No. M.2_3 slot has only M key. no SATA support but that doesn't real matter as there's data cable to SATA port and only power from adapter. In any case, data is already transferred from it, it's still readable and writable only deletion doesn't work. I have backups of everything so not big loss.
All I need is to find a way to flash firmware and se if that would fix it. It's still under warranty but can't send it because there are sensitive data on it. If can't be fixed I'll have to take hammer to it. It's 500GB so I could use in a USB adapter.
 
It has gone into read only mode, meaning it has "failed" (air quotes there for a reason). I had one do this recently, read only but Crystal Disk etc report it in good condition. Some non exhaustive research showed me it was likely a known issue with certain Phison controllers (I forget which model #) going into a "panic" mode when it discovers faults that are not actually there. As far as I could find, once it has gone into read only it's toast even though the flash is actually fine and everything reports good. Now, since you have backed up the data it's definitely worth faffing about with it. If you get anywhere post here, I still have mine sitting on my wall of shame, might be a fun project to try and resurrect it.

Hilariously mine was a Steam drive, and would crash games seemingly at random. Later on I realized it was likely trying to write save files at whatever interval. This thing had me chasing zebras until it out and out caused a hard crash following which Steam would not launch but everything else unrelated to Steam was fine. Figured out it might be the drive when I tried to uninstall Steam and it...wouldn't. Trying to delete partitions via DiskPart threw a fit. Further testing found it exactly as yours. I could see all the data, read it, but not write. It would format, but not format, same as yours. CD Info reported it as Good, 100%. But like I said above, if you get anywhere post it. I won't trust this drive even if it I got it functional again but it'd be a fun thing to try.
 
CountMike said:
All I need is to find a way to flash firmware ...
Click to expand...
That HDD Guru thread has a link to a tool which will repair the SSD, assuming it has a Phison S11 controller. SMART attribute 167 is the Write Protect attribute. A non-zero raw value indicates read-only mode, IIUC.

It's not a case of flashing the firmware. An SSD is not like a phone or a computer BIOS.
 
CountMike said:
No. M.2_3 slot has only M key. no SATA support
Click to expand...
Weird because the site says it supports SATA3 (ignore the bit about sharing a port because I was misreading). If you can save files, can you modify the existing ones? If so, maybe you could overwrite them with junk so you could RMA it. But maybe fzabkar's link can take care of the problem.

Just checked the manual. It's actually marked M2_2; I referred to it as 3 because that seemed to be the "third" slot to my mind. Just because it's M key doesn't mean it doesn't support SATA. M key is PCIe x4 and SATA, while B key is PCIe x2 and SATA. Your drive has both B and M so it can work in either. However it apparently does only support PCIe Gen 3 x2 even if you used an NVMe M key drive, according to the manual. It's using a couple of x1 lanes from the chipset rather than dedicated M.2 support.

M2_1 and M2_3 do only support PCIe drives. M.2 keying is almost as bad as USB-C specs.
 
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Firmware is HPS1104J which should be a Phison S11 controller. Searching by FW finds only 2.5" drives but several FW versions this one included but also says it's not up-gradable. This one is M.2 SATA format nut I suppose they have same chips and controller.
As I said before, I updated and flashed several SSDs and HDDs (Samsung, Seagate and Kingston) but their programs had option to do that, can't find one for this one.
Going to check if HDD guru has something.
Edit: Can't find for Silicon Power.
 
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Assuming that the firmware is damaged, it is most likely to be in the FTL (Flash Translation Layer). This is unique to each drive, as are the SMART module and defect lists. A firmware update doesn't target these modules, for obvious reasons.
 
Repair unsuccessful.
Drive: 0(ATA)
Model: SPCC M.2 SSD
Fw : HPS1104J
Size : 488386 MB
ATA: ReadInfoBlock failed! Error: 0x51
Press any key to exit

SSD Tool is asking for FW file but I can't find it to download.
PS. Contacted Silicon Power and was told:
Hi Mike, sorry for this trouble has caused you






Silicon Power-Customer Support
We are afraid that we currently don't have this firmware update
Silicon Power-Customer Support
would you possibly send it back for the replacement?

Silicon Power-Customer Support
Silicon Power-Customer Support

May we know the country you contact us from?

No more SP products for me.
 
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Another contact with Silicon Power, they asked for invoice or picture of said SSD which I sent. They agree to send replacement if I sent old one sufficiently damaged but I'm in Serbia, they are in Taiwan so it would cost me to send it more than it's worth. Ony have to wait for this:
Thank you for your patience, an agent will handle your case soon during service hours ( Mon-Fri 09:30 AM-18:30 PM GMT+8 ).
 
Don't eliminate SP drives from future purchases just because of one bad one. Even big names like Samsung and WD have had HUGE problems with some models, like total failure and data loss with random drives within a product line because of bad firmware or faulty flash. SP is one of the bigger of the "small" brands and quite popular for being low price without sacrificing performance, and I don't think their failure rate is tremendously worse than others. This problem seems to be an issue with Phison specifically, which many brands use.
 
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