Something is killing my SSD`s one by one in my pc

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Storydiver

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Oct 22, 2014
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3 days ago after booting up my pc my motherboard BIOS told me that it couldnt find my boot drive(Samsung 850 pro 256 gb) i tested the connections , swapped SATA and power cables but nothing , hooked it up to my other pc , windows storage device manager , and samsung magician saw only an uknown drive , tested my other SSD with the same cables , ( samsung evo 850 500 gb ) its condition was good , with 7 tb written .

Ok i thought so , the drive died , it was 4 years old , what ever i will go get a new one , got samsung evo 860 500 gb reinstalled win 10 and was good .
But today , after my morning boot up my evo 850 ( my game drive which i know was good ) had also bricked ( at first windows was in infinite loading loop , i restarted and no drive , same as before , BIOS would not even show that it was connected to my motherboard ).

At this point i am scared to hook anything up to my pc or even power it on .What can be doing this , PSU , motherboard or perhaps i , with my testing used the same power or SATA connector for both 850 pro and 850 evo after reassembly , could those be culprit ?

Has anyone seen anything like this , should i replace both my motherboard and PSU ?

my spec :
OS: win 10 1803
CPU: i7 4790k
Motheboard: MSI 97Z Gaming 7
PSU : corsair 850HXi
GPU : GTX 1080 SLI
RAM : corsair vengeance 2400 16 gb
SSD : 850 pro 256 gb ( dead )
SSD : 850 evo 500 gb ( dead )
SSD : 860 evo 500 gb
HDD : Toshiba 3 tb
HDD : Toshiba 3 tb

 
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gaborbarla

gaborbarla

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Difficult to say, it is I guess possible that your PSU is faulty. At the very least I would connect to a different power connector on the PSU and perhaps use another SATA cable on another SATA port. If it blows again, you will definitely know, but these are expensive tests and warranty may not cover a second replacement.
 
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Storydiver

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Oct 22, 2014
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SATA cables were connected through motherboard intel chipset .

Could the motherboard BIOS really be bricking my SSD s , this is not a new build , the SSD s were in the system for 4 and 2 years respectively (no BIOS updates from the moment of assembly 2014) the very last component that i swapped in , was the 3 tb HDD , which switched out 1tb seagate drive that was 8-7 old and was making noises 1 year ago .

The clear correlation between both SSD deaths , was that the system was powered down for the night and turning the morning boot up the SSD s were dead , it must be some kind of power situation turning boot up , what else could be killing SSD s so baddly that they would not even show up in the BIOS of my other PC .
Could some combination of BIOS and new windows updates or drivers really be killing SSDs this baddly ?

I run all orginal power cables that were inclued , since 2014 , both SSD s ( the old combination of 850 evo and pro , and the new combination of 850 and 860 evo ) were daisy chained on the same power cable ) .

Will run the memtest and report back soon.


Edit: a run of memetest showed no errors
 
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Storydiver

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At this point i see two options , as i dont have the equipment nor the skills to test PSU ( any repair shop i fear would ask more money then a used mother board and 650 EVGA bronze PSU ) the only option to test , that i see is to get the smallest cheap sacrificial SSD that i can find and switch and both the SATA and power cables and connections and hope that that SSD wont brick and it was one of them that was bad .

Or the other safest option is to replace both the MB and PSU , the CPU and RAM should be good , but i dont think i can find i new Z97 MB so i have to go used , then again i could just upgrade , but i was really hoping for Intel 10 nm Whisky Lake or Amds ZEN 2 before doing so and of course the RAM prices are insane right now.
 
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helpstar

helpstar

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Eventually you can revive the SSDs in another system, by unplugging the SATA power cord to the SSD while the system is on. This should get the SSD out of a freeze state or similar and should pop up in BIOS again.
Samsung Magician can help too, to create a secure erase boot USB flash drive, where the freeze state can be recognized
 
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Storydiver

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Oct 22, 2014
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Unplugging the SATA power cable did not seem to work , in what state did you exactly mean the pc to be in , in windows , in bios , with original boot drive plugged in or not , or something else

Interestingly now when either of the dead SSD are plug in with the second pc with the original boot drive plugged in , windows is in a infinite loading loop and on reset it will attempt automatic repairs .

will update when i have tried Samsung Magician secure erase boot USB flash drive.

Edit: samsung Magician secure erase boot USB flash drive did not show any connected SSD , tried with both , guess they are gone for good .
On a side note at least 500 gb evo i should be able to take in for warranty ( 36 months ) , but on the 256gb pro i am screwed , not because of the warranty ( 60 months ) , but because 6 months ago i was cleaning my draws and threw my receipt away , very , very stupid of me and shows that these things will always come back to bite you.

But the main problem still remains what is causing this in the first place ?
 
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Storydiver

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Yes I agree , but what is the probability that only the PSU is the issue , keeping in mind that the SSD 's were both times daisy chained on the same SATA power cable and only one bricked each time .

Should I replace the motherboard or only replacing the PSU?
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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i would do the power supply. if it spiking it kill the drive at power up. on the drive with a missing paperwork if you got it on amazon or newegg they can email you the pop. i have items for m2006 that show up on newegg. if not contact the ssd vendor ask for customer relation speed with a level 2 or higher rep. they should be able to go by the unit serial number of how old the drive is. on your power supply they have a long warranty it should still be in warranty for an rma.
 
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Storydiver

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I also agree that PSU is more likely to be the killer , but in the end it is still a flip a coin kinda of a gamble as the SSD is only connected to two things the PSU and the motherboard.

About the warranty issue no luck there I am afraid , I got 850 pro from a local computer shop and I would not expect them to keep serial number based records for close to 5 years now.
 
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mdd1963

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Testing a PSU is not going to accomplish anything, unless you intend some sort of sustained 8 month long load analysis and look for spikes with a digital storage oscope; the odds of seeing a spike the brief time you do the test are slim anyway... (merely measuring output voltages with no load on it is useless, anyway....)
 
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mdd1963

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That does not mean there was no power spike, only that one device was potentially bricked from it.....that one time.

Might not even be a PSU, might just be some really horrible luck on getting defective SSDs....or cheap $1 Chinese molex/SATA adapters to them, etc...
 
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Storydiver

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Got 750 Seasonic focus gold PSU , going to attempt a rebuild tonight , if another SSD craps out then I will know for sure that it was the motherboard .
I turned 500 gb evo in for warranty , the shop said that they were going to ship it to Samsung and not expect anything until the end June.
 
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Storydiver

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Did the rewiring , managed to save time by cutting the old cpu power cable and running the new on in front of the motherboard , in doing so I did not have unscrew the motherboard and GPUs .

Visual inspection didn't reveal any noticeable burns or points of failure on the PSU or the motherboard .

So far I have done several cold startups and everything seems fine , but that doesn't mean anything because , between the failure of first and second SSD I had also many bootups .

In about a week I will know for sure , I guess.
 
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Storydiver

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I have a replacement cpu power cable in the orginal kit.
All power cables were replaced for new ones .
 
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Smlarkin

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Smlarkin

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You might also consider using a hard drive instead of an SSD. A 500gb drive is only about $50. If it dies then you know to look somewhere else.
The PSU could be the culprit or the drive interface on the motherboard. If it lives then you know that the SSDs simply wore out. They do not last as long as Hard Drives. If you must have the performance of an SSD then you could look into an industrial grade one but it will cost a lot more.
 
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helpstar

helpstar

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"SSDs do have less lifetime" is not that true (depending on usage), HDDs often die much faster. SSDs have profen, that these can work for a very long time.
SSDs are much faster, wouldn´t build a PC without this great advantage.

HDDs typically are more voltage "resistant". So a HDD could survive longer than a SSD in a non optimal working area (stable voltage).

The PRO SSD from Samsung should be very good and it´s no need to get an industrial SSD if you won´t write 24/7 to it.

There were reports that Samsung firmware can brick its SSDs too, this firmware was removed, but maybe it was installed by Magician earlier.
 
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Smlarkin

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SSDs may have improved since I worked with them. A good point has been made about HDDs being more voltage tolerant. May be a cleaner power source is needed to protect a replacement SSD. A good batttery backup inverter may do the trick.
 
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