SSD operating system drive randomly wiped??

[jhsu8888]

I recently added a new hard drive to my system and it stopped booting.

I disconnected everything except the operating drive and it gave me the error:

"Reboot and select proper boot device"

I then connected the operating drive to a USB/SATA adapter and when I looked at it on another computer it says the drive is not even formatted!

It's a Samsung 128GB, 830 series that I got last year. It's been running solid since I put it together, but does this mean the drive got wiped somehow??

Any advice appreciated.

 

[thx1138v2]

How clean is your power? I just saw this article yesterday. It basically says you MUST have good power + UPS to run SSD's. I'm guessing a clitchy PSU might also wipe the drive. That article points to other articles with more specifics.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/169124-the-mysteriously-disappearing-drive-are-power-outages-killing-your-ssds

 

[jhsu8888]

Thanks for the tip, that article really scares me. I realized the adapter I used (pulled from an off the shelf external hard drive case) actually only works with the drive that came with it, so even another HDD that I know should work reads as unformatted.

Although the sudden power cut may be the problem, I remember a few times having to cut the power or having a circuit pop in my house, I have no way of testing the SSD until I get a proper SATA/USB adapter.

Really frustrating!

 

[ingtar33]

plug it into your motherboard and go into your bios. go to your boot settings and make sure it's the device the computer is looking to. It sounds like when you added the new hard drive the bios set it to the primary boot device. when you took out the new hard drive the bios probably didn't reassign the ssd as the primary boot device.

start there.

 

[jhsu8888]

Okay, I was able to find an adapter and the SSD operating drive shows up okay as an external device. All the Windows system folders appear to be there. I ran an error-check with no issues.

Re-connected to my motherboard and still getting the "boot device" error. The motherboard is an Asrock Z77 Extreme4. The bios loads up okay and I can select the SSD in the setup page, but when I reboot I get the "boot device" error.

I even tried connecting the SSD to the USB adapter and selecting the boot drive through the USB option, still getting the same "boot device" error.

Should I open the question up in another forum?

 

[ingtar33]

nope. sounds like your ssd isn't set up properly in the bios. the boot device error happens when either the boot sector is corrupted or the ssd isn't set up right in the bios. Make sure the ssd is set to IDE mode in the bios, see if that fixes it.

 

[jhsu8888]

I found it under Advanced/Storage Configuration, but I tried all the possible configurations of IDE and AHCI modes for SATA Mode Selection and ASMedia SATA3 Mode with no luck. Still getting the "boot device error"

 

[ingtar33]

ok. grab your windows install disk, you're going to need to repair the boot sector on the drive. load into the recovery console.

select command prompt mode.
type bootrec /fixmbr

see if that works. if it doesn't load the windows disk again and load into command prompt again, then
type bootrec /fixboot

see if that works

 

[jhsu8888]

Just did this.

bootrec /fixmbr --> The operation completed successfully.

bootrec /fixboot --> Element not found.

bootrec /scanos --> Total identified Windows installations: 1
[1] C:\Windows
The operation completed successfully

bootrec /rebuildbcd --> Total identified Windows installations: 1
[1] C:\Windows
Add installation to boot list? Yes(Y)/No(N)/All(A):y
Element not found.

Is it borked? System reinstall?

 

[ingtar33]

mmmm and it still won't load up? might be borked. 🙁

 

[jhsu8888]

My only other question is, even if I do a system reinstall, how do I figure out what the health of the SSD is and whether I'm going to have to replace it soon or not?

HD Sentinal?

Will something like Spinrite be good for SSD?

Also I ran the Startup Repair tool from the installation disc and saw this at the end of the repair details:

Root cause found:
The partition table does not have a valid System Partition.
Repair action: Partition table repair
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0


It did not solve anything when I rebooted though.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Got it! Wow, so after looking up the partition error I found this post and followed the instructions about running DISKPART from the command prompt to mark the partition:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7791044e-db7f-4144-a96c-945299811f58/bootmgr-not-found-bootrec-rebuildbcd-and-fixboot-give-element-not-found-error?forum=w7itproinstall

Then I ran all the BOOTREC tools again, this time all successful. After rebooting I got:
BOOTMGR IS MISSING
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart

I booted into the Windows installation disk again, and when it got to the system recovery options it immediately discovered & fixed a problem with the OS. I did one more reboot and finally got my system back!

So that was really long-winded, but thanks ingtar for your help! I definitely wouldn't have gotten this far without it. If you have any suggestions for scanning the SSD for problems please let me know.