Question SSD suddenly dead - what are my prospects/ advice?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
C

ccskk

Distinguished
Feb 6, 2017
15
0
18,510
I was playing some games when I hit a sudden bsod(I didn't catch the code) and when I restarted my computer I found that my secondary SSD (the one the games were installed on) was no longer showing in the pc.
It's a Crucial SSD connected to the mobo via sata cable(as opposed to m.2). Can't remember it's exact age but my guess would be 4+ years old

I've had a go at this "power cycling" that I've seen be suggested from my research so far -- where I unplug the data and leave the disk powered on for a while. After my first attempt I saw the disk show in the bios, but when I restarted to the pc it was gone. After a second attempt I am still not seeing it in the bios or the pc.
I tried swapping the cable and sata slot used and it's still not registering (and the other drive does register with the cable from the bad drive) so it's not slot or cable related.

Does anyone have any more troubleshooting or suggestions for me? I am considering data recovery if I can find a cheap option, as there is a price I will pay for the convenience of recovering the data, though as far to my knowledge the data isn't essential so there's a limit to how much id pay for the convenience.

Not sure if I can use any kind of data recovery software if it's not even detecting the drive at all?

Is there even a prospect for this drive given the situation?
I should be able to get ahold and eventually viewer logs if it will be useful.

Pc Specs:
Custom build
Windows 10
32 GB ram
Motherboard gigabyte aorus b550 elite ax
amd Ryzen 5600x
Rtx 3060ti
Psu cs550M
Other drives attached and still working 1 Samsung 850 Evo m.2 and another HDD (2tb)
All drives roughly 80% full
Peripherals include m&kb and blue yeti mic.

Entire build roughly 4 years old but drives and psu might be a bit older from previous build.

Unfortunately I can't access the exact model of the problem SSD as it's not detected. It's sticker says just says crucial and jr has a BX logo on it and it was most likely a 1 or 2 tb.

Update: managed to get it to show in bios again temporarily but after existing the bios menu and the computer restarting it's not showing. I was able to get the drive name which hopefully is the model number
Ct960BX500SSD1
 
Last edited:
Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age (4 years?) condition (original to build, new, used, refurbished)?

Disk drives: make, model, capacity, how full?

All attached peripherals?
 
  • Like
Reactions: ccskk
The label on one side or the other of the SSD has to have the model information. It might say "P/N" for part number or something like that. But I would say it's probably never going to work reliably enough to recover data yourself, even if you can temporarily get it to show up. Could be some capacitor or resistor or fuse has blown, or it could be the flash or controller, and letting it sit for a while is enough to let it "heal" briefly.

Recovery services are likely to cost more than you care to pay if it's data you can just download again yourself for the most part, and nothing else critical. Probably at least a couple of hundred dollars, depending on just how much data there was and what they have to do to recover it, like de-soldering components. If a flash chip has gone bad there will of course be significant data loss. The one service I'm familiar with only charges if they recover data, but they charge based on how much is recovered, and if you can't give them definite things like file types or locations to look for, they'll just recover the whole drive and charge you for it.

Incidentally, an 80% full SSD is not performing as well as it could. SSDs need free space, preferably not allocated to partitions (overprovisioned) for flash management tasks (10% of capacity for overprovisioning is commonly recommended) and also usually for pseudo-SLC cache which allows for much faster writes. With so little space, the amount of pSLC cache available would be very small compared to the drive capacity, as it's either 1/3 or 1/4 depending on TLC/QLC flash.
 
Last edited:
evermorex76 said:
The label on one side or the other of the SSD has to have the model information. It might say "P/N" for part number or something like that. But I would say it's probably never going to work reliably enough to recover data yourself, even if you can temporarily get it to show up. Could be some capacitor or resistor or fuse has blown, or it could be the flash or controller, and letting it sit for a while is enough to let it "heal" briefly.

Recovery services are likely to cost more than you care to pay if it's data you can just download again yourself for the most part, and nothing else critical. Probably at least a couple of hundred dollars, depending on just how much data there was and what they have to do to recover it, like de-soldering components. If a flash chip has gone bad there will of course be significant data loss. The one service I'm familiar with only charges if they recover data, but they charge based on how much is recovered, and if you can't give them definite things like file types or locations to look for, they'll just recover the whole drive and charge you for it.

Incidentally, an 80% full SSD is not performing as well as it could. SSDs need free space, preferably not allocated to partitions (overprovisioned) for flash management tasks (10% of capacity for overprovisioning is commonly recommended) and also usually for pseudo-SLC cache which allows for much faster writes. With so little space, the amount of pSLC cache available would be very small compared to the drive capacity, as it's either 1/3 or 1/4 depending on TLC/QLC flash.
Click to expand...

managed to get it to show in bios again temporarily but after existing the bios menu and the computer restarting it's not showing. I was able to get the drive name which hopefully is the model number
Ct960BX500SSD1
In terms of that disk if it was 80% full I can't remember, it was my least full of all my disks, and the other two surviving ones are about 80%
 
So it's a 960GB BX500. There are what seem to be a lot of posts in a search regarding the reliability of that line, as it's based on QLC and that was the early days for QLC as well when write endurance wasn't as high as it could be. Maybe getting 4 years out of it was pretty good.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ccskk
ccskk said:
managed to get it to show in bios again temporarily but after existing the bios menu and the computer restarting it's not showing. I was able to get the drive name which hopefully is the model number
Ct960BX500SSD1
In terms of that disk if it was 80% full I can't remember, it was my least full of all my disks, and the other two surviving ones are about 80%
Click to expand...
Crucial BX500, 960GB.

Unless there is some life changing data on it...let it go.
 
USAFRet said:
Crucial BX500, 960GB.

Unless there is some life changing data on it...let it go.
Click to expand...
Yeah... Prepared to let most of it go but I don't know exactly what was on it yet since I have so much stuff. I'm sure I'll find out something important was lost with time.

Since it just happened last night want to make sure I can't get it running again to transfer to my spare HDD and will certainly be upgrading it regardless. 😅
 
evermorex76 said:
So it's a 960GB BX500. There are what seem to be a lot of posts in a search regarding the reliability of that line, as it's based on QLC and that was the early days for QLC as well when write endurance wasn't as high as it could be. Maybe getting 4 years out of it was pretty good.
Click to expand...
Good to know. I bought it back when I was a poor student so was probably going for something cheap. Then never thought about it since. Will certainly be getting a much more reliable replacement.
 
ccskk said:
Good to know. I bought it back when I was a poor student so was probably going for something cheap. Then never thought about it since. Will certainly be getting a much more reliable replacement.
Click to expand...
This time you can get an NVMe drive as the price won't be horribly higher. But overall most SSDs are more reliable now too, especially if you get TLC. Even lesser-known brands are good, so you don't have to go for the high-priced household names, just avoid the randomly-named straight from China brands.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom