SSD Won't Boot - Setup Indicates 0 GB Available

[VTHokie407]

Hey all,

I have had my 120 GB SSD for about 4 years now. It's an Intel SSD 320 Series I purchased from Best Buy. I had my Windows 8.1 operating system installed to it, and the majority of my programs have been installed to my secondary 500 GB SATA hard-drive.

About a month ago, I installed a new power supply unit after finding out online that my GPU was under-powered. After placing the new PSU in the tower, I had some boot drive malfunctions. I couldn't get the SSD to boot and the computer kept attempting to boot from my secondary 500GB SATA hard-drive. I went into Setup during launch and checked the boot order - the hard-drive boot order was correct (SSD first, then the 500GB SATA). After that, for reasons known only to god, the computer booted properly from the SSD.

Here it is a month later and it's doing the same thing - except this time it's worse. The boot order is correct and unchanged. I unplugged the 500GB SATA hard-drive and attempted to boot the SSD by itself, but received the message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

Setup is indicating the SSD has 0 GB free on it (despite the fact I know my SSD has at least 50 GB free on it). This concerned me, so I hooked up my SSD to my SATA-to-USB adapter and plugged it into my laptop. The hard-drive won't show up on the laptop's Windows Explorer (which rules out a bad SATA-to-motherboard cable).

I used HP Diagnostic during launch to check my SSD. The diagnostic tool claims the SSD "Passed"

Is my SSD toast? My 500GB SATA hard-drive came with the computer (which is nearly 6 years old) and is therefore older / less-advanced than the SSD. Are SSD's more fragile than old-school SATA hard-drives?

I'd appreciate any and all advice

- J

 

[Y0GI]

Sounds like a bad SSD. I would RMA it to Intel as there is a 5 year warranty: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/category/ssdc/ssd-320/find_part_svc_wrnty

Yogi

 

[TyrOd]

Hey all,

I have had my 120 GB SSD for about 4 years now. It's an Intel SSD 320 Series I purchased from Best Buy. I had my Windows 8.1 operating system installed to it, and the majority of my programs have been installed to my secondary 500 GB SATA hard-drive.

About a month ago, I installed a new power supply unit after finding out online that my GPU was under-powered. After placing the new PSU in the tower, I had some boot drive malfunctions. I couldn't get the SSD to boot and the computer kept attempting to boot from my secondary 500GB SATA hard-drive. I went into Setup during launch and checked the boot order - the hard-drive boot order was correct (SSD first, then the 500GB SATA). After that, for reasons known only to god, the computer booted properly from the SSD.

Here it is a month later and it's doing the same thing - except this time it's worse. The boot order is correct and unchanged. I unplugged the 500GB SATA hard-drive and attempted to boot the SSD by itself, but received the message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

Setup is indicating the SSD has 0 GB free on it (despite the fact I know my SSD has at least 50 GB free on it). This concerned me, so I hooked up my SSD to my SATA-to-USB adapter and plugged it into my laptop. The hard-drive won't show up on the laptop's Windows Explorer (which rules out a bad SATA-to-motherboard cable).

I used HP Diagnostic during launch to check my SSD. The diagnostic tool claims the SSD "Passed"

Is my SSD toast? My 500GB SATA hard-drive came with the computer (which is nearly 6 years old) and is therefore older / less-advanced than the SSD. Are SSD's more fragile than old-school SATA hard-drives?

I'd appreciate any and all advice

- J

This is a common failure on Intel 320 SSD's, they have had these problems since day 1 and firmware update have never completely resolved them.

You can still recover the data but only a handful of labs who do SSD rebuilds can deal with FTL corruption on Intel 320 SSD's.

If you don't need the data or have a backup, then in most cases you can do a secure erase and continue to use the SSD.

Obviously there are no guarantees on continuing to use it, so you should RMA it.

Keep in mind though, that Intel 320 is a particular example of an architecturally flawed SSD, so I wouldn't count on the replacement being reliable either.