SSD Dead
So I have been using the OCZ Arc 100 SSD I won last year (or the year before, I don't remember which) as my primary OS HD. Then on Wednesday I boot my PC up and it says no boot drive. I tried everything I could think of, ttrying to boot into Safe Mode, using a USB as a recovery disk, etc, but nothing will get the drive to work. I tried putting it in my wife's PC and hers didn't recognize it either. Is there anything that I could do to at least get the data off the drive? I've never had an SSD fail on new before, especially without any warning.
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Did you use the same cable when you tried it in your wife's PC?
Paging @Ryder
Tried old one and a known working cable.
Hi Joe,
If you can't see it on the SATA bus (in bios, in Windows, nowhere) then there are no tools to wake up the drive to get data.
Thanks. I was afraid of that. :-( First dead SSD I've had.
Can you verify 100% that the device isn't seen by any operating system? Like, if you're in windows and it just doesn't auto-mount doesn't necessarily mean the drive is un-seeable. Can your motherboard see the drive in BIOS (not a bootable drive, just... like... does it say 'SLOT 1: OCZ LOL SSD' somewhere in the 'drives' screen)? Can a linux USB see the device if you run fdisk -l?
If the drive is see-able by these methods but doesn't boot or automount, the partition table may be shot (or the bootloader could be shot, but that's something the recovery CD probably would have fixed). There are free tools out there that will rebuild partition tables that work where the windows DVD doesn't (I can't remember the name of the good one... it's not EASEUS... I have used these programs before, though, and they work so well they should be illegal). There are even free tools that allow for the rebuilding of filesystems with minimal data loss (i.e. testdisk, but no idea if it works with ntfs).
If you do have the ability to see (but still not mount) the drive, and the partition table/filesystem are both okay, you could try running smartmontools and check some of the SMART errors on disk. I know SSDs have a nonrenewable write buffer, but I can't imagine you've run through it already (hell, it takes us a couple years to run through the buffer on some of our disks, and we have them running in RAID5s and RAID6s with 1500 customers on a server, 24/7). Either way, smartmontools might help you pinpoint the problem.
If you just straight can't see it at all and you have a USB-to-SATA adapter, you can boot into a linux recovery environment and watch dmesg and see what happens when the drive is plugged in to the machine. That may give you some clues to the problem... but at that point there's not much yer gonna be able to do.
If there's data on the drive you're trying to recover and all more sane methods have failed, there's always the crazy stuff:
http://lifehacker.com/5823227/save-dying-video-cards-with-a-quick-bake-in-the-oven
http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux
Be sure to exhaust your other options first.
Melting solder and possibly freeing up the drive via stiction aren't relevant for SSDs afaik
If you can't see it in BIOS, it's unlikely salvageable at a reasonable cost.
The stiction explanation is wrong to begin with; the reason why you want to freeze things is the same as why you would freeze individual components with freeze spray to try to isolate a failing part. In this case, we're freezing the whole thing.
EDIT: referenced explanation isn't great. There are a lot of things in electronics components which change over temperature and things like dodgy solder, wire bonding, damaged transistor, resistors, and capacitors can behave differently and usually better at colder temperatures.
What is the warranty? I think many SSD's give you three years. I know it does not save the data, but maybe get a drive swap.
Definitely under warranty - https://support.ocz.com/customer/portal/emails/new
In your description mention my name as contact.
Thanks. I just filled this form out.
Thanks @Ryder, my new SSD should be here in a few days. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best program to use to copy from the working drive that I do have to the replacement drive on its way? My old drive is only 120GB and I would prefer the bigger\newer drive to house Windows.
https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/
I ended up buying the software after using the trial. Works really well, no reboots, no linux boot partitions, etc. All done in Windows.
I think I used this the last time I did what you're referring to:
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm
You should also add a full disk (or targeted, if you/your wife consistently use the "right" directories), automatic backup solution on the new drive. Depending on your use-case, Carbonite, Backblaze, and Crashplan are all good recommendations.
Would it be uncouth of me to recommend Knoppix with dd or dd-rescue for drive imaging? These are my go-tos.
I used Clonezilla for my last Windows system drive upgrade to a larger SSD. I didn't have a way to copy the M.2 SATA drive directly as I had done with 2.5 inch drives using Samsung upgrade kit. Booted with Clonezilla USB, backed up to USB HDD, replaced the small M.2 drive, restored the system. After cloning the 128 GB drive to the 500, I extended the new volume in Windows Disk Management.