SSD Failure

[Moltuae]

This is the first proper SSD failure I've seen ... Just wondering what other folk's experiences are.


It is (or was) a SanDisk Ultra 120GB.

But now it's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-SSD!

It was happily number-crunching away until a few days ago when it suddenly died, without any prior illness. Its life was cut short, in the line of duty, by an office worker who turned their computer on one morning to play solitaire, or some such urgent task. I haven't performed a post-mortem, though my guess would be an acute controller failure.





Anyway, I digress ..... I'm presently wondering whether it's worth bothering digging out the paperwork and contacting SanDisk or whether I should just throw the damn thing in the bin or take it apart, just for the hell of it. It was purchased a little over 12 months ago, though the manufacture date is April 2012. Don't these things usually have 3 years or more warranty? If so, what's the claim process and is it likely to cost me more than an hour of my time (effectively making it not worth claiming)?

 

[brandonkick]

I'd assume your going to spend at least an hour getting it all taken care of, if they even are willing to replace the drive.

I'd say your better off buying a new drive.

Stay away from Kingston, they switched to a very slow NAND without changing any model/product numbers. I can recommend samsung drives from everything I've read.

 

[Moltuae]

I'd assume your going to spend at least an hour getting it all taken care of, if they even are willing to replace the drive.

Thanks.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, which is why I haven't bothered looking further into it yet. I've already replaced the drive, with a Samsung as it happens. Fortunately I configured nightly system backups when I originally installed the computer, so replacing the drive was pretty painless.

Just wondered if there was some quick and easy SanDisk replacement procedure ... though I realise that's probably wishful thinking.

Anyone wanna buy a SanDisk paperweight?

 

[Kitten Kong]

I feel your pain. I have a Crucial 60Gb SSD here on the bench.

I used it as a form of keeping most of my tools on, and it was blisteringly fast.

Until the day it died.

3 yr warranty with Crucial. So contact them, to be told, that they no longer make or sell that model.

They would offer a credit towards the cost of a replacement. However the credit, was less than 50% of what I paid for it!. So its sat here gathering dust, till I use it to keep the door open during the summer..

 

[Patch22]

What's the skinny with data recovery from a failed/failing SSD? What I mean is, I currently have a dying traditional SATA drive that I've managed to pull some data from for the customer (inbetween the drive mechanism scraping, clunking and writhing in agony!!) Do SSD's just die with less hope of a similar scenario? I've not yet come across a customer asking me for help recovering data from an SSD but I reckon it won't be long, especially as they are touted as being so reliable.

 

[Moltuae]

So its sat here gathering dust, till I use it to keep the door open during the summer..

I was looking to give it a second life as something like a fancy door-wedge, or maybe a small sanding block.

Then I figured it would probably have been its wish to donate its body to science, so ..... in the name of science, I took it apart.

I then decided to keep it ...

It'll come in handy when I'm explaining to customers the differences between mechanical and solid state drives. I already have one or two dissected HDDs that I carry around with me for that purpose, but previously, after displaying and explaining the inner workings of a hard drive, I would produce an intact SSD and proclaim "and this is an SSD", which was kind of an anticlimax. Now I can pop the lid off and say "and this is what an SSD looks like inside! And while generally more robust and reliable, they can and do still fail, just like this one did".





Now that I have taken it apart, this of course is the point at which someone will reply to this thread to say, "yeah, just post it to this address and SanDisk will send you a new 1TB SSD by way of compensation".

 

[trevm999]

3 yr warranty with Crucial. So contact them, to be told, that they no longer make or sell that model.

That is nuts! It was still under warranty? I once had a kingston stick of RAM that was bad and they didn't make it anymore and so they actually repaired it instead of replacing.

 

[pceinc]

We saw our first SSD failure today. Kingston 120GB just over a year old. System was working yesterday. Powered it off. Moved PC to a new desk this morning, powered on and no SSD found. Simple as that.

 

[Moltuae]

We saw our first SSD failure today. Kingston 120GB just over a year old. System was working yesterday. Powered it off. Moved PC to a new desk this morning, powered on and no SSD found. Simple as that.

Except for the desk move and the fact it was a SanDisk 120GB SSD (rather than a Kingston 120GB SSD), the details are the same: The SSD was just over a year old. Powered off as normal at the end of the day, then simply wasn't recognised by the OS or the BIOS the next day.

Tried it in a couple of other machines too .... nada.

 

[KompuKare]

SF-1200? That was the one SSD failure I encountered. A Sandisk Ultra 120GB which just disappeared. I imagine the firmware has gone into some endless loop (although I guess the controller could have died). A pity none of the manufacturers have a firmware reset button but I am unsure how that would work if the firmware and controller are using any kind of encryption key.

Looking at the PCB images for Sandisk Ultra there appears to be one of those 8pin ATMEL type chips on there but no idea if it is possible or if anyone has tried to hook that up to serial port. In theory these drives might be recoverable but since everything is so proprietary there is not much hope.

 

[Moltuae]

there appears to be one of those 8pin ATMEL type chips on there but no idea if it is possible or if anyone has tried to hook that up to serial port. In theory these drives might be recoverable but since everything is so proprietary there is not much hope.

That's what I was thinking.

On said dead drive here in my hands, it looks like a ATMLH138 (possibly 188; the numbers are malformed) and there are a few nearby test points that look suspiciously like in-circuit serial programming connections.

Like you say though, not a lot of chance of getting any info. And spending any substantial amount of time trying to figure it out would make it an uneconomical repair.

 

[lcoughey]

What's the skinny with data recovery from a failed/failing SSD? What I mean is, I currently have a dying traditional SATA drive that I've managed to pull some data from for the customer (inbetween the drive mechanism scraping, clunking and writhing in agony!!) Do SSD's just die with less hope of a similar scenario? I've not yet come across a customer asking me for help recovering data from an SSD but I reckon it won't be long, especially as they are touted as being so reliable.

We provide SSD data recovery and it is not easy. I'd love to have any old SSD drives, working or dead, for R&D, if anyone wants to send them my way.

As for your client's drive, it sounds like you should have outsourced it to a data recovery pro.

 

[trevm999]

I thought I bricked one of my own SSDs today. Turns out that it was problems with everything I was connecting it to. Couple of BIOS updates later and minus one sata to usb adapter and now it works fine.

 

[Patch22]

As for your client's drive, it sounds like you should have outsourced it to a data recovery pro.

Ha,Ha...data recovery specialists charge serious money around my area and my client was not interested in paying for this, but was just happy for me to try and retrieve what I could by software methods and a lot of patience..

I guess this option is just not possible with SSD failure

 

[ClickRight]

Ha,Ha...data recovery specialists charge serious money around my area and my client was not interested in paying for this, but was just happy for me to try and retrieve what I could by software methods and a lot of patience..

I guess this option is just not possible with SSD failure

I have recovered one dead SSD (sorry I don't recall the make/model and don't have it on hand) with out DeepSpar DDI that did not show in a PC.

Aside from that, I have had a few others come in, including the aforementioned 120GB SanDisk, dead as a doornail and did not ID in my DDI

 

[lcoughey]

Ha,Ha...data recovery specialists charge serious money around my area and my client was not interested in paying for this, but was just happy for me to try and retrieve what I could by software methods and a lot of patience..

Serious money, eh? Did you get an assessment to find out? If you are able to recover some data with a lot of pain, Recovery Force would likely be doing it for you for $280CAD and 300DDR for $300USD.

I guess this option is just not possible with SSD failure

What option with SSD failure? Like I said, we recover data from most SSD drives.

 

[lcoughey]

I have recovered one dead SSD (sorry I don't recall the make/model and don't have it on hand) with out DeepSpar DDI that did not show in a PC.

Aside from that, I have had a few others come in, including the aforementioned 120GB SanDisk, dead as a doornail and did not ID in my DDI

Send them to me for a free assessment.