Recycled SSDs , Can They be reused?

[Scboy4ever]

I recently bought 20 used SSD’s from a local recycle center for 5 bucks each. The first one worked fine when I loaded Windows on it but many of the others aren’t working. They show up in the bios and Windows installation but when I go to load Windows on it the files won’t copy over and an error appears. I’m thinking they may of been shredded with a program before recycling ? If so are they lost, or is there a program that can repurpose them?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id go test all the drives with a disk checking software and read the smart data first before intsalling windows on it.

 

If its a bad drive, nothing you can do easil.

[Airdragonz]

Try reformating them. If you can't, then it's likely a hardware problem

[Anghammarad]

SSDs, different to HDD have a limited amount of data that can be written onto them. 

 

When this write threshold has been reached, some drives don't allow write access anymore, or some intel ssd even go write protect and brick themselfs after a reboot. 

 

So getting used/refurbished SSDs isn't such a good idea. 

 

Yes some now may say "But Anghammarad is stoopid coz modern SSDs have a lot larger lifespan!" sure... but as long as you can't read out the total bytes written onto them to check the lifetime left on them, it is mostly a financial headshot, no matter if 5 bucks or 10 cents, just lost.

[porina]

Find the brand/model of them and see if the manufacturer offers a diagnostic tool for it. They will typically report if there is a problem, and also how much remaining life is on them. If not available, you can try generic SMART tools like CrystalDiskInfo.

[Scboy4ever]

Thanks for the info. Why would manufacturers limit the data amount on SSDs?. That’s really disturbing. Hopefully a few them will pan out so I don’t take a loss. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, Scboy4ever said:

Thanks for the info. Why would manufacturers limit the data amount on SSDs?. That’s really disturbing. Hopefully a few them will pan out so I don’t take a loss. 

not a manufacture limit normally(cough cough intel). Its a limitation of the nand flash cells, but this doesn't seem like a out of writes issues.

 

Can you show the smart into of the drives and run something like badblocks on them?

[kirashi]

On 7/12/2019 at 8:36 AM, Scboy4ever said:

Thanks for the info. Why would manufacturers limit the data amount on SSDs?. That’s really disturbing. Hopefully a few them will pan out so I don’t take a loss. 

Um.... they don't limit the number of writes. SSDs wear out over time, just like anything else. Despite having no moving parts, flash NAND memory only has so many write cycles before the cells will no longer retain 1's or 0's successfully. If they're decent brand name SSDs, like Crucial or Samsung, you can usually install software from the manufacturer's website to see how many write cycles they've been through so you can gauge which drives may be more worn out than others.

[Scboy4ever]

Just an update. So it seems the issue was with the laptop I was refurbishing. Now I feel so stupid. All the SSD's checked out and I made a sweet profit. I also bought 10 Dell Latitudes E6540 i7's 4th gen's for 15.00 each, 1080p resolution. Only need the hard drive caddy and drive which I put the the SSD's. I also got a few i5 (4th gen laptops ) for 15 each so the profit was good. Thanks for your help. Peace.