troubleshooting Need help fixing my SSD

[Frano121]

Power went out and when I tried to turn it back on it wouldn't boot. I tried repairing it but as you can see in the image, it is stuck.

Is there anything I can do to save my SSD or at least data on it.

Thank you in advance

[Windows7ge]

Even if boot files are lost provided the partition data isn't corrupt you should be able to mount it while booting a different drive. It will show up as D:\ or E:\. From there you can pull everything important off of it.

 

Windows also has a recovery mode but if the drive can't boot I'm not sure it's a useful feature...

[Frano121]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Even if boot files are lost provided the partition data isn't corrupt you should be able to mount it while booting a different drive. It will show up as D:\ or E:\. From there you can pull everything important off of it.

 

Windows also has a recovery mode but if the drive can't boot I'm not sure it's a useful feature...

After 7 hours, this is the progress (image).

Before I ran this repair I created bootable USB with Ubuntu and I tried opening this drive but it said that the folder is empty.

Maybe it will work with windows. I'll try installing windows and recovering the data tomorrow.

Thank you for your help

[Windows7ge]

With Ubuntu or other Linux variants you sometimes have to manually mount the disk via CLI so Windows might be your better bet here. If Disk Management has the drive show up as unpartitioned there's a strong chance the partition data was corrupted when the power went out.

 

You may still be able to do data recovery though so long as new data hasn't been written to the disk.

[Frano121]

13 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

With Ubuntu or other Linux variants you sometimes have to manually mount the disk via CLI so Windows might be your better bet here. If Disk Management has the drive show up as unpartitioned there's a strong chance the partition data was corrupted when the power went out.

 

You may still be able to do data recovery though so long as new data hasn't been written to the disk.

I've tried to put my SSD in my brothers computer, and it wouldn't boot. (I've selected his drive to boot from). When my drive was removed his PC would boot normally again.

I don't know what to do. Should I try to format it and install fresh windows on it, or is there some other way to save the data. 

[TekSupport]

5 minutes ago, Frano121 said:

I've tried to put my SSD in my brothers computer, and it wouldn't boot. (I've selected his drive to boot from). When my drive was removed his PC would boot normally again.

I don't know what to do. Should I try to format it and install fresh windows on it, or is there some other way to save the data. 

There are two options here for attempting to recover your data,

one is to get a sata to usb adaptor, make sure you get one depending on the size of your drive, in your case since its an SSD, it should be 2.5inch. Here is a link to the best seller according to amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-SATA-Adapter-Cable-Drives-en-GB-SATA-USB-3-0-converter/dp/B01N2JIQR7/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=usb+to+sata&qid=1594646344&sr=8-3

 

The other option is to try again on your brothers pc where you get it to boot up on his drive with yours connected to try to access the data.

 

Also have you tried creating a windows bootable usb and running startup repair?

[Frano121]

15 minutes ago, TekSupport said:

There are two options here for attempting to recover your data,

one is to get a sata to usb adaptor, make sure you get one depending on the size of your drive, in your case since its an SSD, it should be 2.5inch. Here is a link to the best seller according to amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-SATA-Adapter-Cable-Drives-en-GB-SATA-USB-3-0-converter/dp/B01N2JIQR7/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=usb+to+sata&qid=1594646344&sr=8-3

 

The other option is to try again on your brothers pc where you get it to boot up on his drive with yours connected to try to access the data.

 

Also have you tried creating a windows bootable usb and running startup repair?

The first thing I tried to do was make quick bootable USB with Ubuntu to try and recover my data, but it said that the drive is empty. Now it wont even boot from USB.

I do have this SATA to USB adapter I will try to use it. 

( AXAGON ADSA-1S6 USB3.0 - SATA HDD/SSD 2,5" drawer + Adapter )

Thank you for the idea. 

[TekSupport]

3 minutes ago, Frano121 said:

The first thing I tried to do was make quick bootable USB with Ubuntu to try and recover my data, but it said that the drive is empty. Now it wont even boot from USB.

I do have this SATA to USB adapter I will try to use it. 

( AXAGON ADSA-1S6 USB3.0 - SATA HDD/SSD 2,5" drawer + Adapter )

Thank you for the idea. 

connect it to your brothers pc after it boots up incase it causes issue during boot.

[Windows7ge]

39 minutes ago, Frano121 said:

I've tried to put my SSD in my brothers computer, and it wouldn't boot. (I've selected his drive to boot from). When my drive was removed his PC would boot normally again.

I don't know what to do. Should I try to format it and install fresh windows on it, or is there some other way to save the data. 

Did you try selecting his drive from the Boot Override menu? (F10 sometimes F11). If his motherboard supports hot swap you could also connect the drive when the PC is already booted.

[Frano121]

28 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Did you try selecting his drive from the Boot Override menu? (F10 sometimes F11). If his motherboard supports hot swap you could also connect the drive when the PC is already booted.

Yes I did, I mentioned that

[Frano121]

1 hour ago, TekSupport said:

connect it to your brothers pc after it boots up incase it causes issue during boot.

I've tried to connect it to my brothers PC and my laptop and both times it just froze file explorer and Disk Management.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Frano121 said:

Yes I did, I mentioned that

Quote

(I've selected his drive to boot from).

I interpreted this as in you changed the Boot Order, not that you used the Boot Override menu. These are different settings in the BIOS.

 

You can still try connecting the drive after booting into Windows. You can also try using a external USB dock as you suggested.

[Frano121]

15 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I interpreted this as in you changed the Boot Order, not that you used the Boot Override menu. These are different settings in the BIOS.

 

You can still try connecting the drive after booting into Windows. You can also try using a external USB dock as you suggested.

Quote

I've tried to connect it to my brothers PC and my laptop and both times it just froze file explorer and Disk Management.

 

I have tried using the external USB dock but it freezes the PC and I can't load anything

[Windows7ge]

54 minutes ago, Frano121 said:

 

I have tried using the external USB dock but it freezes the PC and I can't load anything

I had a feeling that might happen. The potential for data recovery still exists but its become harder and the risks are greater.

 

If this data is really important you might like to consider professional data recovery. If it's replaceable but just inconvenient to recollect then we can keep trying different things like connecting the drive over USB then powering on the system or going back to GNU/Linux and using some partition recovery software and seeing if we can read the NTFS partition after mounting.

 

If you get the drive to mount in Windows you may like to create a disk image before moving forward. That way if the situation goes from bad to worse the potential for data recovery still exists.

[Frano121]

8 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I had a feeling that might happen. The potential for data recovery still exists but its become harder and the risks are greater.

 

If this data is really important you might like to consider professional data recovery. If it's replaceable but just inconvenient to recollect then we can keep trying different things like connecting the drive over USB then powering on the system or going back to GNU/Linux and using some partition recovery software and seeing if we can read the NTFS partition after mounting.

 

If you get the drive to mount in Windows you may like to create a disk image before moving forward. That way if the situation goes from bad to worse the potential for data recovery still exists.

The data is not that important, it is as you said just inconvenient. What can I try to do next to save the data?

 

If it is not possible to recover the data is it at least possible to make this SSD usable again, or do I have to buy a new one?

[Windows7ge]

6 minutes ago, Frano121 said:

The data is not that important, it is as you said just inconvenient. What can I try to do next to save the data?

 

If it is not possible to recover the data is it at least possible to make this SSD usable again, or do I have to buy a new one?

Data recovery isn't something I typically deal with because I keep backups everywhere but it looks like we can look into a program called Testdisk. This states it can recover lost partitions and make non-bootable disks bootable again. If we can't get the drive to show up in Windows though we will have to do it in something like Ubuntu if the drive will register there.

 

It's possible the drive isn't showing up in the OS because of software level corruption which we could recover the disk itself and just start from scratch with Windows but there is also the possibility it could be a hardware level issue caused by the power failure in which case you'd have to submit an RMA under warranty if one still exists and replace the SSD.

[Frano121]

On 7/13/2020 at 7:50 PM, Windows7ge said:

Data recovery isn't something I typically deal with because I keep backups everywhere but it looks like we can look into a program called Testdisk. This states it can recover lost partitions and make non-bootable disks bootable again. If we can't get the drive to show up in Windows though we will have to do it in something like Ubuntu if the drive will register there.

 

It's possible the drive isn't showing up in the OS because of software level corruption which we could recover the disk itself and just start from scratch with Windows but there is also the possibility it could be a hardware level issue caused by the power failure in which case you'd have to submit an RMA under warranty if one still exists and replace the SSD.

I've tried using the software that you've recommended, but I'm not 100% sure if I used it correctly.

 

I tried creating image of the disk, and it created the image.dd (72.5 GB, but the disk is 220 GB). In the process of creating that image it threw error and stopped creation

And when I tried to open it it said: "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged.".

 

[Windows7ge]

Maybe it recovered the partition but it couldn't recover the File System.

 

I will openly admit, I'm not sure where to go from here. At this point all I can do is guess the SSD may have experienced some physical damage but I personally can't verify that unless we wiped the drive and reinstalled an OS fresh to see if it behaves but obviously if we do that we can't recover the data so I need to accept the fact that this is now over my head. Sorry.

 

But I won't just up and leave you to figure this out on your own. Some people here definitely have better hand on experience in this department than I do.

 

If he's up for it I can poke one guy who might know where to go from here. @Electronics Wizardy

 

Summarising where we're at:

1. The SSD was working until a power outage now it no longer boots.
2. Being connected to another computer via SATA stops the PC from POSTing
3. Being connected via USB adapter freezes Windows when connected.
4. We've just tried a program called Teatdisk on GNU/Linux to try to make an image of the drive but it appears to have not worked correctly.
5. What looks like recovering the partition has revealed what looks like a corrupt NTFS File System.
6. Data on the SSD is not irreplaceable but if it can be helped not starting from scratch is preferred assuming this isn't actually a hardware failure.

I'll stick around in the off chance I do have anything useful to contribute.

[Electronics Wizardy]

44 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

he's up for it I can poke one guy who might know where to go from here. @Electronics Wizardy

well here are my thoughts

 

FIrst thing, make a image, idk if its a hardware issues, and this keeps it from getting workse. Use dd rescue for this

 

Next thing, try r-studio on that image, it should be reasonably good at trying to get another mft that could help get data back

 

Try try photorec. This will just look for the signatures on files, this will almost certainly find some files, but it far from perfect.

 

 

[Frano121]

7 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

well here are my thoughts

 

FIrst thing, make a image, idk if its a hardware issues, and this keeps it from getting workse. Use dd rescue for this

 

Next thing, try r-studio on that image, it should be reasonably good at trying to get another mft that could help get data back

 

Try try photorec. This will just look for the signatures on files, this will almost certainly find some files, but it far from perfect.

 

 

I used dd rescue to create image and R-Studio to view them. R-Studio looks great and I can see all of my files. Unfortunately it is a paid product and PhotoRec extracts everything everywhere.Is there any other software that is free, and is able to extract these data while keeping the folder structure intact?

 

Thank you for your help.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Frano121 said:

I used dd rescue to create image and R-Studio to view them. R-Studio looks great and I can see all of my files. Unfortunately it is a paid product and PhotoRec extracts everything everywhere.Is there any other software that is free, and is able to extract these data while keeping the folder structure intact?

 

Thank you for your help.

any program that works like photorec where it looks for signatures won't get file directories due to how they work.

 

Your best option is really to pay for r-studio, there really isn't much free software out there, and its expensive to make this software.

 

Otherwise, keep trying programs until you find one you like.

[Frano121]

@Electronics Wizardy @Windows7ge

Thank you for your help, I've managed to save all of my most important files, and my memes folder, using the R-Studio demo version.

 

Now that my files are safe, is there something I can do to make my SSD usable again? Should I format it and then try to install WIndows on it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Frano121 said:

@Electronics Wizardy @Windows7ge

Thank you for your help, I've managed to save all of my most important files, and my memes folder, using the R-Studio demo version.

 

Now that my files are safe, is there something I can do to make my SSD usable again? Should I format it and then try to install WIndows on it?

Make a good backup plan, that way you don't have to do this stuff ever again.

 

For the ssd, check the smart data first, if its bad, its probably done for, if smart is good, id go a full disk read, then reinstall if that work.

 

 

[Windows7ge]

Since Windows doesn't appear to want to let you boot a computer while it's attached you should be able to wipe the drive in Ubuntu using something like Gparted. If you can clear the disk assuming nothing is physically wrong with the drive the Windows installer should work. From here personally I'd do Shift+F10 then diskpart, select disk #, clean

 

This just makes sure in case gparted didn't do the job right that any partition data gets set to be overwritten on the new install so the Windows installer sees it as an empty disk.

 

As Electronics Wizardy said though, check the SMART data assuming everything looks good Windows should reinstall without issue.

[Frano121]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

Since Windows doesn't appear to want to let you boot a computer while it's attached you should be able to wipe the drive in Ubuntu using something like Gparted. If you can clear the disk assuming nothing is physically wrong with the drive the Windows installer should work. From here personally I'd do Shift+F10 then diskpart, select disk #, clean

 

This just makes sure in case gparted didn't do the job right that any partition data gets set to be overwritten on the new install so the Windows installer sees it as an empty disk.

 

As Electronics Wizardy said though, check the SMART data assuming everything looks good Windows should reinstall without issue.

 

26 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Make a good backup plan, that way you don't have to do this stuff ever again.

 

For the ssd, check the smart data first, if its bad, its probably done for, if smart is good, id go a full disk read, then reinstall if that work.

 

 

Seems like SMART is unavailable