Dead boot SSD, Recognized but cannot wipe

[stcavanaugh]

Hi all, long time lurker first time poster, ya get the idea... First off, this is going to be a longer post - want to include all of the troubleshooting steps I've already tried, and all of the thoughts I've had so far...so, sorry for the long post. 

 

Anyways...

 

A few days ago I decided to force shutdown my machine (6700k, 16gigs ram, MSI h110m motherboard, msi 1070, Samsung 850 evo 500gb, windows 10 - not sure what update anymore). When I went to boot up the next day, it got past the motherboard splashscreen, and told me that it did not detect a boot device. So, somehow when I force shutdown, I killed my windows install. Ok, no worries, nothing mission critical, full backups from the night before, we're good. I'll make a windows flashdrive and reinstall. 

 

I'm going to list out the issues I've had so far, and the troubleshooting steps I've taken cause I fell that's easier.

 

1. Made flashdrive, tried to boot - but it hangs at the windows spinning circles
   1. realize that somehow having the ssd plugged in is stopping windows from loading
   2. Take out old ssd (Samsung 850 evo 250gb) to try to boot to/install windows to it (it was an old install from a few months ago, same machine, should have booted fine)
      1. No dice. This ssd prevents boot as well
   3. Find old 250gb hitachi traditional drive, boot up, install windows. 
2. Update bios somewhere in there
3. Turn on hot swap to prevent boot issues, and allow me to look at drives in windows without going through sata-usb adapters (these were causing naming issues in diskpart)
   1. Both drives are recognized, by name (Samsung SSD 850 EVO ___gb by device manager/devices and printers), but there are still issues
4. Try to clean them using diskpart
   1. Works for 250 gb drive (which, by the way, is being recognized as a 500gb drive somehow by diskpart, drive manager, etc)
      1. Diskpart throws out errors about not being able to access file when I go to create a partition 
      2.  Diskpart now hangs even at startup, no command line options available. 
      3.  Drive manager hangs on opening, will not show list of drives
         1. Previously, both drives were able to be recognized in drive manager and diskpart, but could not be initialized with gpt or mbr. 
   2. Does not work for 500gb drive - from this point on, this drive is unplugged because it seemed to be causing slowdown with diskpart and devicemanager/disk manager. 
5. Try to uninstall the device/driver in device management - hangs
   1. Drivers on both drives were updated around October when I cloned them. 

Other thoughts/information:

1.  250gb drive was a known good device until today. It was simply cloned to the 500gb drive using the Samsung wizard software, and then left in my desk drawer for the past few months. 
2. Sata cables/sata power are known good
3.  All other hardware is fine, and windows is now bootable - but will still hang if EITHER ssd is plugged in - via sata or the sata to usb adapter. 

So, are there any other troubleshooting steps I can take, or should I just accept I now have two inexplicably dead ssd's (well, one is inexplicable, I know I f'ed up with the 500gb drive)? I really don't care about the data on them - it is all backed up. I plan to take them in to the IT guy for my department tomorrow to see if he has any ideas, but if I can get it fixed/figured out on my own, I'd like to. It really isn't his job to fix my personal gear. 

 

TL;DR: Forced shutdown machine, broke drive, somehow broke spare drive as well. Can see drives, but cannot wipe them. pls send help. 

 

Thanks in advance everyone. Let me know if this is in the wrong place or something, I'll happily move it. 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by stcavanaugh
additional information

[john01dav]

It's worth a shot calling the manufacturer and asking for a replacement. Most have some sort of warranty. Something else you can try is to use a different motherboard and sata cables. I had somewhat similar issues in the past because my case's only drive mounts were through a sata hot swap thing, and the hot swap thing was broken. Removing the hot swap device and wiring the drives directly to the motherboard fixed the issue. I suspect that you may have a failure in the motherboard's sata system and/or in onr or more sata cables. If they're m.2 drives, it may also be worth a shot to try a different motherboard, but I haven't use those enough to say anything more.

[stcavanaugh]

 

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

I've tried swapping out to other known good sata cables and motherboard slots. They're 2.5" drives. I'd consider trying motherboard, but the fact that it boots fine from the other drive leads me to believe that it's a failure on the drive side, not mobo side, also, they're recognized in windows, I just can't do anything with them.

 

I'll give Samsung a call tomorrow, that's a good idea. Worth a shot, even though I think they're both way out of warranty...

 

Thanks!

[john01dav]

Just now, stcavanaugh said:

also, they're recognized in windows, I just can't do anything with them

The issue that I had with a backplane effected different drives differently. My SSD was fine, but my mechanicals had smart errors galore, but I could still read/write from them slowly. My point is that failure of the kinds that I described can manifest in many different ways.

[stcavanaugh]

Makes sense. I think I have some spare unused sata cables I can swap to. I'll post an update here once I try that out.