How do I fix a dead SSD?

Arctis · May 14, 2020

My dad recently gave me his 9 year old Alienware laptop (m14x r1). The laptop was working properly(although slowly) for about a month or so, and then the SSD started to fail. At first, it was just the system freezing and me having to restart it. Then it escalated to the laptop not booting up, but eventually getting to the windows loading screen after a few tries. When I hit the power button this morning, I was greeted with the BIOS screen, then a black screen with a blinking cursor. After it sitting there for about 5 or so minutes it gave me a message saying "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". I took off the bottom plate, battery, disk r/w, and then disconnected the SSD, reconnected it, put the battery back in, etc. I tried booting it again, but it still gave me the same message. Does anyone know what to do here? I have already tried my recovery drive, but it said something like "Recovery failed, system drive too small" or something like that.

databreach · May 14, 2020

Can you try to plug in windows install media if you have any or make one. annd see if your drive is still partitioned correctly with diskpart. After booting up to windows install media. You should be able to get a cmd by pressing: Shift+F10 and then type dispart and after that type list disks. Spot you ssd and then type select <whatever your disk's name> and after that type 'clean' (if it doesn't detect it you're pretty much over and its dead). then close cmd and proceed with windows installation.

Arctis · May 15, 2020

1 hour ago, databreach said:

Can you try to plug in windows install media if you have any or make one. annd see if your drive is still partitioned correctly with diskpart. After booting up to windows install media. You should be able to get a cmd by pressing: Shift+F10 and then type dispart and after that type list disks. Spot you ssd and then type select <whatever your disk's name> and after that type 'clean' (if it doesn't detect it you're pretty much over and its dead). then close cmd and proceed with windows installation.

I think the SSD is completely dead now. The computer isn't even booting anymore. Thanks for your help, though.