Samsung M.2 SSD 980 Pro 2TB Failure - Need help

[jacobp925]

I’ve had this new PC around 2 years. Last night, everything froze completely except my mouse and I had to force turn off my PC with the power button. Upon rebooting I got the message: “WARNING: Please back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent and cause unpredictable fail.” I’ve attached a picture to this post.

 

I’ve already done some research and it seems this may be related to a firmware issue (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-980-pro-ssd-failures-firmware-update). I don’t want to boot with this drive to run the tool and run the risk of writing data and forcing the disk to a read only state permanently.

 

I’m wondering what my next best/safest steps are to backup this failing hard drive so I don’t lose all the data. Here’s what I have to work with:

- Existing windows PC with the failing SSD and a 4TB HDD (I don’t want to format that 4TB HDD)

- A windows laptop

- A 2TB portable drive (Also don’t want to format this. I have about 1.5TB of space left there)

- A new 2TB M.2 SSD

- A new 256GB flash drive

- An M.2 NVME enclosure

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kokosnh]

For now, just run some liveCD Ubuntu from CD or pendrive ( or alternatively instal whole new system on that new 2TB M.2 SSD, and I assume, it’s empty), and backup that 980 pro to the 2TB portable drive ( I assume you have the space for the data from 980 pro there ).

 

and why even talk about formatting the HDD or external?
 

when you backup is completed, eject the external drive, and reboot PC.

then just boot that windows, as you have nothing to worry about, and give us a crystaldiskinfo screenshot of that SSD with all smart table.

 

or alternatively if you did instal whole new system, just run it, and run crystaldiskinfo ther, and give us a crystaldiskinfo screenshot of that SSD with all smart table.
 

ps. Always have a backup 

[jacobp925]

18 minutes ago, kokosnh said:

For now, just run some liveCD Ubuntu from CD or pendrive ( or alternatively instal whole new system on that new 2TB M.2 SSD, and I assume, it’s empty), and backup that 980 pro to the 2TB portable drive ( I assume you have the space for the data from 980 pro there ).

 

and why even talk about formatting the HDD or external?
 

when you backup is completed, eject the external drive, and reboot PC.

then just boot that windows, as you have nothing to worry about, and give us a crystaldiskinfo screenshot of that SSD with all smart table.

 

or alternatively if you did instal whole new system, just run it, and run crystaldiskinfo ther, and give us a crystaldiskinfo screenshot of that SSD with all smart table.
 

ps. Always have a backup 

How should I actually go about backing up the drive though? What software? What plugs into what? Are you saying I should backup individual files or run something to clone the ensure disk? I’m not familiar with this.

[SpookyCitrus]

43 minutes ago, jacobp925 said:

How should I actually go about backing up the drive though? What software? What plugs into what? Are you saying I should backup individual files or run something to clone the ensure disk? I’m not familiar with this.

Depends entirely on what you want to save, if you're just worried about files, documents, pictures, etc. You can simply boot into a portable OS such as Winpe, or a linux OS such as Ubuntu, and simply copy and paste your files you want to save to a folder on your external drive. If you want to save the entire OS along with all the programs and everything how it is you will need use a cloning or image backup software such as Macrium Reflect or Aomei and either do a full system image backup or a clone to another M.2 SSD or empty external HDD.

[jacobp925]

1 hour ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Depends entirely on what you want to save, if you're just worried about files, documents, pictures, etc. You can simply boot into a portable OS such as Winpe, or a linux OS such as Ubuntu, and simply copy and paste your files you want to save to a folder on your external drive. If you want to save the entire OS along with all the programs and everything how it is you will need use a cloning or image backup software such as Macrium Reflect or Aomei and either do a full system image backup or a clone to another M.2 SSD or empty external HDD.

Alright, thank you

[Doobeedoo]

Yeah they issued a firmware fix for 980/990 Pro series a while ago. Early batches had older one. Definitely update to latest. Few my friends have the drive and all good, I have 990 Pro one.

[kokosnh]

If we don’t know the smart, it’s hard to know, that’s the issue is. 
all we know is that there’s some smart attribute that is marked as failed, and uefi is detecting that. 
 

if it’s a firmware related, or hardware issue, or something minor that don't matter, we don’t know yet.

 

when you are done backuping everything, run crystaldiskinfo, and give us the screenshot of whole smart table of that SSD.

 

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

Yeah they issued a firmware fix for 980/990 Pro series a while ago. Early batches had older one. Definitely update to latest.

If it’s that, then it’s too late, the NAND’s done , no firmware can revive it.

after updating firmware, you got yourself nice backup drive, as I would not trust it with live data, over it's rated TBW.

[jacobp925]

I’m trying to boot with my USB. Whenever I boot with my USB it tries to make me install the OS on one of the other 2 disks I have mounted. I’ve tried Windows and Ubuntu. Why can’t I I just boot from the OS I installed using Rufus?

[kokosnh]

If you use Ubuntu liveCD, you just have to use the „try Ubuntu button” 

 

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

 

and yes, normal windows instalator, will try to install windows