UX32a disk problems

szomeret · February 7, 2015

I've a UX32a notebook, it's a cheap notebook I take to class. It's got a 120GB Samsung SSD that I installed and 32GB Sandisk iSSD that's soldered onto the main board. Now normally that's a nice bonus, a free disk. But today I realized the iSSD is dead. Everything is taking forever. Occasionally, task manager freezes up (trying to view disk activity). When it's not frozen it shows 100% usage but 0kbps throughput for the iSSD. I can't uninstall/disable the disk in the device manager, the window sits there while the cursor spins for at least 30 minutes.

I can't shutdown the laptop via the menus or even the command line. Only the power button will do. In total, it's becoming unusable. I did manage to get into the BIOS in an attempt to disable the SATA port. But guess what? The stupid BIOS won't let me enable or disable SATA Ports. What the hell? So I ask you, the LTT community, any ideas on how to disable this iSSD? Reformatting the main drive did nothing: windows still sees the iSSD and mounts it as it's an integral drive and NTFS. Obviously, since the iSSD isn't responding I can't reformat it.

TL;DR: read the italics and bold.

Edit: I've managed to get the pagefile off of the iSSD. It seems that eventually access to the iSSD messes with the entire disk controller. Anyway, I really need to remove it from the system but the BIOS won't let me and Windows tries but fails. I've tried formatting the disk but all it says is "Windows was unable to complete the format." Well thanks.