SSD Dying?

[Larron]

Hello, so I think my SSD might be dying on me. 

Sometimes when I boot up my PC I get "insert proper boot device and press any key" this goes away if I reset the PC (sometimes on first reset, sometimes several) Now... This isn't that big of a deal, sure its annoying when I want to start my PC quickly that I sometimes have to reset a few times to get it to boot.

 

But... now to the more serious issue, the last few days, I have had my PC freeze completely on me. First few seconds I can hear my friends on Mumble, and they can hear me, but I cant tab out of the game, I cant open task manager or anything its all frozen. Only way to solve it is to reboot, and when I do this I get the "insert proper boot device and press any key" error. So I'm assuming thats why its freezing.

 

This is a huge issue for me since I'm playing hardcore Diablo 3, 10 minutes ago it froze just after entering Torment X Ubers, and for anyone playing hardcore diablo you sure know thats not where you want to DC. (Somehow I managed to survive it.. God knows how. Thanks to my party for that lol...)

 

The SSD I have the OS on is an older SSD, Corsair F120GB2.

Running Windows 10 Home.

 

Do you think its the SSD thats dying on me or could it be something else? 

Thanks 
Larron

[cynexit]

To be fair, this could also be the motherboard so I would suggest the following:

1) Iinstall CrystalDiskInfo and see if it shows any smart related errors for your drive

2) Install a throw-away Windows on some old harddrive you have lying around and then use this for one or two days. Make sure you use the same SATA port and same SATA cable!

 

If (1) is showing you something then get a new SSD and clone everything over as long as you still can but also validate the data! If the drive is really dying there is a change that some blocks are already lost which could make the clone as unstable as the current drive.

If (1) shows nothing and (2) produces the same failures over time it's likely the mainboard or SATA port/cable.

[Larron]

To be fair, this could also be the motherboard so I would suggest the following:

1) Iinstall CrystalDiskInfo and see if it shows any smart related errors for your drive

2) Install a throw-away Windows on some old harddrive you have lying around and then use this for one or two days. Make sure you use the same SATA port and same SATA cable!

 

If (1) is showing you something then get a new SSD and clone everything over as long as you still can but also validate the data! If the drive is really dying there is a change that some blocks are already lost which could make the clone as unstable as the current drive.

If (1) shows nothing and (2) produces the same failures over time it's likely the mainboard or SATA port/cable.

 

The motherboard is basically new, I got it a few months ago since my old board died, I really hope its not that.

But, I tried changing sata cable, went into bios, confirmed the drive being detected, went ahead and changed boot order, restarted and now the drive + another drive wasnt detected. It might be connected to the SATA-e ports, together with the other drive that wasnt detected, so it feels like it has something to do with that maybe. I'll see if I have enough regular SATA ports to put all disks in or I'll try swap them around so I have the OS drive on the regular ports.

 

*EDIT*

So the boot drive was indeed on a SATA-e port. I swapped it to a regular SATA port, went into bios and changed boot order, reset and save, now instead of resetting it turned completely off, but once I started it again it got into windows without problem. Now this might have been a coincidence, since the error doesnt happen all the time. But I'll see over the next few restarts if it happens again, and hopefully it wont freeze like it did earlier. 

Oh and.. the boot felt really slow. But then again the SSD isnt the fastest on the market and its a few years old. 

 

CrystalDiskInfo says the boot drive is  "100% Good"

[Ominous]

Yes, SSDs have quite a long lifespan with Intels one lasting up to 10 years.  Corsair aren't far behind Intel on quality so don't expect your drive to fail any time soon.  The SSD (if you got it when it was released) should still have quite a bit of life in it, it might now be in the first steps of degrading.  Every currently being used SSD is dying, every computer component in my machine right now is dying.  All computer components will fail eventually, there is not much denying in that.  They usually die in multipliers (They get slower really quickly unlike Hard Drives which take a while to die.) which obviously means that you will notice if your SSD is in fact, dying.