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SSD Failure???
I completed my new build in early January and the machine has been working great until this morning. I turned it on and it failed to boot with an error message to select a proper boot device. I went into the BIOS and it no longer acknowledges that my SSD is there. It see my 500GB WD drive, but no SSD. My initial thought is the SSD went up, but does anyone have any other thoughts or suggestions or should I just start the RMA process?
Mobo: Asus P8Z68 Pro
CPU: I5-2500K
GPU: HIS IceQ Radeon 6970
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB
SSD: Crucial M4 256GB
HDD: WD Black 500GB
Comments
Check for damaged wiring to the drive, un-plug and re-plug the connections, try alternative wiring or connectiors if possible, make sure they're secure. Boot up into BIOS and see if your MB detects the drive each time. It also helps if you have access to another PC to test the drive on.
If all of that fails, sounds like an RMA is in order.
It could be a lot of things. It could be the SATA cable. It could be the SATA port. It could be a connection coming loose (either end of the SATA cable or the power cable to the SSD). Or it could be that the SSD is dead.
Try swapping out other things first. You've got (at least) two SATA cables (one for the hard drive and one for the SSD), so try swapping which one goes to which. Try swapping the power cables, too. This will necessarily mean reseating both of them as well. If swapping stuff around makes everything work, then it was probably just a loose connection. If it makes the SSD work and the hard drive disappear, then it's probably either a SATA cable or SATA port that is the problem. You've got enough SATA ports on the motherboard that you could probably just use a different one. If the problem is a defective SATA cable, then that's a lot cheaper and easier to replace than an SSD.
I think it was someone at OCZ that remarked that about half of the SSDs that they get returned are completely fine, and the problem was somewhere else in the user's computer, but he blamed the SSD.
Out of curiosity, do you have an option in your BIOS regarding boot devices? Perhaps an option under "Boot Override"? Your issue sounds familiar to what I used to get on my own Asus Gene-Z with my own SSD's, and I think there was an option for "Intel Boot", which somehow kick-started things and made it work again. Dunno, maybe it's something entirely different in your case, but just throwing that out there.
Edit: Also, are there newer firmware versions out for your drive? While own drives were Sandforce-based, the issue was finally fixed with a firmware revision.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Do you have the latest firmware for that M4? There was a 5200 hour bug that caused them to flake out, once you apply the firmware (v0309 or later) they work fine.
So...after trying everything I could think of and some things suggested here...still no SSD working. I contacted Crucial about an RMA and replacement and they asked me what the problem is...so, I explained it along with everything I tried to correct the problem. After I was done, the tech support guy knew exactl what is wrong, as apparently it is relatively common, and had me do the following:
1. Once you have the drive connected and sitting idle, simply power on the computer and wait for 20 minutes. We recommend that you don't use the computer during this process.
2. Power the computer down and disconnect the drive for 30 seconds.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 one more time.
4. Reconnect the drive normally, and boot the computer to your operating system.
While I had already tried something similar with no success...following these steps exactly brought it back up. No loss of data or any issues. Just thought I'd pass along the info in case anyone else has the same issue with a Crucial M4 SSD.
First I've heard of it - thanks for posting.
I'm glad it worked for you, but that's weird. Maybe something got backed up and needed idle time to correct itself? The Crucial M4 does take its time on garbage collection.
Any clue on what caused this?
Im curious since I have one aswell
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
I really have no idea what caused it. I shut my PC down 1 night, then the next morning when I booted it up...it couldn't find the drive. The Crucial support guy said that when this happens, power cycling almosy always corrects the problem. Then he sent me the instructions I posted.
I don't understand why this process worked, especially considering I had already powered it up a couple times without being connected to the mobo as well as disconnecting the power cable to try another cable. I'm thrilled it worked...but no idea why it did. Also, this might be the 1st time I've ever spoken to Tech Support from any company where they were actually able to resolve my issue. I was pretty skeptical and even asked for his extension so that after it didn't work I could call him back to get an RMA. He was pretty confident though and I guess he knew his stuff.