Is my SSD dead?

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theUpload

137 posts

Master Geek

#127225 3-Aug-2013 00:04

So my dad had a UMPC from about 2007 and it has an SSD inside it, at the time the touchscreen driver corrupted the whole system and the SSD ws rendered un-usable so we replaced it. To this day I still have that SSD because I'm under the impression it's not totally dead.

It cannot be formatted, but it does show up as a drive in any PC I put it in, just as an unknown volume. Currently its in a pc that Im using a live ISO (Parted Magic) to try and revive it BUT no luck, cant partition BUT it allows me to wipe it using most external methods, not the secure internal wipe. So it obviously recognizes it enough to wipe it but not enough to format? Is it actually dead?

It's an Adata 128GB

thanks in advance

michaelmurfy

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#871048 3-Aug-2013 00:09

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theUpload

137 posts

Master Geek

#871049 3-Aug-2013 00:10

Awww, so even though it shows up, its not able to be saved in anyway

michaelmurfy

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#871051 3-Aug-2013 00:12

The problem being if the SSD corrupts itself, and is not wanting to be formatted it's pretty-much unsavable and thus I wouldn't trust it for anything, just chuck it.

insane

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#871055 3-Aug-2013 00:19

SSD's only have so many free blocks to replace bad ones, once it's out of free blocks bad things happen :p

I've had an SSD fail on me, 128GB Vortex 3. It's replacement has been fine for about a year so it's just the luck of the draw it seems.

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theUpload

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Master Geek

#871058 3-Aug-2013 01:03

Okay team cheers

raytaylor

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#871270 3-Aug-2013 17:07

SSD's are not like normal hard drives that can slowly die - an SSD will usually die at once. Hence it is important to have a backup.

You can prolong the life of an SSD by limiting the amount of writes you make to it. This is very simple to achieve. You just install an extra 2/4GB of ram in your computer, and allocate it to be a ram drive. Set your environmental temporary directories to the ram drive, the internet explorer / firefox cache and any other programs you use with a temp directory that can be specified.

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theUpload

137 posts

Master Geek

#871295 3-Aug-2013 17:43

Cheers team, I'll cease my attempts to format it

Mark

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#871753 4-Aug-2013 21:33

Before you ditch it entirely ... see if there is a firmware update available for the drive, most of the updates for SSDs I've seen involve wiping it out entirely (all data gone) as they relay things out, it might sort yours out.

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#871766 4-Aug-2013 22:20

theUpload: So my dad had a UMPC from about 2007 and it has an SSD inside it, at the time the touchscreen driver corrupted the whole system and the SSD ws rendered un-usable so we replaced it. To this day I still have that SSD because I'm under the impression it's not totally dead.

It cannot be formatted, but it does show up as a drive in any PC I put it in, just as an unknown volume. Currently its in a pc that Im using a live ISO (Parted Magic) to try and revive it BUT no luck, cant partition BUT it allows me to wipe it using most external methods, not the secure internal wipe. So it obviously recognizes it enough to wipe it but not enough to format? Is it actually dead?

It's an Adata 128GB

thanks in advance

Have you tried SpinRite? This is the best HDD tool that exists, it may work where other tools fall over.