Has Anyone Had a SSD Die on Them?

Lalbert0pia on 04/10/2015 - 23:22

Hi all,
I have (or had) a Crucial 500GB MX100 SSD. I've been using it since last December. Today, I finished using my laptop (a Lenovo Y50-70) and put it to sleep before I went to visit a friend. I got back home several hours later to a certain error message after POST. I googled it and my findings suggested that Windows Boot Manager was unable find a disk. I checked BIOS and the SSD was listed as present.
I whipped out my Windows 10 USB disk hoping to repair the installation amongst other things. After the loading screen, nothing happened. Setup didn't start; the screen was blank.
I took out the SSD, put it in an external HDD enclosure and connected it to another computer. The drive was detected but the primary partition had a RAW file format. At this point, I knew I was going to have to format it or clean the disk. No matter what I tried, it always returned a "cyclic redundancy check" error. The last time I saw this error message was in 2006 when I tried to access a badly-handled CD.
I've resorted to using my old HDD until I can get this sorted out. It literally took well over a minute to boot to desktop.

Has anyone ever had a similar issue and what did you do to resolve it? Aren't SSDs supposed to last a minimum of 5yrs before they start acting up? Any advice is welcome and greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Computing

Comments

  • scrimshaw on 05/10/2015 - 00:00
    +7

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/2484998/solid-state-dri…

    Yes, they do die. And yes, they do just die suddenly with no prior symptom — while hard drives can sometimes report errors, make weird noises, and generally thrash around until they die a slow, painful death, SSD's simply keel over and die quietly, even if it was working fine just a few moments ago.

    Since your SSD is about a year old and hasn't really got a lot of use, I'd probably say that was a 'random failure' rather than a failure brought on by old age and wear/tear. This can be explained fully if you read up on the concept of the 'bathtub curve'

    The Crucial MX series is a 'mid-end' consumer SSD and so is only covered by a three year limited warranty. Since it's still fairly new you should be able to get RMA authorisation. Contact Crucial.

    • albert0pia on 05/10/2015 - 14:01

      Thanks to all.

      What brand and model would you recommend that has less chances of keeling over without warning?

  • Davo1111 on 05/10/2015 - 00:47

    Has Anyone Had a SSD Die on Them?

    no

    Aren't SSDs supposed to last a minimum of 5yrs before they start acting up?

    No, their life is based on the number of writes. For most people they get more than 5 years.

    It's like a 5 year "unlimited km" car warranty. Manufacturers know that most people won't be able to get more than 20,000km/year. So they can provide a 5 year warranty. If however you did 100,000km/year the car might not last the warranty period.

    You're much much more likely to have a HDD instantly die over an SSD. Most SSDs develop errors over time, and you can see their demise coming.

    http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experim…

  • [Deactivated] on 05/10/2015 - 09:35

    How does 1 avoid losing data if it fails?

    • iridiumstem on 05/10/2015 - 09:39
      +1

      Back up, I've heard that it's really hard to recover data off from SSDs.

      • [Deactivated] on 05/10/2015 - 10:34

        Yeah, but how often? Seems like a big invenience

        • [Deactivated] on 05/10/2015 - 14:42

          Why the thumbs down?

        • Max Power on 05/10/2015 - 18:48

          Only you can decide.
          Ask yourself these questions:
          - How important is my data?
          - How often does it change?
          - Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? ;)

        • Davo1111 on 05/10/2015 - 23:48

          It's really not that difficult.

          I use Karens Replicator on all my machines. I have a daily and weekly backup folder on an external harddrive. It just updates the important files once a day on schedule.

    • msmhw on 05/10/2015 - 09:42

      cloud backup for important data.
      also now a days its cheap to buy external drive and put your thing on it.

  • rxjb on 05/10/2015 - 09:36
    +2

    I have had 3 Sandisk SSD's all fail within 1 month of installation and with no warning. Similar to you. I had put them to sleep and they failed to come out of the sleep. Might have been a bad batch, but the SSD's replaced under warranty have been going strong. Have implemented a strong backup protocol since that day to minimise any data loss.

  • Amour on 05/10/2015 - 10:35

    I had an SSD die in my 11 month old Mac. I can't remember the exact wording, but it gave me a warning there was an issue with a sector of the hard drive and to back it up.

    I returned it to Apple and the person running the diagnostics said she had never seen an SSD die in a Mac and was really surprised it gave me a warning (maybe she was new?). What is even worse, if not under warranty it would have cost over $1100 to replace (ex labour), which is expensive compared to what the Mac originally cost and what you can buy an equivalent SSD for.

    • Cobalt_ on 05/10/2015 - 11:36
      -1

      Whoever quoted you $1100 to replace an SSD ex labour costs is telling you fibs. An SSD costs anywhere from $100-200 (for a 120-240GB) and probably no more than an hour of labour to replace the old drive and re-install the operating system.

      Now if you were talking about professional data recovery to get the data off the dead drive, that can get expensive, but even with a drive under warranty this service would not be included. Moral of the story is do decent backups and the worst case scenario is you're out of pocket for a new SSD which is relatively cheap compared to paying for a data recovery service to get it back.

      • maybe a bot on 05/10/2015 - 13:46

        Most new Macs use a proprietary SSD slot. It's similar to m.2 and is quite hard to source new drives for.

        • Cobalt_ on 05/10/2015 - 14:10

          I've heard the latest MBP's and MBA's use Apple's special sauce glue instead of regular screws making them extremely difficult to service however we are talking about one that is almost a year old. Even M.2 SSD's are no longer THAT expensive. I still think the tech was talking porkies

      • Amour on 06/10/2015 - 08:31

        I thought it was expensive too. The SSD was replaced by Apple and the work slip/invoice I got back said $1100+ (can't remember the exact amount - it wasn't a round number) for the part only. The amount owing was $0 as it was a warranty repair. I queried it and was told that would be the cost if not under warranty. There wasn't any data recovery as I had backed it up. It is a work computer and I showed the IT guys at works and they were shocked too. I love my Mac, but it has scared me off buying one for personal use.

  • Shadowsfury on 05/10/2015 - 10:49

    I've had two fail on me before, after about 15 months of usage the first one went. Got it replaced under warranty and then that one died about 6 months later. I was always able to access the files on it though, just would fail to boot up.

    Gave up on that brand and bought another one, and its been going fine for a couple of years now.

    I only back up important files (to dropbox for docs and google drive for photos). I don't mind my OS completely dying on me because I only need to reinstall Windows and I'm good to go again.

  • chartparker on 05/10/2015 - 14:46

    Yep I had a Samsung 840 pro die within 4 months. Luckily I was headed to Sydney a week after so I just brought it with me to their HQ with RMA claim and they swapped it on the spot.

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