-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
Copy pathFix Your Dead SSD in 61 Minutes - The Power Cycle Method.txt
187 lines (128 loc) · 7.54 KB
/
Fix Your Dead SSD in 61 Minutes - The Power Cycle Method.txt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
The Silicon Underground <https://dfarq.homeip.net/>
The Silicon Underground <https://dfarq.homeip.net/>
David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Follow @siliconundergro <http://twitter.com/siliconundergro>
# Fix your dead SSD with the power cycle method
Last Updated on September 6, 2023 by Dave Farquhar <https://
dfarq.homeip.net/>
There was a big dustup a while ago about power failures killing SSDs
<https://dfarq.homeip.net/an-ssd-data-loss-issue-and-how-to-prevent-it/
>. It turns out that when this happens, you can usually unbrick it. If
your SSD died, here’s how to recover or fix your dead SSD in 61 minutes
using the power cycle method.
Yes, it really does take 61 minutes to revive a dead SSD, but you only
have direct involvement for a few minutes. The rest of the time, you can
do something else while you wait for the drive to do its thing. This
trick will even let you recover drives that won’t show up in Windows
Device Manager or disk management if you transplant them into another
machine.
Note that this trick generally only works for drives corrupted by power
loss. But it doesn’t hurt to try it on any old dead drive, say one
corrupted by a bad firmware update or a blue screen. It’s nice that it’s
possible to recover from SSD failure using a free, easy trick. First
I’ll cover SATA drives, then I’ll cover a trick that works for NVMe and
M.2 drives.
Table of contents
1. SSD repair without tools: What you need <#1>
2. Power cycle the SSD to fix it <#2>
3. What about an NVMe or M.2 SSD? <#3>
4. The alternate method <#4>
5. One more thing to try in Dell laptops <#5>
6. A last resort <#6>
7. Possible residual issues <#7>
8. Fix your dead SSD with the power cycle method: In conclusion <#8>
SSD repair without tools: What you need
The SSD power cycle trick works better in a desktop PC, since you need
to connect the power cable but not the data cable. If you’re recovering
a drive from a laptop, you can use a spare power supply with my neato
paper clip trick <https://dfarq.homeip.net/a-safe-way-to-test-power-
supplies/>. Then you don’t have to open up an extra computer.
If a laptop is all you have, you can use a USB SATA adapter as long as
it’s possible to plug in just the power cable. My USB SATA adapters use
a single connector. Or you can try the alternate method below that works
on NVMe or M.2 SSDs.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
Power cycle the SSD to fix it
Fix your dead SSD with the power cycle method <https://dfarq.homeip.net/
fix-dead-ssd/unplug-sata-data-cable/>
To fix your dead SSD with this method, unplug the SATA data cable from
the SSD, like I’m doing here. The data cable is the smaller of the two.
Then cycle the power as I describe in the paragraph to the left.
If the SSD is already in a desktop computer, pull the data cable, but
not the power cable.
If you’re installing the SSD in a desktop or connecting it to a loose
power supply temporarily, do this instead. Connect the power cable, but
no data cable, to the SSD. The power cable is the larger of the two
connectors.
Turn on the power and leave the power on for 30 minutes. After 30
minutes, power down or pull the power cable. Wait 30 seconds, then
restore power. Let the drive sit powered on for another 30 minutes.
Power down again, then wait 30 seconds.
At that point, if all went well, the drive will come back to life when
you connect the data cable, or plug the drive back into a laptop.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
What about an NVMe or M.2 SSD?
Of course, if you have an NVMe or M.2 SSD, you can’t unplug the data
connection while leaving the power connection in like you can with SATA.
You’ll need to use the alternative method below to fix your dead SSD of
the NVMe or M.2 type.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
The alternate method
Supposedly this trick can work without disassembling anything at all. If
it’s a PC, turn the PC on and then hit whatever key boots the PC into
the BIOS. Frequently it’s the DEL key or one of the function keys like
F1, F2, F8 or F10. Let it sit for 30 minutes at the BIOS screen, then
power down for 30 seconds and repeat.
On a Mac, power up while you hold down the ALT key, which is supposed to
pull up a boot menu. Let it sit at the boot menu for 30 minutes, then
power down for 30 seconds and repeat.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
One more thing to try in Dell laptops
In Dell laptops and possibly others, the smaller size of SATA SSDs
compared to traditional hard drives can cause electrical contact issues.
If your SSD suddenly died in a computer like that, you can probably fix
it by shimming it with an old gift card <https://dfarq.homeip.net/ssd-
not-detected-in-bios-try-this/>. Try that if the power cycle trick
doesn’t work. Or feel free to try it first.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
A last resort to fix a dead SSD
And as a last resort, sometimes an SSD will overheat and break one or
more solder joints. You can fix that issue by baking an SSD in an oven
<https://dfarq.homeip.net/baking-ssds-the-ssd-oven-trick/> to reflow its
solder joints. This issue is rather rare though, so it’s a last resort.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
Possible residual issues
Once you get the drive working, you could still have problems that keep
it from booting, so you may have to do some further data recovery. But
recovering data in those cases isn’t as hard as it sounds.
If you have a Missing Operating System error or a similar indication of
an MBR problem, here’s how to rebuild an MBR and recover partitions
<https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-to-clean-an-mbr-and-recover-drive-
partitions/>. The MBR trick will also recover the file system after it
rebuilds the MBR. If the system appears to work but goes into a loop,
here’s how to fix a Windows boot loop <https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-a-
windows-boot-loop-with-ahci/>. All using free tools of course.
I also have a trick for fixing SD and micro SD cards <https://
dfarq.homeip.net/my-phones-micro-sd-card-made-windows-disk-manager-hang-
but-i-fixed-it/>, if you’re interested.
Using one or more of the tricks above will restore your system to a
bootable state and get your lost data back.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>
Fix your dead SSD with the power cycle method: In conclusion
There are no guarantees, and the trick sounds a lot like MacGyver or
even witchcraft. But this works often enough that many people now do it
routinely. If the drive isn’t working, you don’t have anything to lose
by trying to fix your SSD this way. Unlike some data loss tricks we used
to do with hard drives, this one does no harm.
This DIY SSD drive repair trick works with most drives. I’m familiar
with it working with Crucial, Samsung, and OCZ drives. Even if you have
a different brand, it’s worth a try with other makes of drive as well.
And aside from the power loss weakness, SSDs tend to outlive their
advertised life expectancy <https://dfarq.homeip.net/what-happens-when-
you-write-a-petabyte-of-data-to-an-ssd/>. So it’s good to be able to
bring one back when it dies from power loss.
The right answer, of course, is to have backup copies so you can restore
data from a backup if something goes wrong. But your backup won’t fix a
nonfunctioning drive, so it’s nice to be able to bring bricked hardware
back from the deadm, usually with data intact.
Back to the table of contents <#toc>