Dead SSD?

Yolina

Sony Vaio Duo 11 with SSD. Earlier today, it froze and crashed then got a nice "Operating system not found" message. Went into the BIOS and the hard drive is showing 0GB. Reset the BIOS just in case but no dice; doesn't go into recovery from the "assist" button and when using the USB key recovery, no partitions are listed. Am assuming dead SSD? Any suggestions welcome though just on the off-chance!

And of course it's Saturday night and Sony support not open until Monday morning... Have had to dig out my rather antique and painfully slow netbook Still, important data is backed up anyway and the Vaio is still under warranty, so not big drama, just very annoying.

50Twuncle

Never had a problem with SSD's
Apparently this may work (on Crucial models at least)

1. Only connect the SATA power connection and not the data cable. A USB enclosure with an external power source will also work.
2. Once you have the drive connected, simply power on the computer and wait. The computer will need to stay powered on for 20 min and it is recommended that you don't use the computer during this process.
3. Power the computer down and disconnect the drive for 30 seconds.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 one more time.
5. Reconnect the drive normally, and boot the computer to your operating system.
6. Update your firmware, if you are not already at the latest on your drive.

S0litaire

!!!DON'T update the firmware!!!

Don't think the SSD is "dead" but the freeze and crash definitely borked the partition information.

DON'T update the firmware just yet!!!

If the SSD died the machine would not see a disk in BIOS.

It is seeing the disk that's why i'm leaning towards borked partition information.That's whay it's saying 0Gb

Any half decent recovery software should be able to recover the partition information and get things working again.

Try that BEFORE you do anything with the firmware!

50Twuncle

S0litaire wrote: »

!!!DON'T update the firmware!!!

Don't think the SSD is "dead" but the freeze and crash definitely borked the partition information.

DON'T update the firmware just yet!!!

If the SSD died the machine would not see a disk in BIOS.

It is seeing the disk that's why i'm leaning towards borked partition information.That's whay it's saying 0Gb

Any half decent recovery software should be able to recover the partition information and get things working again.

Try that BEFORE you do anything with the firmware!

I only said to update the firmware - IF everything else was
OK !!

Yolina

Thanks both of you Any partition recovery software you can recommend? If that doesn't work then I'll just let Sony deal with it given that it's still within warranty. I have some really-not-pleasant-real-life stuff to deal with at the moment as well unfortunately

spud17

A tentative suggestion, it is a bit intimidating, but I've used it once to successfully recover lost partitions, and then all the data, but not from an ssd.

TestDisk

Yolina

Forgot to say that when using Vaio Rescue from USB, the only option given for recovery is:
Current: all showing as unallocated space 0GB
New: showing 2 partitions - one with just "..." and the other "C:drive 0GB"

so not sure I want to try this?

S0litaire

Recovery disks you get with a new PC tend to just WIPE the drive and reinstall the system as it came out of the box (SO you'll loose EVERYTHING).

Install something like:

http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

onto the old laptop then plug the drive into a external USB caddy and plug it into the old laptop and run the recovery software.

it should then tell you what it can recover.

Yolina

Have backups so not bothered about losing stuff With my head really not being in the right place at the moment after getting a truckload of bad news in succession over the last few weeks, I decided to just let Sony deal with it :rotfl: they have arranged for a courier to pick up the laptop tomorrow and will fix under warranty (plus getting the drive out of the Duo 11 looks like a right PITA - had a nosey at teardowns...)

Edit: and the pleasant CS rep booked the thing as a "VIP" repair at no cost so should be a 3 days turnaround. I've also just remembered where I'd put my bargain-price HP TouchPad so at least my internet browsing is now faster than on the antique netbook All in all, not a bad result though obviously I'd have preferred if the thing hadn't packed up in the first place, it's reinstalling all the software that's going to be time-consuming (and getting licences transferred for various stuff)

Yolina

Just an update to say that the SSD had indeed failed and has been replaced under warranty.

poppellerant

Maybe I missed it, but what make of SSD was it? I find OCZ are least reliable.