Help with missing drive

[DapperShark]

So I'm having some problems with an SSD not being recognized by Windows, I've scoured the internet for a solution but so far nothing has worked so I figured I'd ask here.

The faulty drive is an XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1TB M.2 SSD, I bought it back in January for my laptop and had been mainly using it for vidya storage and it had been working fine until a few days ago, what I think happened is a Windows 11 update fucked my shit up, I woke the laptop from sleep mode and the screen was black and the fans started going off like a fucking fighter jet during takeoff, it stayed like that for several minutes and I eventually ended up shutting it down manually via the power button (this was likely a big mistake).

When I turned it back on it turned out Windows was installing an update even though they were supposed to be paused, after this Windows started booting very slowly (a few minutes when it used to be near instantaneous) and the SSD just disappeared (the other two drives seemed to be fine), it would only show up in the BIOS and in device manager but I had to click on 'show hidden devices' and it would be greyed out and throw the following error code: “Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer. (Code 45)”.

Earlier today Windows updated AGAIN without my consent, this has seemingly fixed the slow booting issue, and the SSD now shows up in device manager and disk manager but not in file explorer. Disk manager immediately prompts me to initialize the drive but it throws this error when trying to do so: "Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)". I downloaded ADATA SSD Toolbox and CrystalDiskInfo and both say the drive is in good health, I've tried disconnecting and reconnecting it, running chkdsk and sfc /scannow but nothing has worked, I also would've tried plugging it on my main computer to see if it works there but I'm currently traveling. The computer is an Acer Nitro 5 laptop with a 1660ti, an i7-9750h and 32GB of RAM, it has 3 memory slots: first is an 1TB HDD, the second is a 256 GB M.2 SSD where Windows is installed and the third slot contains the faulty XPG M.2. Did I brick the fucking thing? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Did I brick the fucking thing? Any help would be appreciated.

So you don't care if you wipe all the data? Give diskpart a go then
1. Open cmd as Administrator
2. Run diskpart
3. Enter list disk
4. Figure out which drive is the dead one and select it by number using select disk <num> e.g. select disk 1

5. Enter the command clean
6. Close the window and try initializing then formatting the drive again in Disk Management

What "clean" does is wipe the partition table and leaves it in an uninitialized state. I find it works better in quirky situations, Disk Management is an absolute piece of shit if anything isn't 100% right.

 

[The Connected Nose]

Boot into some flavor of Linux and initialize the drive there (should be able to format it as something Windows can see), then go back to Windows and see what happens. You can always reformat to NTFS if Windows sees it afterward.

 

[El Goblina]

That was how the SSD on my mother's PC acted when it died recently. The second you notice an SSD rig acting up, BACKUP EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I miss when Windows was like 95 and 98...

No updates needed, and no forced updates.

 

[DapperShark]

So you don't care if you wipe all the data? Give diskpart a go then
1. Open cmd as Administrator
2. Run diskpart
3. Enter list disk
4. Figure out which drive is the dead one and select it by number using select disk <num> e.g. select disk 1
View attachment 7322779
5. Enter the command clean
6. Close the window and try initializing then formatting the drive again in Disk Management

What "clean" does is wipe the partition table and leaves it in an uninitialized state. I find it works better in quirky situations, Disk Management is an absolute piece of shit if anything isn't 100% right.

I mean I'd prefer not to lose the data but if nothing else works I'll give this a try, thanks.

Boot into some flavor of Linux and initialize the drive there (should be able to format it as something Windows can see), then go back to Windows and see what happens. You can always reformat to NTFS if Windows sees it afterward.

I guess now's as good a time as any to see if I'm autistic enough for Linux.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

I mean I'd prefer not to lose the data but if nothing else works I'll give this a try, thanks.

First step if you want to try and save the data is to run something like ddrescue to take an image of the drive as it currently is. Especially as this will rule in or out hardware issues, since if you get fuckloads of errors from ddrescue you know the drive itself is toast and it's not Windows being cancerous.

This live CD contains ddrescue as well as a bunch of other useful tools https://www.system-rescue.org/

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

GParted's live CD boot is also very good for managing disks with a GUI, it can handle anything I've thrown at it when I worked in a computer repair shop, even the really funky shit:

https://gparted.org/livecd.php

But this sounds like the SSD giving up the ghost to me, having dealt with a few similar computers in the past. They can suddenly fail then come back again, have quirky behaviour like what you are seeing. Windows can be retarded with drives but that's usually the Windows install fucking over after an update, never really external drives.

 

[User names must be unique]

I guess now's as good a time as any to see if I'm autistic enough for Linux.

It's really not that bad anymore, I've been using it for the last 6 months now and have never needed to use the terminal(command prompt). though of course it'll be dependant on your hardware and use case.

 

[Le b0wski]

Did I brick the fucking thing? Any help would be appreciated.

I looked up reviews of the drive and they all say it runs weirdly hot so I wouldn't be surprised if they are pushing something to die prematurely for some tiny performance increase regular users aren't even going to notice. Warranty return it if you can.

 

[DapperShark]

They can suddenly fail then come back again, have quirky behaviour like what you are seeing.

Funny you should mention that, I don't know how or why but the drive just randomly came back after a restart, it seems fine for now but I no longer trust it and I'm going to try and back up everything asap before it decides to shit itself again.

Warranty return it if you can.

Yeah I'm probably going to end up doing this and definitely never buying XPG crap again, thanks Tom from MySpace.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

Funny you should mention that, I don't know how or why but the drive just randomly came back after a restart

Yep, that's 100% SSD failure. Back up your data right now, because it will most likely fail again at any moment.