First SSD to possibly die on me?

[IVIYTH0S]

So I've got a SanDisk Extreme 240GB (first generation) that's got 40 months on 'er now (4 months out of warranty, nice play SanDisk) and I was going to do my monthly image of that and my laptop's drive when it failed. I just shrugged it off and decided to play FO4 for a bit and planned to run the backup while I slept but the game was running 90% ok but would once in a while just freeze, and not a framerate choke (I'd be pretty pissed if my computer couldn't handle FO4 but my friend's 660Ti/E8400 computer could lol) but an outright 5-10 full second freeze. It wasn't that consistent but would do it just enough to piss me off to the point of saving and then restarting the computer (my computer has probably been on for months and I just sleep it whenever I'm not using it for prolonged periods of time).

 

So I restart and it starts loading windows, and then bluescreens me. Try that like 6 more times with the same result. I disable AHCI just for S's and G's because I've had that be the problem for whatever reason way back and then re-enabled it later and was cool for months. Nope, still BSOD'd me again. (and yes I installed windows with AHCI on so it put the driver on properly for you sticklers lol)

 

I booted from my flashdrive of wonders and opened up MiniXP to run Victoria on it and it started scanning and instantly errors were stacking up (not in crazy amounts but steadily increasing the count). I then ran a chkdsk session and it saw a lot wrong but the second pass was fine since I ran the /R argument, so I tried to boot windows again with high hopes...that were dashed with yet another BSOD.

 

I just plugged my laptop drive in to get a third assessment with HD Tune's error scan (it's a little more visually appealing than Victoria imho) and whelp, I'll let it do the talking:

I guess she's a sinking ship now, glad I decided to investigate before just trying a refresh of windows. I may try another SATA cable but I doubt that would cause only some sparse read errors.

 

Any other thoughts about what to do before I start shopping for a new drive?

Also, side-rant, fuck S.M.A.R.T. for not throwing any kind of error whatsoever lol.

Edited January 4, 2016 by IVIYTH0S

[SpikeSoprano]

I had a hd show about 3 times the amount of bad blocks as yours on a friends laptop and like yours they all seemed to be at the start of the drive.I assumed it was junk so for a laugh(mine not his) I used a Linux disk and partitioned it in half, then loaded windows to the last partition. It seemed to work fine with no errors long enough until I got the new drive shipped from new egg. It was still running fine when I installed the new drive but I did not try to load any data on the first bad partition. You might try that just to see if it will work.

[ir_cow]

I guess they do die like everything else. I haven't came across any of mine that died yet. My friend is still rocking some old Mushkin 120gbs I sold him.

[Waco]

I'd try reimaging it, then running the error scan again. Perhaps the controller hiccupped and allowed some LBAs to degrade/lose their data?

[cchalogamer]

I'd try reimaging it, then running the error scan again. Perhaps the controller hiccupped and allowed some LBAs to degrade/lose their data?

I'll second that, once the data's off and you can I would secure erase and see if that fixes the drive.  If it does you may still want to replace it as your primary, but could use it as a secondary drive to load a few games on etc.

 

Funny thing is with several SSDs of my own (11 in actively used systems in the house right now) from many vendors including nearly every OCZ model of death everyone and their brother says will die to countless customer PCs I've actually been lucky enough to never have one fail.  (So in about 40 mins after saying that I'll get a business customer calling with a PC that wont boot) 

Edited January 4, 2016 by cchalogamer

[IVIYTH0S]

Thanks guys, I backed up everything I could think of manually. What do you recommend to running the secure erase? The SanDisk toolkit is garbage (just allows for firmware updates and S. M. A. R. T. Checks) , I know the OCZ toolkit has that function but I don't think the drive will show up there since it's not OCZ.

[El_Capitan]

I would first repair it for Windows errors, then repair the game cache, and see if that works. The memory controller would be the first thing to go before the NAND flash, and the errors you're seeing only reports read errors. If you let the memory controller do its work, it might re-allocate the blocks that have errors.

[IVIYTH0S]

I would first repair it for Windows errors, then repair the game cache, and see if that works. The memory controller would be the first thing to go before the NAND flash, and the errors you're seeing only reports read errors. If you let the memory controller do its work, it might re-allocate the blocks that have errors.

That's what I'm hoping for, I ran chkdsk already and "corrected" the errors as best that could but it still won't boot.

 

How do I repair the game cache? Or do you mean check for the file integrity of FO4 using Steam or something? I would if I could boot from that drive. I've just been using my laptop's Silicon Power SSD to help work on my SanDisk for now.

 

Would the memory controller automatically re-allocate the bad blocks or is there a command I should run? I don't even mind losing the 1.5% disk space, the OS drive has very little important data and I'm not at all hurting for space, I typically have 50% or more free. The only things that change that I'd ever "lose" would be recent save games and updates to bookmarks (if any), I usually backup saves myself after every close up of the game to my one drive folder. After this I'm motivated to setup a program to automatically backup my saves from whatever game I'm playing periodically to the folder I set in Onedrive, and do the same for my bookmarks.

[IVIYTH0S]

Here's a third chkdsk so you can see if didn't "fix" anything else:

 

This is asinine that SanDisk doesn't have their own toolkit that can just secure erase the drive. That's pretty sad for a memory company as big as they are, every hates OCZ but atleast their products haven't failed me and their software accommodates their products!

Edited January 4, 2016 by IVIYTH0S

[El_Capitan]

Sorry, working at the moment, so can't give too much help right now. Try this for now:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139810-sfc-scannow-run-command-prompt-boot.html

[IVIYTH0S]

Sorry, working at the moment, so can't give too much help right now. Try this for now:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139810-sfc-scannow-run-command-prompt-boot.html

Done:

 

EDIT:

Just found that the toolkit is the old version and "Dashboard" is the one HERE so I'm running an extended SMART test right now (though it did already say there were errors through their initial SMART report)

 

I think this will let me "sanitize" the drive finally, Parted Magic couldn't do it. This is the last hope ladies and gents

Edited January 4, 2016 by IVIYTH0S

[IVIYTH0S]

Secure Erased it (Sanitize isn't available for me on a drive this old) and then re-imaged December's backup and it's running fine now, even the HD Tune scan looks good!

I may be in the green for a bit now, only time will tell. Thanks all!