Samsung 500 GB 860 EVO Issue

[FenFox]

So, my computer crashed while I was playing a game and eventually rebooted to: "Reboot & Select Proper Boot Device"

So I went into the BIOS and I can't find the SSD listed as a boot. I can however find every other storage device listed as a potential boot device.

This SSD is a little under a year old at this point so I'm not sure if It's defective or not. It shouldn't be?

1.) I checked to see if the cabling is attached to the drive and It's fine.
2.) I used cables from a HDD that shows as a boot device to see if my SSD would register as a boot and it doesn't.
3.) I put this SSD into an external enclosure and connected via USB to my desktop and laptop. It doesn't show as a boot device on my desktop and on my laptop it wants me to initialize which would wipe the data, no good.

So I'm not sure what else I can do. Someone recommended resetting CMOS in my mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H. Haven't looked into how to do that yet.

Any other ideas or do you guys think It's toast at this point?

 

[mda]

Looks like you've troubleshooted enough.

If the laptop wants to initialize the data... it looks like RMA time?

 

[FenFox]

Looks like you've troubleshooted enough.

If the laptop wants to initialize the data... it looks like RMA time?

Hmm, you think that's enough? Should my laptop have recognized it from the enclosure without initializing if it wasn't fucked? Or maybe even my PC when the enclosure was connected? Thing is, I wanna be absolutely sure there's no data on it before I send it back because like an idiot I saved a lot of sensitive information on my desktop in plain text. So if there's even a small chance I can get it working I wanna try a few other things, and then if it doesn't work I guess I could initialize it to wipe it I suppose.

 

[Maxx]

Most likely the crash corrupted the mapping table in the DRAM cache (volatile memory) before it was written back to NAND. You will want to run chkdsk (fix) on the drive and further try to repair it with Windows (e.g. startup repair from Windows install if it detects the SSD's OS after a chkdsk pass, also can do manually in command prompt with the typical fixmbr/fixboot/rebuildbcd commands). Clearing the BIOS can help it "see" the drive but won't fix it to be bootable if it's corrupted. If after all of this problems remain (and you can't retrieve data) then you should engage in a secure erase.

 

[FenFox]

Most likely the crash corrupted the mapping table in the DRAM cache (volatile memory) before it was written back to NAND. You will want to run chkdsk (fix) on the drive and further try to repair it with Windows (e.g. startup repair from Windows install if it detects the SSD's OS after a chkdsk pass, also can do manually in command prompt with the typical fixmbr/fixboot/rebuildbcd commands). Clearing the BIOS can help it "see" the drive but won't fix it to be bootable if it's corrupted. If after all of this problems remain (and you can't retrieve data) then you should engage in a secure erase.

Ok, so do I put it back into the enclosure and reconnect it to my laptop and run chkdsk from there? I'm not familiar with any of these steps. Do you have a link to a guide I can look at?
Also, secure erase?

 

[Maxx]

Ok, so do I put it back into the enclosure and reconnect it to my laptop and run chkdsk from there? I'm not familiar with any of these steps. Do you have a link to a guide I can look at?
Also, secure erase?

Chkdsk /f on a drive is a way to check the file structure of the drive, via command prompt. If it's not getting a drive letter this will not be possible. There may be other ways to check/repair it like via Hard Disk Sentinel (which can give you basic health information of the drive as well). If the data can be restored by either means it might still require a startup repair for it to boot properly. If it is truly hosed, though, as in mapping corruption, a secure erase is basically a method of returning the drive to a factory state. There are special commands/tools for this, with a Samsung drive that should be in their Magician software. You can Google chkdsk for more on that, Self-test/surface test in HDS. Startup repair is done with a bootable Windows installer (which you can even download/create for free), if it has to be done manually then that's command prompt stuff again which is more involved.