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What to do with a dead SSD?

D

Dew itt right

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 28, 2005
Messages
3,314
Thanks for attending the school of hard knocks. Class is now in session...

So I bought a "used" 120Gb Crucal SSD on Amazon. Once it arrived a few days later I opened it up and found "REFURBISHED" stamped on the back of the drive. I was frustrated to say the least but didn't have the time to return it and shop for another so I said screw it - if the drive works than just let it be! So I installed Windows on it and it ran fine.

Fast forward a month and a half later, my HTPC reboots and tells me I have no OS installed. I check the BIOS and find that it's not recognizing the SSD at all, only the storage HDD. I tried plugging the drive into another PC but it's not being recognized in windows either. You can scan for new hardware but it never finds anything.

So what can you do with a dead SSD? Are there places that fix SSD's? I talked to crucial and they said they don't offer any kind of repair service. Just wondering what to do with it now - it's too light to be a decent paper weight or door stop... :D
 
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take it apart and use the platters to make a cool ass clock.

oops: no platters....
 
Probably reached the write limit so it's pretty much toast. If it's refurbished then it's probably either just used, or they used flash chips that have already been used in other drives. Just guessing though.

This brings up an interesting thought though. Is data recovery possible on SSDs or are they basically 100% unreadable when they reach their end of life?
 
no, electronics would have gotten fried somehow, other people have complained about ssds going toast.
a write limit is just a write limit, would not make the thing unreadable.
in fact it would be interesting to see exactly what happens, I don't think I have read about any cases where this has happened.
 
I seriously doubt that the cause of this type of failure has anything at all to do with the NAND chips themselves.

My bet is that the SSD mapping table somehow was lost or corrupt and the controller can not recover from that.
 
How long is Amazon's return policy for electronics? Worst case, you can RMA it, right?
 
ditchmagnet said:
How old is it? It isn't covered under manufacturers warranty?
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It's not that old at all. The manufactured date on the box is week December 2009. Normally they have 5-year warranties but because it was refurbished it only carries a 30 day warranty. I could have returned it to the Amazon seller because it was refurbished instead of used but you only have a 14 day limit to file a claim so I screwed myself out of that one too. I called Crucial and they basically told me I'm screwed too. I'll probably just through it up on Ebay as-is and start it at a penny to see if there's anyone out there who actually flips these....
 
Thats too bad...if the ebay thing doesn't work out, you can always clip it to the front wheel of your bike like a baseball card, it will show the world that you are into computer and make a cool sound.
 
Mail it to this guy:
will-it-blend.jpg
 
Crispy002 said:
Mail it to this guy:
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Business/images/will-it-blend.jpg[img][/QUOTE]
Solid state smoke; don't breathe this.

You should still leave the Amazon seller nasty feedback for not noting the condition accurately, if only for the catharsis. Just don't scam people on eBay...
Click to expand...
 
I highly doubt it has anything to do with the NAND chips. It might either be the controller or the power supply on the SSD.The controller and NAND chips run at much lower voltages than the 3.3V you supply on the power connector. There are small buck converters on the SSD PCB to convert the 3.3V down to something like 1.8, 1.5, 1.1V or whatever the particular SSD controller and NAND chips require.
 
UPDATE: It looks like "List it on Ebay" was the correct answer!! I listed it AS-IS and specified that it was broke but I still managed to get 8 bidders interested and it sold for almost $100 shipped!! Apparently there must be some way of fixing these...
 
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Either that or people bidding can not read english or believe they can revive it. I would give this a try but in no way would I pay $100 for a broken drive..
 
...or he went the not so ethical way and plans on doing a swap with Best Buy?

Congrats on the $100! I love eBay. I'm still amazed at the stuff I can buy and sell on there.
 
Forceman said:
Probably this. Wonder how much of this type of thing a place like Amazon, with their liberal return policies, has to deal with.
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I've known people that took major advantage of this... Heck, I worked retail for a short bit and saw the ridiculous stuff people do. Like women who put masking tape on the bottom of these $1000 shoes to wear them for one night (to impress their friends) and then return them the next day "as new". ...and they'd complain like crazy when you'd call them out, like they were owed something for basically getting a free rental!

The Intel drive is ridiculously easy to exploit too. I'm not 100% sure (cause I bought mine used), but there's no tamper seal or anything!

I noticed other drive manufacturers are pretty conscious of this. You'll notice funny things like screw placement differences in different generations and tons of tamper-proof seals.
 
Well this drive is permanently stamped "REFURBISHED" across the back of the drive and includes the refurbished version of the product booklet inside so he'll be pretty unhappy if that was his intention. Thank God for "as-is, no returns" ebay listings! =)
 
Dew itt right said:
Well this drive is permanently stamped "REFURBISHED" across the back of the drive and includes the refurbished version of the product booklet inside so he'll be pretty unhappy if that was his intention. Thank God for "as-is, no returns" ebay listings! =)
Click to expand...

Haha! Well that's good...

For reference, I just want to put this out there for everyone...

I've just gotten my second Intel G2 SSD and neither had had any security seals. That means that you can easily open them up without anyone knowing (and not sure if the G1 insides are swappable/line up with the screws).

If you do buy a drive off of eBay, open it up and find a G2 review with pics. The chip layout and model numbers should match it. That's one way to tell if everything is legit (besides checking the drive info in the BIOS).

...but I think it's something to be aware of if anyone plans on buying a used Intel drive.

Also, the Intel SSD toolbox gives detailed info like "Host Writes", "Power-On Hours Count" and "Media Wearout Indicator". I'd recommend that anyone looking to buy used ask the seller for these.

To give you an idea though... One of my drives has 237gb written to it and has the wearout at 99 (supposedly it goes from 100 down to 0). The other has 8.11tb and the wearout is at 96. So, these things seem pretty durable aside from the occasional failure...
 
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