Drive runs fine. Windows runs fine. SpinRite says the drive is in Device Fault

[RonSkol]

I've got a 3 year old laptop that's running fine, and I want to keep it for a bit longer before replacing it. I'm a fairly new listener to Security Now and just bought SpinRite. I was able to boot to SpinRite from USB and ran the RAM tests for 2.5 hours. No problem. But when I tried to run SpinRite, it says that my 1TB SSD has placed itself in "Device Fault" status. The drive has been running fine. It still can boot to Windows 11 Home and run no problem. Is SpinRite detecting an upcoming demise of this SSD?

More detail:
I replaced the 512 GB SSD with a 1 TB SSD about 2 years ago. It's a Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe M.2 2280SS Gaming SSD. Model CT1000P5PSSD8. I've had no problems with the PC other than replacing the battery a few months ago. I thought I'd run SpinRite on it and see if there are any performance improvements. But I'm unable to select the SSD because of the Device Fault state. I've run Chkdsk c: /f /x and found no errors. I've restarted and powered down the PC a number of times while trying to get this to work. The PC seems to be running perfectly. Not sure why the drive is identifying as having a Device Fault.

I'm just curious if this is indicative of the drive dying soon? Or is this a known issue with some drives? I'll attach a few screenshots

 

[PHolder]

Is SpinRite detecting an upcoming demise of this SSD?

It seems likely the drive uses encryption technology which your laptop/Windows supports but which SpinRite does not. Do you enter a password when you boot the PC? (Even if you don't, it's still possible that it's encrypted and the system BIOS is managing it via the TPM.)

In any case, what's likely happening is that SpinRite is requesting the drive to do drive things, and it's not allowed until it is properly unlocked and so all it can respond with is a "That's an error... no can do!" and SpinRite reports that to you as a failure to communicate with the drive.

The other possibility is just that there is some weird incompatibility between that machine's BIOS and that drive because SpinRite is reporting it as NVMe which is not supported by FreeDOS so in order for SpinRite to work with it, it relies on the BIOS's support.

 

[RonSkol]

Thanks for the quick reply, Pholder. I just double-checked and the drive isn't encrypted. Attaching a screenshot. Plus attaching the other 2 screenshots that didn't seem to upload originally. I'm downloading a utility from Crucial for their SSDs. I'll play with it tomorrow to see if maybe there's some settings to tweak or check if it's encrypted some other way. But it sounds like since it's an after-market SSD, it might have compatibilities with the HP laptop's BIOS. :-(

 

[PHolder]

I would be interested for @Steve to take a look and comment. I just tagged him, perhaps he'll stop in at some point in the future.

 

[Bplayer]

This is a long shot but when setting up run SR in a VM the drive has to be changed from readonly mode. the steps are to run diskpart from an elevated command prompt. Then

• For the disk you want to access in Spinrite, enter these commands (replacing # with the number of the physical drive shown in the list disk):
  1. list disk
  2. select disk #
  3. offline disk
  4. attribute disk clear readonly
  5. rescan

 

[RonSkol]

Hi Chris... So it sounds like you're recommending to boot Spinrite from my USB drive, get to the DOS prompt and run those commands. If the scan works, do I need to do something to reverse those commands? I don't want to run them and be stuck not able to boot Windows again. Thanks in advance!

 

[Scott]

Hi Chris... So it sounds like you're recommending to boot Spinrite from my USB drive, get to the DOS prompt and run those commands. If the scan works, do I need to do something to reverse those commands? I don't want to run them and be stuck not able to boot Windows again. Thanks in advance!

The steps Chris outlined are only used when running SpinRite under VirtualBox under Windows. But it sounds like you’re running SpinRite natively (booting a FreeDOS USB) so they would not apply.

 

[RonSkol]

Thanks, Scott. Sounds like I've got some for of PC/drive/BIOS incompatibility... :-( My drive's running fine. I was just interested in checking out SpinRite and seeing if it improved things at all. Glad to support Steve and GRC.

 

[Scott]

Thanks, Scott. Sounds like I've got some for of PC/drive/BIOS incompatibility... :-( My drive's running fine. I was just interested in checking out SpinRite and seeing if it improved things at all. Glad to support Steve and GRC.

Yeah I’d vote for a weird incompatibility between the BIOS and the drive.

 

[Bplayer]

Forget my post as it is only applicable to the VM scenario.