SpinRite 6.0: SATA SSD Undetected Through the BIOS

[wizfactor]

Long time SN listener finally purchasing SpinRite to try fixing an SSD.

For references, the affected SSD is a Samsung EVO 870 1TB drive, and was previously connected to my desktop PC through a SATA connector. One day during a forced reboot, my motherboard BIOS warned me that this SSD was outputting numerous S.M.A.R.T. error messages, so I immediately started the process of copying the data off the SSD to a backup. Fortunately, about 90% of the data was able to be backed up, but I'd like to recover the remaining 10% if possible.

So I bought a copy of SpinRite to get to working on this SSD. However, upon booting into SpinRite, it was able to recognize my two NVMe drives (that are working fine), but not the Samsung SATA SSD. In fact, after that initial warning message from my MB BIOS, the BIOS has not been able to detect the SATA SSD during subsequent reboots. I tried connecting the SATA SSD using a SATA-to-USB adapter, but SpinRite gave me the "Bad Motherboard BIOS" error, so using USB is a dead end so far. The only saving grace I have found so far is that the SATA SSD can be read when booting to a Linux Desktop. Windows sometimes can recognize the drive through SATA, but it's not very reliable and regularly hangs when trying to read it.

So I would like to ask for some advice on how to proceed here. What should I do when both SpinRite and the MB BIOS can't detect the SATA SSD, but my desktop OSes can?

Some other info:
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B450-I
- SSD's Partition Table: GPT

 

[PHolder]

I'm afraid it sounds like your SSD has reached the end of its life. Presumably it feels it has no reliable flash cells to write to, and just powering on a SSD seems to require writable flash cells for it to do its own management. I have a drive by a different company that is acting kind of similar, only mine seems to run for a short period (maybe 5 minutes) before going offline and being unreachable in any way.

SpinRite's recovery options involve being very persistent. It will ask the drive to read, and read and read again, hoping it can get a mix of results that will allow it to feel confident it has all the data available, and then it will write the result back to the same place. If your drive is indeed at the end of its lifespan, there will be no means for such a write to succeed, and so, SpinRite will not help you (or more specifically your drive) in any way.

I will mention this thread on @Steve's development newsgroup, and perhaps you'll get a personal reply here from him in the future.

 

[Scott]

I'd try Samsung Magician and see what it says; I had this happen recently with an NVMe Samsung drive, and Magician showed there were errors. When that happens, you're out of luck.

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/consumer-storage/magician/

 

[ColbyBouma]

Can SpinRite 6.1 see it?

Instructions for downloading and using pre-releases:

Text/New-Testers.md · master · Colby Bouma / Misc Scripts · GitLab

Random scripts that don't each need their own repo.

gitlab.com

 

[Steve]

@wizfactor : Thanks to Paul (@PHolder) bringing this to my attention, I'm checking-in here. I agree with Scott that Samsung's own Windows utility will provide the best diagnostic view into their own drive.

And Colby's (@Dagannoth) suggestion about trying SRv6.1 is also exactly right. You will definitely want to attach the drive directly to that machine's SATA connector (where it originally was) since v6.1's is still using the BIOS for all USB-connected drives and if the machine's BIOS is no longer seeing the drive SpinRite would not either.

SpinRite v6.1 is really very stable. We're down to fussing over the wording of its User Interface and one-off edge cases which are, in any event, all non-critical.

Best luck and THANK YOU for your support!

 

[wizfactor]

Since the last time I was able to back up most of my data off the SSD, the drive itself has unfortunately further deteriorated. It's currently unreadable on Windows, and on Linux it has reverted to a Read-Only state. I'm worried about SR no longer being usable if the SSD if permanently Read-Only.

@magnificent_starfish When it comes to S.M.A.R.T. information, this information is no longer available to me. In hindsight, I should have gotten a screenshot now that I know that a SSD can deteriorate so quickly that even S.M.A.R.T. stops becoming readable.

The only diagnostics that I can provide so far are these logs from CHKDSK:

PS C:\Users\Admin> chkdsk E: /f /r /x
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Secondary.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
169984 file records processed.
File verification completed.
Phase duration (File record verification): 2.02 seconds.
162 large file records processed.
Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.93 milliseconds.
0 bad file records processed.
Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 0.42 milliseconds.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
An unspecified error occurred (696e647863686b2e 548).
An unspecified error occurred (6e74667363686b2e 1847).

And these device statistics from HWINFO64:

 

[millQ]

Probably bad firmware:
(I think Samsung fixed the problem in the latest firmware, but the damage is already done to your SSD)

https://www.grc.com/groups/spinrite.dev:37763

Samsung 870 EVO - Beware, certain batches prone to failure!

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