Solved Hard Drive Failure? or otherwise

I have a peculiar issue that happened with my laptop, while in the process of backing up it suddenly froze and i was forced to restart it. After restarting it i was greeted with a black screen and a message "Missing Operating System". A couple restarts later and now it's stuck as "Reboot and Select Proper device or insert boot media in selected boot device". I attempted to fix my computer using a system image iso on a USB External hard drive, but System repair cannot fix it, none of my existing system images work.

Strangely when i attempted to use the command prompt function, i could not find my OS drive, and when looking up the drive letter C:\, i was getting my storage drive which is normally D:\, and the D:\ Drive game a message "This device is not ready" The Bootrec.exe/ScanOs detects no windows version installed.

It seems the bios still recognizes the OS drive though(Intel 510 ssd).

I'm not sure if this is just some very peculiar windows issue created by terrible timing, or my SSD has died for a second time, but this time without any warning.

Took the drive out...tested it on another computer, the entire drive is *Unallocated*

Attempted to enable it as its *not initialized* but i get a Data Error Cyclic Redundancy.

Welcome to the forums Len19,

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

From my knowledge, the BIOS has checked all the devices for a bootable sector, but could not find one, this may due a corrupted boot sector or damaged boot files.

You could try using the diagnostics for your SSD.

• Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox

Here's some general troubleshooting steps:

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219533-troubleshooting-windows-7-failure-boot.html

I have attempted to run startup repair but the program is unable to locate my hard drive.

I am looking at my drive with another computer, Hard Drive Sentinel has shown that this drive had dropped from 100% health a few weeks ago to 27%.

There are 105 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.
The TRIM feature of the SSD is supported but disabled. It is recommended to upgrade the operating system, the disk controller or its driver to improve performance.

The intel SSD toolbox does not detect the drive in question

The sad part of this is i had to RMA this drive when i first bought it and a year and a half later its giving me issues again.

Have you checked with the BIOS if the drive is being detected? It seems your SSD is beginning to have a few problems again.

x BlueRobot said:

Have you checked with the BIOS if the drive is being detected? It seems your SSD is beginning to have a few problems again.

Click to expand...

Yes, the bios detects the drive, similarly my disk management on the other PC i have it plugged into does as well as Hard Drive Sentinel, but the drive is *Not Initialized* in disk management and attempting to enable it gives me a cyclic data redundancy error.

I can't seem to access the drive with intel SSD toolbox.

Try a bootable Puppy disc or USB, just to see if you can access the HDD in linux or not?

Arc said:

Try a bootable Puppy disc or USB, just to see if you can access the HDD in linux or not?

Click to expand...

Not 100% sure exactly which file to download but i'm downloading the precise-5.5.iso and i'll try using YUMI with it and see if it works.

Download Lucid Puppy (Ubuntu-Compatible Build) v5.2.8 ISO from http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

It is light and only 132.6 MB.

Make a Bootable pendrive with Rufus v1.3.2 (442 KB) http://rufus.akeo.ie/ It takes less than 2 minutes to create your bootable live Linux pendrive.

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/198909-lucid-puppy-way-recover-files-non-bootable-computer.html

(If you want to recover data)

Try this one .... let us know if you can explore the HDD in linuz or not.

i've already partially disassembled the laptop in question g53sw, and compared to other laptops it's a hassle to take apart and reassemble, does this work if i just booted this on a working laptop with the drive in question connected by usb?

It should work, if you dont use the HDD as bootable in the other working laptop.

Arc said:

It should work, if you dont use the HDD as bootable in the other working laptop.

Click to expand...

I seem to have messed up somewhere, I'm getting a message lupu_528.sfs not found.

Is this possibly because i am using a external hard drive rather than a thumb drive *as i do not currently have one*

I'm now pretty certain the data on the disk is gone..., i just tested out the disk using DISKPART from the cmd prompt, and the disk is 111/111gb free, seems the entire partition is gone.

On a positive note...bought a new hard drive and reinstalled windows without any major issues although HD sentinel reports the drive health at 99% despite being brand new, not sure if that's an issue or not.

Reset the BIOS to defaults: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS

Set SATA controller to AHCI. If it's not there now, I'd Clean Reinstall.

I'd RMA the SSD. We are seeing a lot of bad ones here. Just because the test says it's not bad enough yet doesn't mean the Intel Tech Support will not RMA it with that many errors. They may also shed some light on its exact problem.

Unfortunately i have already done the first two steps a while back, i think RMA may be the only choice, which is sad since i got this drive from a RMA on the same model a a year and a half back.

On a note, this new ssd is already at 98% health according to HD sentinel due to two data errors on transfer, although perhaps i'm just getting paranoid from the recent issue.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Len19 said:

On a note, this new ssd is already at 98% health according to HD sentinel due to two data errors on transfer, although perhaps i'm just getting paranoid from the recent issue.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Click to expand...

Check it with CrystalDisc Info too. A brand new disc, when it is properly formatted, should not report 98% health for good IMO.