Solved SSD Not Recognized After Power Outage

[dazzlenet]

I always use a battery backup. The battery in my CyberPower 1200AVR died & before a new one arrived we had a power outage. Now my PC won't recognize my SSD which has my Windows 7 operating system on it. I need help desperately. THANKS!

 

[GokAy]

Did you check BIOS to see if boot order has somehow changed? Or does it not even show in BIOS?

You could attach your SSD to another PC temporarily to see if it is recognized.

 

[dazzlenet]

Did you check BIOS to see if boot order has somehow changed? Or does it not even show in BIOS?

You could attach your SSD to another PC temporarily to see if it is recognized.

It doesn't show in BIOS. The only other computer I have is this HP Envy Laptop. Any more suggestions?

 

[GokAy]

Shutdown and unplug PC for a minute or two.
Load defaults in BIOS.
Try another SATA port.
Try another SATA cable.
Try it on a friend's PC (kindly ask IT department if you are working, etc.) and attach as a secondary.

 

[dazzlenet]

Shutdown and unplug PC for a minute or two.
Load defaults in BIOS.
Try another SATA port.
Try another SATA cable.
Try it on a friend's PC (kindly ask IT department if you are working, etc.) and attach as a secondary.

I tried another SATA port, another SATA cable, & unplugging the power cable for 30 seconds then booting on for 20 min. (about 10 times!) & nothing worked. My Western Digital & CD/DVD Drives have SATA: in front of them in BIOS, which wasn't there before. Any suggestions for changes in BIOS that may help?

I called Samsung & the guy told me to return the SSD & they will send me a new one, since they have a 5-yr. warranty. When I told him what happened, he said something like, "SSD's do not have any type of protection for when the power goes off." Oh well, I had already figured that out the hard way!

 

[GokAy]

Did you have Rapid Mode enabled prior to this? A power outage by itself does not warrant your situation. I had quite a few outages while using a Samsung SSD.

 

[dazzlenet]

Did you have Rapid Mode enabled prior to this? A power outage by itself does not warrant your situation. I had quite a few outages while using a Samsung SSD.

Yes, I did have Rapid Mode enabled. Now that you mentioned it, I had noticed that it would sometimes show a problem with Rapid Mode & advise me to restart the computer and try enabling Rapid Mode again. I hope you have a solution as to how I can fix it. Thank you very much for responding to my post.

 

[OvenMaster]

Googling "SSD power failure" shows plenty of info on drives that become wiped, damaged or bricked with sudden power loss.

 

[GokAy]

Well, Rapid Mode gives a pseudo-performance (it uses RAM to cache data) and hence a power outage may cause data loss as cache can't be written to the disk. However, losing the entire disk is something else.

Did you check BIOS throughly? You could also try attaching it to another PC.

 

[dazzlenet]

Well, Rapid Mode gives a pseudo-performance (it uses RAM to cache data) and hence a power outage may cause data loss as cache can't be written to the disk. However, losing the entire disk is something else.

Did you check BIOS throughly? You could also try attaching it to another PC.

I read on the net a how-to w/photos to change the SSD in my laptop & it looks fairly easy. Couldn't be harder than installing a new SSD & hard drive with very short cables and cramped room in my PC! I am gonna try it this evening after I read up on "SSD power failure" to see if it's worth the trouble.

My BIOS looks so different than it normally did. I wonder why it now puts SATA: in front of my DVD & Western Digital hard drive. Also, what am supposed to have enabled as far as IDE, ACHI, etc. ~ or is this important? Are there any other settings I could possibly change in BIOS for my SSD to be recognized, if it isn't fried?

The only way I can boot up my PC is with Hiren's Boot CD, but it doesn't recognize either hard drive. So far, it's been useless. It's likely I don't know exactly what to run to find my hard drives. Any suggestions with it?

Whenever I was seeking advice on what hard drives to buy to replace my old Seagate, I wish that the power loss failure probability for SSD's had been mentioned. If I had known, I could have borrowed a battery backup from my son until the new battery for my Cyber Power arrived. Live and learn, right? Especially with computers! LOL

Thanks again for all your time & help. It is greatly appreciated.

 

[GokAy]

I don't know if your BIOS is capable of disabling drives, not even sure if it is possible. Maybe with UEFI?
It is possible SATA operation mode has been reset with loading defaults.

 

[dazzlenet]

Googling "SSD power failure" shows plenty of info on drives that become wiped, damaged or bricked with sudden power loss.

So far I have read a lot of valuable info here: TR Forums ? View topic - SSDs and Sudden Power Failures

Darn, I wish I had read the above forum BEFORE I installed the SSD. It seems I could have set my PC to hibernate & this would have been a "safety feature" for my SSD. I always thought this was only an option on laptops.

I currently own the first laptop of my life. I have run PC's since the first version of Windows ~ so long ago I can't even recall what it was. XP has always been my favorite, then Windows 7. Buying a laptop was my best option until I got my PC up & running again after I broke a Seagate hard drive where the sata/data cable connects. No fixing that huge boo-boo!

I read the following statements online & am wondering what command to run or utility to perform when system won't even boot from SSD. "The good news is, file system corruptions are typically not fatal since most operating systems will perform a file system repair operation on the next power up. Alternatively, a user can run a command or utility to perform the repair operation."

I need some help understanding these terms if anyone has time:

TRIM ~ as used in this sentence: The SSD potentially has some extra issues due to TRIM or garbage collection, but it's really not much different than a conventional disk during a write operation or defrag operation. A complete brick of an SSD due to power loss is actually pretty rare and is usually due to firmware bugs.

RAM CACHING Ex 1: If you make use of the ram caching feature from the EVO range and the power goes, anything in ram is susceptible to loss. Ex. 2: Just don't use RAM caching. The EVOs are already fast.

Write-Cache Buffer Flushing: I think I had this enabled in Samsung Magician b/c it was recommended when using an SSD & HDD together. Doesn't look like it helped at all at this point.

 

[GokAy]

TRIM is an SSD command to clean deleted cells. When the OS support it and it is enabled, whenever you delete data, not only the MFT index for it is deleted (https://www.piriform.com/docs/recuva/technical-information/understanding-windows-file-deletion) but also the cells holding that data are cleaned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_(computing)).

RAM caching is Rapid Mode.

I have Write-Cache Buffer Flushing un-checked.

There are plenty of us who have hibernate completely turned off with no issues at all.

 

[dazzlenet]

I don't know if your BIOS is capable of disabling drives, not even sure if it is possible. Maybe with UEFI?
It is possible SATA operation mode has been reset with loading defaults.

The Motherboard in my PC is MSI-A75MA-G55. The manual is located here: MSI USA - Computer, Laptop, Notebook, Desktop, Mainboard, Graphics and more .

I am running Windows 7 64-Bit & have 8GB Ram. I want to update the Ram to 16GB. I normally use the Crucial System Scanner to find the correct memory upgrades, but this is a custom built gaming computer & the scanner does not work on it. I think the DIMM slots require DDR3, but I am confused about the Dual-Channel Mode Population Rule.

 

[dazzlenet]

Since I haven't been able to get the SSD to boot, I am going to return it. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[GokAy]

Sorry to hear. Did you get the chance to try it on another PC?

 

[JustStan]

Just wanted to share my experience and see if anyone has any thoughts.

I originally had the same problem as the OP; I had a power outage and couldn't boot from the SSD, (it just went straight to BIOS). I checked all the BIOS settings and tried rebooting with no luck. I continued to try rebooting several times over several days and eventually it booted up normally. I didn't have any more problems with it until today.

Today, I was going to be doing some work on the house with the power off, so I fully shut down the computer and unplugged it before turning off the power. When the work was done, I turned back on the power, plugged the computer back in, and turned it on. Same thing, it booted straight to BIOS. Based on my previous experience, I just kept exiting the BIOS and letting it reboot. After about five or six reboots from BIOS, it booted up as normal.

Anyone know what would cause this temporary outage of the SSD after the computer has been without power?