Bad Sectors on my SSD

[neosapien]

My SMART info and bad sector error

I have a Sandisk 480GB SSD that serves as my main disk. Yesterday I was doing my weekly backup, and found that the backup failed due to bad sectors, for the first time. Then I had two BSODs, and during the second one I got a "BOOTMGR is missing" error upon boot and nearly crapped my pants, power cycled the drive, rebooted and manually pointed my BIOS to the SSD to get it to boot there.

From googling, it seems like my best option in this case would be to image the drive onto a backup disk, secure erase the drive using Parted Magic, and then restore the backup image to the SSD. I don't want to completely wipe everything and reinstall Windows because that would take a lot of time to get every little program back up and running again. I'm using Windows 7 64-bit.

How do I image the drive onto a backup if I can't image the drive without getting bad sector errors, though?

 

[nerp]

How long have you had the drive?

 

[neosapien]

How long have you had the drive?

Since 4/19/2013

 

[Elixer]

You could use ddrescue, but, realistically, since you have corrupted data and you don't know what has been corrupted, the best bet is to secure erase it, then clean install.

The only other way around this, is use one of your backups that you made...assuming you made one before.

 

[tcsenter]

SanDisk does have it's own SSD Dashboard utility for checking drive health.

 

[neosapien]

SanDisk does have it's own SSD Dashboard utility for checking drive health.

Yeah, the SMART utility in there says it can detect no problems with the SSD, weirdly enough.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If that drive is under warranty I'd contact sandisk support and see about rmaing it.

 

[neosapien]

If that drive is under warranty I'd contact sandisk support and see about rmaing it.

The problem is that during those weeks when it was being shipped back to Sandisk, examined, and a replacement shipped back, I'd be without my SSD, which is my main disk, which I keep my OS and games on. I guess I'd have to migrate that data temporarily to an HDD during that time. I wonder if it would be worth it.

 

[corkyg]

I always keep a clone HDD of my OS SSD for just such contingencies. You might consider cloning your SSD as is to a HDD.

 

[nerp]

SanDisk RMA is pretty decent. Going through one now for an Ultra II 250 gb that failed in less than a month. Just totally disappeared from the BIOS and no computer can see it no matter what. I can't even run diags on it. They got my drive and I should have the replacement in about a week.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Listen critical thinking tells you that you need to replace a defective product and since the warranty exists for that purpose use it before you lose your investment.

 

[Charlie98]

Something else to look at... the SATA cable. I've had recurring problems with my Samsung 840Pro... linked to the SATA cable. Your SMART data doesn't show C7 (CRC Error) but my Samsung acted the same way yours is; it did not have the error count that yours does, so I'm not saying you don't have a bad SSD, but I would try to eliminate as many outside factors as I could before giving up.

 

[neosapien]

Something else to look at... the SATA cable. I've had recurring problems with my Samsung 840Pro... linked to the SATA cable. Your SMART data doesn't show C7 (CRC Error) but my Samsung acted the same way yours is; it did not have the error count that yours does, so I'm not saying you don't have a bad SSD, but I would try to eliminate as many outside factors as I could before giving up.

I've checked now, it's not the cable. I unplugged the SATA cable from another hard drive and plugged it into the SSD. Same bad sector error at the same sector.

 

[Charlie98]

I've checked now, it's not the cable. I unplugged the SATA cable from another hard drive and plugged it into the SSD. Same bad sector error at the same sector.

I kept getting the boot error (MBR not found) on my 840, along with crashes when finally in Windows. A new SATA cable fixed it... but it sounds like your drive is going south. :thumbsdown:

 

[tweakboy]

You gota back off your stuff and RMA it. gl

 

[neosapien]

I did a Secure Erase on the Sandisk 480GB SSD, then afterwards tried backing it up again, and got no bad sector errors. I purchased a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO, copied everything over to that, Secure Erased the Sandisk 480 again, and sent in an RMA request to Sandisk.

On February 26th 2016, I began noticing that my attempts to do weekly backups from this SSD were meeting with failure. I would get errors like “Failed to read data from the disk. Failed to read from sector '255,320,800' of hard disk '3'.”, where these errors had never occurred before. I told Windows Chkdsk to scan the disk and attempt recovery of bad sectors. I began receiving multiple blue screens of death (BSODs) with the SSD errors as the cause. At one point after a BSOD, I rebooted the machine and received the error message “BOOTMGR is missing”, and had to unplug and replug the drive for my computer to recognize the SSD again. I tried replacing the SATA cable, but the issue persisted.

Based on their reply, it seems that they're not too keen on the idea of sending me a replacement drive just because of that. They want me to Secure Erase and then carry on using it.

Thank you for contacting SanDisk. Please note that CHKDSK was written in the days of spindle drives and hence does not provide useful data on SSDs. Please also note that BOOTMGR missing means that boot loader is corrupted, and not necessarily a hardware issue with SSD. Please let us know how you connected the SSD to the computer. Please try connecting the SSD as secondary drive to an internal SATA port or externally via USB and secure erase it following the steps below:

Open Command Prompt window.
1.Type diskpart, and then press ENTER to open the diskpart tool.
2.Type list disk, and then press ENTER. A list of available hard disks is displayed.
3.Type sel disk #number, and then press ENTER. number is the number of the hard disk that you want to clean. The hard disk is now selected.
4.Type det disk, and then press ENTER. A list of partitions on the hard disk is displayed. Use this information to verify that the
correct disk is selected.
5.Make sure that the disk does not contain required data, type clean all, and then press ENTER to clean the disk. All the partitions and all the data on the disk is permanently removed.
6.Type exit, and then press ENTER to close

In case an error is observed why performing these, please take its screenshot and attach to response e-mail.

 

[Ketchup]

Well, even CrystalDiskInfo said that the health of your drive is good. I believe their response was justified considering that the Samsung software is also not detecting any errors. Also, the bad sector error is not going to go away because you swapped a cable. It has been marked, and will not go away until you wipe the drive/partition.

I would follow the steps Sandisk has given you and let us/them know if there are issues. I would also suggest leaving the replacement sata cable in place, jik that turns out to be the cause of the problem.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Perhaps you should have included that it encountered Unrecoverable Errors meaning that data was irretrievably lost.

And SanDisk Dashboard and CrystalDiskInfo most likely go by how much wear the SSD has seen and how many reallocated sectors it has.
When actually it would have been better if it had a number of reallocated sectors rather than permanently losing data.

Maybe you should consider contacting the retailer about this if SanDisk is not willing to replace it.


And CrystalDiskInfo seems to think that another drive of yours is not in good condition.

 

[aviator79]

Please replace your SATA cable first, some of the errors may be related to a defective cable.
Then do a secure erase and a fresh install, compare the new RAW data from SMART to the old screenshot.