How to check if an SSD is dead? EVO 840 1TB

Rocketman122

Member
Jul 22, 2013
175
3
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My friend has a samsung 840 EVO 1TB. he brought his pc to lab to have a PSU installed inside after he himself installed and it wasnt booting. not sure if he did something wrong.

nonetheless the pc is back two weeks and he came to boot the pc a few days ago and the SSD isnt recognized and doesnt boot. tried it in another pc, nothing.

what can we do to see if the SSD is dead or simply a configuration issue?

thanks in advance.
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,187
4,871
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Samsung has a utility called magician which can give you information about their ssd's however if the bios no longer sees the drive or if it is no longer accessible then chances are the controller is frozen. Remove the ssd from power, as in disconnect it from all power sources for 30 minutes and then reconnect it and see if it is recognized by the bios. If it is seen then use another working pc and download the Samsung magician utility to it and create the dos utility disc which will boot the system and attempt to unfreeze and secure erase the drive which is the only way to bring a ssd back and yes you will lose all data on the drive.

If you cannot get that far as in the bios still does not see the drive then you will have to contact Samsung and request an rma. I don't know where you are but here in the US obtaining a rma from them is like pulling hens teeth. I went through it recently with a frozen 840 pro and I had quite the time getting an rma from them and they use a 3rd party to perform their warranty work so it was not a good experience for me. Good luck and keep us posted on your situation.

Whatever you do, DO NOT RAPIDLY POWER CYCLE A PC WITH A SSD! This is a sure fire proven way to lock one up. The original sandforce 12xx controller was notorious for failing in this way and I had one go recently because of a failing power supply. Unfortunately it was out of warranty when it happened so I lost the drive. When my 840 pro locked up I had issues with an evga z87 ftw motherboard and when it rapidly power cycled the system my 840 pro locked up.
 
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