SSD Problem (and maybe buying a new one)

[Lil Frier]

So, I had a rough go with my SSD (Kingston SSD Now V300, I think is the full name) this week, and I'm not especially pleased about it. To make a long story short and get to a questions:

The SSD won't cooperate when set as my boot drive anymore. It just shows a black screen and blinking cursor, like I'm missing an OS. It still has its files on it, from what I can tell. I threw Windows on a WD Blue drive to boot and attached the SSD as a secondary drive. I can see the files (including the Windows directories and installed programs) that were on the drive when it stopped working. Anyone have input on what could cause this, and a possible solution? Since I can see my files and programs, I'm not especially concerned, but I am genuinely curious about the matter.

As a secondary question, why do we overpartition a SSD? I did it to about 15% extra space (of a 120-GB drive). I thought the idea was to give the drive places to move files if chunks of it started to fail. My drive still showed 15 GB of the 96 or so free (which didn't include the overpartitioned section, whose functionality I couldn't see or test).

Lastly, has anything changed in the market lately? The last review I saw (on some PNY drives) had the Samsung 850 Pros looking like the clear winner. Have they exhibited any longevity issues, or has someone else put out a SATA drive worth considering over Samsung's? I've heard Sandisk Extremes are decent, but are they a legitimately better option?

As always, information and assistance is appreciated.

 

[Brado78]

I wonder if the boot partition is corrupted or missing?, If the drive is showing up as a secondary drive then, the drive is working. All I would suggest is running a smart test on the drive and see what comes up. Jewel from Kingston will be happy to help

If the drive is dead or dying, I really recommend the Sandisk Line. I have the Ultra II, and I love it!!! They are an EXCELLENT choice for speed and price...fyi though the Ultra II does have TLC Nand....

 

[wpcoe]

Could it be a GPT vs MBR formatting issue with boot configuration?

 

[Lil Frier]

Brado: Hard telling. I never reformatted the SSD or anything, so when I threw it in as a secondary drive (it's not connected now, though), I could see all of the previous files, including the Windows Program Files/Program (x86) Files/Users and such. The status of the partition, it's why I asked about the purpose of overpartitioning. I thought I chopped off that extra space to prevent early corruption. I'll see what the Ultra II prices look like, though I'll add that I still don't quite know the full TLC-MLC argument.

wpcoe: I'm not sure what that refers to. How could I check it? It's something where the drive has been fine for 2-ish years, but then just stopped booting. I don't know how formatting would randomly become the issue.

Just to add, so the failure scenario is known, I don't shut my PC down or use sleep/hibernate. So, I attempted to remote to my PC via TeamViewer from work (long story, but I need software on my PC to do work), and it said it was offline. Upon examination, the PC was completely locked up, no response from mouse or keyboard. Forcing it off by holding the power button, then restarting it, was the start point of this. It never came back, so I had to scramble to get a boot drive set up again.

Oh, not really related to the board, but where do I pull my Windows license key from? Since I have access to the OS files on that drive, I wanted to make sure I find and jot down that activation key (I had to get another to get my PC up and running again).

 

[Brado78]

Even though Over provisioning is more about, endurance,performance and efficiency of the SSD. It won't protect it from Corrupted Sectors or bad partitions. I still think your Kingston is ok, I have one in old Lenovo T410 laptop and that little sucker puurs ,I would put it back in the pc and get a windows repair disk and access the "repair start up" feature and give that a try. Also what you could do is copy all of the files off of the kingston, reformat it and try again.

 

[Brado78]

Go on Ebay for SSD's I got my 240gb Ultra II for 100 dollars, free shipping, Canadian , it will be cheaper US

 

[Lil Frier]

I considered doing that with the Kingston, wiping and reusing it. However, I have little desire to put up with this again, if it happens again. I was down to about 15 GB of storage on the SSD, so going up from 120 GB to 250-512 GB (depending on type) just seems like the way to go. I was going to do it SOMETIME, and this served as a bit of a pants kicking.

Is overpartitioning still a thing with new drives? I figured they'd start to figure it out themselves better and not need it as the tech progressed. I'm wondering if that belief has led to any improvements.

 

[pitz]

Overpartitioning? Not only is that unnecessary, but it might actually be more harmful than good. After all, the SSD and the filesystem should work to spread the load on the drive out as much as possible. If you start imposing artificial limitations on "the system", efficiency is most likely to be less.

Just don't fill your SSDs past 90% consistently, and you'll be fine. And make sure the overall setup supports TRIM.

 

[JimmiG]

The SSD controller and NAND are unaware of the file system and partition layout, so over-partitioning won't do much harm. Keep in mind that NTFS works best with some free space on the partition though - so it's better to have a partition that's 80% full than to restrict it to use 80% of the drive while being 100% full.
Unless you do extremely write-intensive tasks on the computer, it's mostly a waste of time

 

[Lil Frier]

Thanks, I did some additional reading after this. I'll have to make sure TRIM is up and going on my next SSD, then it should be fine. I never got the SSD over 85% full, so I shouldn't be too worried, especially if I was living on 80 GB of storage and will go from a 120-GB to a 256-GB or 512-GB drive. I don't do media storage on it, I've got a new, 3-TB drive for that. It'll hold the OS, heavily used programs (music and video players, browser, all light stuff), and maybe 1-2 games.

Thanks for the help, now just have to pick a drive. I was disappointed to see Newegg's sale on the 850 Pro 512 end a day earlier than they said. It was under $200, now it's up to about $220 again (after sitting $250 yesterday). It's probably that or the 256-GB version for $120. The Ultra IIs just didn't seem to match Samsung in performance ratings Anandtech ran, and spending a few bucks isn't a big deal...it's the $100 in picking capacity that'll matter. Maybe eBay will have someone like Best Buy selling them cheaper (as Best Buy and Newegg have often had special sales on stuff through eBay).