Weird/Interesting SSD Issue

[Brovane]

A couple of days ago I had the power go out at my house. My primary computer runs a Crucial M4 SSD with 256GB as my primary boot drive with hard disks for extra storage. My computer runs on a UPS so it continued chugging along. However after about 15 mins I decided to go ahead and shutdown my system. I then also turned off my UPS after shutdown so it would stop beeping at me. About 90 mins later the power came up again. I turned back on my UPS and booted back up my system. It came up and then it gave me a error about no boot drive detected. I kind of had a WTF moment. So I went into the BIOS, it did see my hard disks fine and my DVD but no SSD. Ok I restarted a couple of times and still the same result. So I then shutdown the system and opened the case and reseated the cables for the SSD and still no SSD detected. So at this point I was like ok and I started to think about my backup/restore procedure. I found a repair disk and got my external USB drive and thought about trying to restore to one of my hard disks and see if I could just boot of that until I could recover from the SSD. I was having issues doing the recovery so I thought I would do a restart and try a different recovery disk. When I restarted it detected the SSD and I could access it fine and everything booted up. Of course I immediately created a new restore disk and also created a backup image of my C-drive.

I e-mailed crucial support and the only way they told me that SSD could have any issue was if I did sudden shutdown liked pulled the power plug. Well I know I didn't pull the power plug. I shut the system down before turning off the UPS. I am running the 010G firmware on the SSD, which seems to be the latest firmware.

What is interesting is it sounds like the issue I had was similiar to what this guy did see http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/283731-32-crucial-detected-bsod

I got this system around the end of February. I am right around 8-9 months. I leave my system on a lot which doing some rough math would put me at around 5,100 hours or so. However according to Crucial the firmware version I am on I shouldn't be affected by this bug.

Any thoughts?

 

[IctusBrucks]

I wonder if it had something to do With the response time of the backup? Not sure but I know they aren't instant. Yea your power supply has caps but maybe voltage dropped for an instant just enough to affect the ssd... Maybe it just happens to be the most voltage sensitive thing in your system?

Out of curiosity what was the ups. I could be way off here but nobody else had a better idea yet....

 

[Brovane]

I wonder if it had something to do With the response time of the backup? Not sure but I know they aren't instant. Yea your power supply has caps but maybe voltage dropped for an instant just enough to affect the ssd... Maybe it just happens to be the most voltage sensitive thing in your system?

Out of curiosity what was the ups. I could be way off here but nobody else had a better idea yet....

It was a APC 1400. It kept the computer online when the blackout happened and I only turned it off after about 20mins of run time. I then turned off the UPS at this point. I know that as they where working to restore power there was several voltage hits because my lights flickered several times before the power came on all the way. However the computer was plugged into the UPS still so I don't see how this would of affected it. Even with the UPS off it should have still offered surge protection.

 

[hhhd1]

doing a 'power cycle', should bring it back to life.

 

[Brovane]

doing a 'power cycle', should bring it back to life.

That was the thing I did about 4 times at a power cycle when I first had the issue and the BIOS wouldn't detect the SSD. It would detect the Hard disks and DVD just fine but not the SSD.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like the problem Tweakboy had with his. Perhaps, after full power loss, your computer did a double-boot, which cuts power briefly, and that "killed" the SSD.

 

[hhhd1]

try this:

power on the computer, leave it at bios, while having all power to any extra harddisks/optical-disks disconnected.

Do the power cycle by connecting the power connector to the SSD and removing it, instead of by full system power-on/off.

 

[LoveMachine]

There are a few other threads regarding Crucial SSDs dying at a bit under a year, despite the supposedly fixed 5000 hour bug. It's not happening to everyone, but there does seem to be a pattern. My drive was one of them.

 

[Brovane]

try this:

power on the computer, leave it at bios, while having all power to any extra harddisks/optical-disks disconnected.

Do the power cycle by connecting the power connector to the SSD and removing it, instead of by full system power-on/off.

The computer did eventually see the SSD after troubleshooting. So right now for me it appears to be working.

Crucial recommends a power cycle procedure when the BIOS does not recognize the drive.

However I did fine this documentation online from Crucial. It it happens again I will try this. It appears they haven't fixed the 5,000+ hours issue.

1: Attach the SSD to power but do not attach the SATA cable.
2: Turn the computer on and let it sit for 30 minutes.
3: Power off
4: repeat 1-3
5: Attach the SATA cable and power on.
6: if it works you must update the microcode to 000f. There is a bug that causes random errors after 5,100ish hours of use.
7: if not call crucial and RMA your drive.

 

[Brovane]

There are a few other threads regarding Crucial SSDs dying at a bit under a year, despite the supposedly fixed 5000 hour bug. It's not happening to everyone, but there does seem to be a pattern. My drive was one of them.

Yeah that is what I am worried about that it is going to die on me. Probably right after the warranty expires.