Hello all,
I just experienced my first SSD failure. It is a 512GB Corsair LX series with my Win8.1 OS and a variety of games and core programs on it. The SSD and the rest of the entire system is only a couple of months old. My computer simply froze with no sign of recovering, then I force rebooted. I was prompted by my BIOS and I tried looking for a recovery option of some sort with no luck. I then tried booting a couple more times and after the 3rd try it booted with no problems.
What happened? How can I prevent this from happening? I had already planned on getting another matching SSD to put in RAID for maximum reliability, but the build left me a bit short on money and I intended to get the second SSD later. Now this seems like a more important issue. What can I do to ensure nothing like this happens again?
I think I have AHCI enabled but I've never heard of TRIM. After a little more digging I have also found a redirect virus on my PC called adverttraff and I just can't find a way to kill it. The computer consistently crashes after about a half hour or so, HDD light solid on. I've been able to boot it again after a couple tries each time. I have a hunch that this redirect virus is the cause.
I'll try a few more anti-malware programs but yeah I was really hoping I wouldn't have to re-install. The LX series has a 3 year warranty, so yeah I may take advantage of that if nothing else works. Thanks!
Have you experienced any power outages? I had my SSD not boot after a power outage. It turns out some SSDs can go into a power idle or lock state. I fixed this by turning my PC COMPLETELY OFF. Off then no power cable into PSU and PSU turned off then I made sure no power was in the capacitors by holding the power button. I don't think the SSD is failing. Also for the virus you must destroy it manually instead of re-installing. Use System Internals and watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuy_Pm3KaV8
If you watch the hole video you should be able to remove it.
If you need anymore help don't hesitate to ask.
I haven't seen any power outages happen from this PC yet, but it may be worth noting that the building is very old and is not grounded. I've had the computer on for a full two days now with no issues. I found a way to disable the redirect virus, though I have no degree of confidence that it is gone from the system. I couldn't seem to find it with process manager, but in any case that problem has ceased for now. I also began getting messages from Windows saying that my E drive is failing. The E drive is a 4 year old 1TB Seagate drive, however the drive has been reformatted when it went into this system and has not had any data put on it yet. If these problems resurface I will try disconnecting the drive, doing the power off method, deeper hunting with process manager etc.
Thank you very much! Whether or not Sysinternals Tools is useful to me right now I enjoyed learning about how to use it and I'm sure it will come in handy one day.
No problem, SysInternals is truly amazing. I use them every day, I even had the chance to remove a duplicating virus in a Windows 7 virtual machine, just like the one in the video.
To remove adverttraff follow these instructions.
Boot into safe mode with networking
super key + r and run intecpl.cpl
This will open internet options and you'll need to reset IE.
After this clear your browsing history and run Malwarebytes.
Sorry I had a typo run inetcpl.cpl in the run box.
Even though it seems to be gone at this point I went ahead and did that too, and it remains to be gone so... Yay!
Thanks!
The system crashed a couple times today, and my stupid ass only fully read the BIOS prompt at boot just now. It was telling me that SMART is detecting an imminent drive failure on port 1, which I assumed to be the SSD, but it turns out that the numbering on the board is a little jacked up, so the failing drive was indeed the E drive. I don't understand why the empty drive failing could be causing the issue, but I went ahead and removed the E drive so that the system doesn't have to deal with it. So far so good, but we'll see how it goes after a few days. I also realized that I have the SSD on Z97 SATA connections, but the two HDD's were on the 2 ASMedia connections. I never knew there was a difference, but I'll be moving the other HDD over to the Intel ports soon.