samsung 840 crapped out on me

[nubbin77]

I have a 250GB Sammy 840 as my OS drive for a little over a year now.

I was getting an endless bootup then bluescreen then it would go and make the drive look to correct errors on next bootup, and just cycle back and forth.

I figured it was just the OS that got corrupted (win 8.1).
So I got another SSD, and put windows 10 tech preview on it to see if I could recover from the 840. Within the new OS, I can see the drive (in the BIOS too) but it says its empty.

I have also tried re-installing windows 8.1 onto the hard drive but it says the drive is locked.

I guess I am just seeking advice if there is anything else I should do before I trash it or try to get warranty service on it.

I think its a little strange that the drive can be read just enough to detect the old OS on it, but not enough to actually access via a separate operating system, or reinstall anything to it, or repair it, etc. I would think it is either accessible or not. There were telltale signs for spinning drives, but this is my first SSD failure. And I guess that's my overall question, I am not 100% sure if the drive has failed or if it is something else. I tried plugging it into different SATA cables on different SATA ports in the motherboard as well, so I have ruled that out.

Any advise or just see about getting it serviced? (of course I would love to have it just work again, I wasn't planning on re-doing my fully working happy system until windows 10 was released).

 

[Maxx_Power]

Get warranty service. You paid for the warranty service as part of the overall cost of the drive. It would be wise to use it.

Actually, can you try Windows' built-in hard drive management tools under Administrative tools or using the command-line drive tools like Diskpart to make sure the drive is not dead first ? Your recovery attempt may have damaged the files and even the partition tables/etc but the drive itself could be okay still.

 

[tazeat]

Use Samsung magician to secure wipe it then do some sort of disk checking?

But I'd be tempted to just attempt to secure wipe it then send it in for a warranty. The magician tool should at least tell you if it thinks it is healthy or not.

Once it's happy just restore your last backup.

 

[nubbin77]

Thanks guys.

I will install the Samsung magician software on the new OS and run it on the drive to see what happens. Hopefully that will confirm 100% its not ok, or give me enough access that I can wipe it before sending it out for warranty service. I just hate the idea of sending the drive w/o being able to wipe it.

If nothing else I get to play with windows 10 now.