Hello Forum, I had used a Patriot Pyro 120gb SSD for a bit over a year or so and all of a sudden my pc failed to boot.

I used it as a multi-boot drive for Win 7 & 8 alone with a another 120gb Samsung SSD. I got these things just when they were getting out on the local market with the pyro costing somewhere around $300.00 for a 120gb at the time.

Anyhow, just wanted to know if anyone else experienced any SSD failures, particularly Patriot products or failures right near 1 year?

In addition, what could cause SSDs to just Die out in short span of time?

Thanks for any info on this matter.

PS. To be a bit more clear on my topic.. When I say Failed to yield Anything, I mean the drive is not even detected on any pc or tester I have. Thx.

Not detected and chipset is SF-2281 – failure is probably a bad NAND that halts the drives internal OS.

_________________
Digitalsupport Data Recovery
https://digitalsupport.dk

I would agree with the previous post, but would say that as well as that, often there is a simple failure of a component such as a capacitor, fuse, power IC or resistor.

As there doesn't appear to be much evidence of tools and engineers knowing anything about SandForce based firmware issues, or being able to recover by removing NANDs and reading them isn't possible due to encryption, most is speculation when a physical fault hasn't been diagnosed. Diagnosing these faults is possible, but very rare as the depth of knowledge of the actual electronics of the system is quite slim, and if the customer doesn't agree to a price worthwhile to go down that path, often the jobs don't even start.

If you want to start diagnosing electronic issue (which may or may not be the case) start by posting a picture of both sides of the PCB. Do a search for a similar thread to see how investigation of this might happen. It doesn't need to be a same SSD just to get an idea of how this journey might take place.

easiest first steps is use a multimeter to check components like resistors marked with "0" or "000" for open circuit, capacitors that have a short or look under microscope for any obvious "blown" components.

\Trying to identify a CAUSE would be a complete waste of time, unless something simple like a bad power supply was evident.

Thanks for the info.. Thank Goodness I did a small backup of a few files a few weeks before this happened.

I actually had more trust on these SSDs than my older disk drives. The worst length of failure I had with the older disk drives was at least a bit over 1.5 years.

Anyhow, I will check my warranty, I believe it is 3 yrs, not sure.

Thanks.

Sounds like data isn't critical, and good that you backed some up. I'd like to comment on the last post a little, even though your post gives me the feeling you are pretty competent user, it may help some other people to shift their focus on searching around for a drive that should last and shouldn't fail.. based on flimsy ideals.

I understand the feeling of trust, and why some people will think a certain drive is better than another in some way. The reference to the Backblaze test that precedes a lot of posts is an example. But the absolute best idea is to not trust ANY drive. For the record, backblaze doesn't either, they often seem to play around with drives just to see how they go.. they also have failures of the drives that are the "winners" too.

If you structure your backups so that any failure of a drive won't be a major headache, then you have peace of mind. I know this gets said a lot. but I would like to break it down a little more and explain why this is not just a random comment, or just a thing that everyone says.

If you buy a drive in the view that you have done your research, and talked to people and chosen a good drive.. you still really are in a position where you don't really know the outcome of a failure. If you live by the knowledge that drives die, in many different circumstances, then you are in a "Known State".

There are things that can affect the best drive on the planet:

lightning
spill drink on your computer
power surge
bad power supply in computer
failing components somewhere in the system
cat pee-ing on your computer
theft of computer
crypto malware
some kind of user error or accidental format, partition etc.


Remember that when you think about the hard disk, you really have to take into account more than just the disk. Also, what you are putting it in, what power you are supplying it with, what the OS is doing to the disk, environment(hot, dusty, static electricity, humidity, physical strains such as in a laptop moving around).

Case in point: TLC NAND chips are not perfect. it is actually impossible to manufacture these without errors. So the manufacturers build in systems like sophisticated Maths - ECC for correcting errors.. Marking columns in the chip as bad, don't use them.. cutting part of the data areas off from use, special read retries to get the data in a kind of best guess system. It is like we know that 1 + 2 = 3. any one of those numbers can be lost and we know how to recreate that statement.

If you plan for failure, you are actually better off than the guy that paid $900 for an enterprise hard drive but has no failure plan.

One thing this post had me thinking about is where are the good solid tutorials or information sites that allow a regular person to follow a set of guidelines for a backup strategy? I would love to be able to link to something to show that backing up in such a way that your hard drive choice is flexible is not out of reach. It is easy for some of us more involved in technology to think of how to do it, but the regular person is just as likely to click on a crypto-malware link as they are searching for a backup solution than be able to get it right, alone, without some major effort.

The newer stuff that's coming out with TLC NAND, things like 8 layer 128GB chips, encryption and the like makes me worried for peoples data.

That is Great Info HaQue..

Yes, I will normally backup data that Is important or tedious to re-generate, especially data that could possibly be lost forever.

With this stated, your reply makes perfect sense with the idea that users should always take out a bit of time to do necessary backups especially with memory being at a cost that is crazy low at this time.

You are so right, I think I put a bit too much trust in the new SSD technology, and with that said, I truly havnt done any in-depth research on SSDs. But, as you mentioned, it really doesnt matter, any drive can die out on you at any given moment, just be prepared.

Thanks for the informal reply, makes much sense.

"...One thing this post had me thinking about is where are the good solid tutorials or information sites that allow a regular person to follow a set of guidelines for a backup strategy? I would love to be able to link to something to show that backing up in such a way that your hard drive choice is flexible is not out of reach..."
HaQue, earlier post

HaQue, because my college cafe has nothing to sell, may I invite you to go to:
college cafe @ yuku -- school isp blocks all such forums, so I can't hotlink except from home.
In Computer Technologies, I have a thread: Backup & Restore...
Now, yes, you will find my thread opener appearing very complicated!
I'm hoping you can help stream-line it in a post for the average one-computer person

_________________
"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin revisited