Computer Woes

[GettinBetter]

I have a gen 4 mobo, and am using a couple of 500Gb M.2 NVMe SSD's on the PCIe bus (i.e it doesn't go through the chipset).
On one I have a Windows 10 OS, and on the other Ubuntu, with RAID10 running through SATA (1T) (i.e.these do go through the chipset).

The other day whilst exploring a simple spreadsheet, it hung. with no keyboard or mouse input. Just before I rebooted what looked like either a EUFI, or a Windows repair screen came up. It was sat at 0% completed. I waited what seemed like an eternity, then my impatience got the better of me, and I restarted. I know the 'possible' consequenses of doing this and shouldn't have but.....

Now it keeps booting to EUFI, because the the M.2 drives, or more importantly the one with Windows on it isn't recognised, neither do the command prompt fixes/repairs work.

I'm assuming I've buggered the Win10 boot partition (by turning it off), and want to run a bootrec /FixBoot or FixMbr etc on a different Mobo. So I decided to take the SSD's to a computer shop. I was assuming they would just repeat the DOS fixes whilst connected to their machine, but nope, they just wanted to run their software and let it restore it to another drive.

To my amazement they didn't know how to use windows command line to get drive info....

I'll be gutted if the SSD's gone down in just over a year, I'll bloody mirror the two PCIe drives next time, and stick my Ubuntu on a third drive.

Bloody lost without a decent PC, having to use a crappy laptop for the time being.

[Howling Terror]

Check those cables, the routing and connections.

I had an issue that shared the same issues you described.
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The Harry Turner Project

[GettinBetter]

I did take them out and put them back in, but with the PCIe slots there's very little to go wrong mechanically, they have a screw at the end so you can't leave them hanging out so to speak....

I ordered one of these...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403183988713?hash=item5ddfa36fe9:g:9cgAAOSwurlhTDWY

I'll check it myself.

[stinkwheel]

A grub boot loader on a USB stick might come in handy?

https://www.supergrubdisk.org/
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Mysteriass]

I had an SSD die on me a few weeks back. I know someone else who's SSD died recently too. Maybe it's free radicals from outta space or something maaan.

The problems with my SSD started with pausing of the machine during downloads. Then I'd get random reboots during startup. After about a week of this a final complete system hang and it wouldn't boot again. I lost a lot of por... I mean...important documents.

They say the SSD has a chance to repair itself.

Turn off the computer. Take out the data cable but leave the power in. Computer back on.

Leave the SSD powered for about an hour. It'll try and unshit itself. Maybe.

If it's one of those little internal SSD's then just leave the computer in the BIOS so nothing is trying to access the drive and upsetting its self heal tools.

Power off. Get the drive back out then put the SSD into another computer as a secondary drive or put it in a USB caddy.

If it works. Try and copy as much as you can off it quick. Start with the most important stuff first because there probably isn't much time before the SSD will hang again.

If that doesn't work there's a tab on the SSD circuit board that can be shorted that will put the drive in diagnostic mode. Then the drive can be accessed by specialist software for recovery.

[stinkwheel]

I always regarded SSDs as too unreliable for longer term storage of important stuff anyway and as being effectively disposable. OS and apps on SSD with backup image on NAS, data on HDD is how I'd roll.

So with my linux system, the OS is on SSD, the home folder and everything downstream of it is on HDD. I don't actually keep a backup image of the SSD because it's easy enough to re-install the OS anyway if the drive falls over.

Maybe peoples attitudes to them has changed?
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Mysteriass]

There's usually mitigations to increase the life of an SSD. There's TRIM and alterations to the file system that can be applied by switches in the fatstab, for example: Preventing the OS writing time stamps to every file it accesses.

The other SSD killer is web pages that use the drives temporary space to run an application that constantly updates from the web. I've been looking into running the browser cache in a ramdrive to ease the SSD load. Even something like a crypto exchange can thrash the SSD by constantly reading and writing tiny chunks to it. Games will really fry an SSD.

[Easy-X]

For personal systems I always stick the OS on an SSD and all my data and the temp files on a HDD. In my experience you usually get a hint that a HDD is going down beforehand, SSDs tend to just die.
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter

[GettinBetter]

[Ayrton]

I bought 2 budget SSD's for my laptops and both died within a week of each over after 6 months. I barely used the one more than 5 times too Now I make sure to only buy from quality brands.

[Mysteriass]

[GettinBetter]

[Polarbear]

[Easy-X]

Not worth cheaping out on storage, big names only.
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter

[xX-Alex-Xx]

[UncleFester]

Some Bios allow you to select the UEFI partition and select the UEFI OS to boot from.

Presuming you've tried this?

Or

Bcdboot 'OS drive letter':\Windows
Then the usual boot rec commands.

Bcdboot is the one most folk seem to skip and its not necessarily C:\
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2017 Z1000SX

[GettinBetter]

[UncleFester]

Mmm I'd be pondering bios reset / update too and maybe try one drive at a time etc etc.

I have Nvme drives and I'd used a USB adapter to copy stuff around - worked flawlessly.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08M3JD266/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_NE6EWXTSWDP6J8E7SGAX?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
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2017 Z1000SX

[GettinBetter]

[GettinBetter]

[GettinBetter]

So, I haven't been able to access the NVMe SSD which had my OS on.

I bought another 500Gb Force MP600 NVMe Gen 4, same as the other, this time I hardware mirrored them, also as this slot isn't under the gfx card I left the original heatsink on.

The USB M2 NVMe adaptor didn't solve anything, sometimes it shows up on the system, other times it doesn't, when it does, it is totally unreachable...I have tried using the following tools:
AOMEI partition Asistant.
Cossair SSD Toolbox.
Disk Genius.
EaseUS Partition Master Suite.
DOS.
Diskpart.

Although I haven't tried to format it with these tools, so now that I've got WIN10 installed again, I might as well see if it's useable.