SSD randomly not booting

BradHP

A few weeks ago, my system wouldn't start to Windows, just went to the BIOS screen. The boot drive SSD (Inland Professional 1TB 3D QLC NAND PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD) didn't show up in BIOS. I opened things up, took out the SSD and put it back in and then it showed up and everything booted. My cat had started a bad habit of jumping on the case and sitting over the fans, so I thought maybe he had knocked something loose.

It was fine again until today. Did the same thing, took the drive out and reinstalled, but then it started loading Windows and went to a blue screen. It restarted, then went back to the BIOS again and showed the same thing where the drive wasn't listed. I shut down, and let it sit a while I looked for my Windows installer USB, planning to install Windows on my 2nd storage SSD to be able to get in the system.

I decided to try starting it up again after a few minutes, and it cycled maybe 2-3 times where it gave I think one long beep (which I think indicates a memory issue?), then it went to a normal startup and everything was fine again.

Does it sound like this drive is dying on me? It's less than a year old, bought from Micro Center and installed in a new build in September 2020.

Ian

Greetings, it is a possibility that is occurring, and if it is, it would be under warranty.

I would test the drive out to get some more info on what's going on, here is a guide on how to do that:

https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/

BradHP

Ian

What brand / model of motherboard do you have?

BradHP

It's the ASUS Tuf Gaming B550 Plus. BIOS and all drivers are up to date.

Rest of the specs are Ryzen 7 3700x, 32 GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 3200, EVGA RTX 3070. Other drive is an ADATA Swordfish.

Ian

Is there another m.2 slot you can test the drive in and see if the same issues occur?

tc0566

Crystal disk info never shows failures on Inland drives and any software that attempts to test the drive will cause a BSOD.

Quietman

Old post, but putting this here in case someone else runs into this issue.

A known cause of this with NVMe drives resides in the BIOS settings. Doesn't show up all the time, as it depends on the combination of MB and SSD. Common symptoms are the NVMe drive not showing up and the system not booting.

Here's what I had to do with my Asrock Tai ch. Go into the BIOS. For the slot with the NVMe drive you will often have a choice of Auto, PCIe (or NVMe), and SATA. Default is Auto. Change it to whatever the option is for an NVMe drive (PCIe on my MB, NVMe on others). This will eliminate the issue providing there is nothing wrong with the drive.

For some reason the BIOS will on occasion pick the wrong type of drive interface when in Auto. The fact the poster removed the drive, reinserted it and the BIOS recognized it makes me think this is a possible cause.