What might have happened to my Force GT 120 GB?

I purchased my new PC components in early January and everything has been working without issues until now. I was using my PC as normal on Friday, playing some games and doing some photo editing without changing or installing anything new. Anyhow i shut down my PC as normal and go to bed. Saturday morning when I start my PC i notice that it spends an unusually long time on the UEFI screen and then says that there are no bootable devices. My first thought was that my windows installation had become corrupt somehow so i insert the windows disc to reinstall. When prompted to choose where to install windows I notice that only my two Seagate 500GB HDD's are on the list. Booting back in to UEFI I notice that my SSD is not being detected at all and the settings are as they should be. I have tried resetting the the BIOS, unplugged everything, changed SATA cables and connected to different ports on the MB, disconnected the two HDD's and tried those ports that I know are working. I also inserted my SSD into my laptop but it wasn't recognized there either.

 

The drive is only about four months old and has been working fine with great speeds and no crashes BSOD's or anything of the sort. I'm really lost as to what is going on, a drive breaking during the night while the PC is powered off just doesn't make any sense. I can see a red LED through the crack where the connectors are so it's getting power but is completely dead in every other way. What's going on and is there anything i can do?

 

Any help or experience of this happening to anyone else is greatly appreciated.

 

/Chris

When I first got mine I had trouble with the SSD not being recognized. Don't know if you ASUS MB came with some SSD cables with white ends or not but mine had some.

 

You should use those cables and make sure the SSD is plugged into the Intel port #1 not the Marvell ports ( presuming your board has Marvell also as does mine - why I dunno ). I have the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe.

 

Once I got all that straightened out I haven't had that problem anymore.

 

Until I did I kept having to unplug all my drives and plug only the SSD in to get it to recognize it. It was really strange. Once recognized I could re-plug all the other drives and it was good for a few days until it went on strike again.

 

Very tempramental about which ports you use and the cables too.

 

Every so often these drives seem to have some random strange problem. I don't think they have the firmware 100% right yet.

 

I have gone to ASUS and downloaded and installed all the latest drivers they have for this board -- that seemed to help too.

It's been connected to one if the Intel SATA-6 ports all along with the white tipped cables and unfortunately swapping ports or cables doesn't help. Disconnecting all other drives makes no difference either.

 

Updating the MoBo drivers isn't an option since they would have to be installed on the SSD that has failed.

-Disconnect the power from the SSD overnight, plug it back in the morning and see if it gets detected.

Also it pretty well HAS to be connected to Intel SATA3 port #1.

 

Shouldn't make a difference but from all I've seen here and my own experience -- it does.

 

SATA ports are terrible. They are difficult to plug into securely and make them stay connected. Just the least wiggle on the cable after connecting can often break the connection even though it LOOKS like it is still plugged in good.

 

IT AIN'T.

 

Wouldn't be so bad if the cables were more flexible but for some reason they make them stiff as a 2 X 4.

 

Even the " latching" ones don't latch all that securely many times.

 

You'd think for something as important as data flow they would design connectors with some type of screw holding it firmly in place -- but no that would cost 10 cents more.