So I've been updating something on linux and suddenly everything froze, I had to reset. Then it didn't boot, I checked the BIOS and saw that my SSD is not there. I tried it with the cables from my HDD (which works fine), maybe it's something with the cable or what not but no, it's dead. I had my file system go away before and had bad sectors on my HDD but I never had it die on me like this. So anybody an idea what happened here? It was about 3 years old, 120gig OCZ Vertex. On average the PC was on at least 8 hours every day. I dont know how long these things are supposed to last. Could it be the updates I was installing? Some of them were system files. And also: could you recommend me an SSD now?:) It has to be around 120 gig, SATA3, it doesn't need to be fast just a reliable SSD. Is Kingston or Samsung any good? Thanks!

Samsung 850 250 GB are great and reasonably priced.

This is old and SSD are getting better. But it's worth knowing SSDs die. A lot. Particularly within the first 2-3 years.

OCZ Vertex was the one with a firmware update that enabled higher performance at the cost of randomly busting the drive permanently. I hope you were not running on that firmware version.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Hardware fails. Sometimes it fails early.

It serves as a reminder to the very important 3-2-1 rule of data. Always sure you have a minimum of: 3 copies, 2 media types, 1 off site. For me and many others, that means a local disk, a NAS disk, and an online backup service. As a recommendation for backup, I use FastGlacier with the data stored on Amazon for a few bucks a month, cheaper than any other service I've found and no pesky AUP violations when their 'unlimited' plan really means 'under 10 GB of user data'.

Most of my SSDs are Samsung, though my first was a 256GB Crucial MX which I believe is old enough that it's only SATA II, and its still going strong. I've also got a Crucial mSATA 128GB SSD that's also been fine. I prefer the Samsung drives now for their consistent high performance, and among those I prefer the PROs rather than EVOs for my boot drive -- since they use higher-quality flash and hence have a longer warranty (I care less about cashing in the warranty some day than I do about it being a statement of Samsung's own confidence in these drives). Never had any problems whatsoever with any of these.

That said, for certain manufacturers and especially in earlier days, the failure mode of SSDs seemed to be a propensity for sudden, total failure. Of course, spinning disks can fail hard too, and newer quality SSDs have this problem less and less, but that's always stuck with me, so I have a mirrored RAID volume in my desktop where my important work is. Currently that's a pair of 750GB laptop hard drives. I also have a home NAS running Windows Storage Spaces with 4 drives providing unmirrored (POD), mirrored (RAID 1), and parity (RAID 5) volumes (I use different ones depending on the resiliency I want for the data), and most of my irrecoverable work is also in GIT somewhere online (though, I do need to create a more thorough, less ad-hoc online backup plan).

I personally would avoid anything based on a Sandforce controller, or on bargain-basement controllers. Sandforce was impressive when they regularly outperformed all but the most expensive competitors, but they don't stand out so much these days and the hoops they jumped through to get there is just one more thing that could go wrong. The cheaper controllers often have inconsistent performance, don't do TRIM well, lack encryption, etc. I know the lower price is appealing (in fact, in my new build next year I'll be using large Samsung EVOs for my local RAID, rather than spinners) but for your primary or boot disk I just don't think the saving a few 10s of dollars on a $100+ product is a smart move. Swallow the extra cost and consider it as a one-time insurance premium.

Thanks! It's indeed a reminder for backing up stuff more often since I lost a few days of work.

"OCZ Vertex was the one with a firmware update that enabled higher performance at the cost of randomly busting the drive permanently. I hope you were not running on that firmware version."

Probably not, I didn't install any update on it. Now that I'm reading into it they don't handle power loss very well and recently I had a lot of crashes where I had to reset the machine. ...I don't know but I guess it doesnt matter now.

Money-wise it came at the worst time, I want to update my PC - new HDD, more RAM and a few small things - and this "update" was totally not planned. I have to go with something cheap. Im looking at the 120gig Intel 535 now. It comes with 5 years warranty which sounds OK but I can't really find any reviews on it.

Have you tried plugging it on another pc as a secondary disk or something like that? Just to see if it at least gets recognized?

Anyway...I had a very similar problem with an OCZ Vector 256GB. It all started with a freeze like the one you described, then the disk was nowhere to be found after 1 or 2 minutes upon booting. After contacting their support, they suggested I would create a bootable media of their OCZ ssd guru toolkit and boot in it. Suprisingly, it worked! I was able to see the ssd without it disappearing.

Well, I couldn't save any data, but it managed to save the disk so I was happy with the outcome. I performed a firmware update, a secure erase of the disk (so it goes back to its factory default state), and then clean installed everything from scratch. This happened like, 4 months ago, and I haven't seen any signs of malfunction since. I have this ssd for a total of 3 years now and that was its only problem, so as far as market recommendations go, I would easily buy an OCZ disk again.

I definitely recommend contacting their support and posting on their forum, you have nothing to lose. They are fast, friendly, and did the job for my case. I hope you can save your disk as well.

Have you tried plugging it on another pc as a secondary disk or something like that? Just to see if it at least gets recognized?

Anyway...I had a very similar problem with an OCZ Vector 256GB. It all started with a freeze like the one you described, then the disk was nowhere to be found after 1 or 2 minutes upon booting. After contacting their support, they suggested I would create a bootable media of their OCZ ssd guru toolkit and boot in it. Suprisingly, it worked! I was able to see the ssd without it disappearing.

Well, I couldn't save any data, but it managed to save the disk so I was happy with the outcome. I performed a firmware update, a secure erase of the disk (so it goes back to its factory default state), and then clean installed everything from scratch. This happened like, 4 months ago, and I haven't seen any signs of malfunction since. I have this ssd for a total of 3 years now and that was its only problem, so as far as market recommendations go, I would easily buy an OCZ disk again.

I definitely recommend contacting their support and posting on their forum, you have nothing to lose. They are fast, friendly, and did the job for my case. I hope you can save your disk as well.

Thanks! I've tried to boot with it but it can't find the SSD. I tried the same on an older laptop, nothing. On my PC I took the battery out from the motherboard for a few hours as to reset the bios but same thing, it's not seen. I will try it on an other PC soon, if still nothing then I will post to their forum maybe they know a magic trick but probably not:)

I wouldn't say 3 years is the "normal" lifetime for recent SSD's

My ssd's have all died within a year or 2, except the newest ones I got have lasted 2 years so far (woo progress!).

Remember back in the day IDE hard drives used to fail just as often (A computer store near me sold 512 mb drives for $5 as-is. some even worked!)

Hopefully the same trend follows and we get blazing fast ssd drives that are reliable.