SSD drive prevents Windows 7 from booting

Question

An apparently random recent failure on my Samsung 870 EVO drive is so bad that it seems to be stopping my Windows 7 install from booting when it's plugged in. This drive is my backup drive so my OS drive is separate and will boot if I unplug this drive, but if plugged in, Windows hangs during boot even if I try to boot into safe mode.

I plugged it into my Linux machine and tried to run ntfsfix on it, but it just said it was corrupt and told me to run chkdsk. However if I can't even boot into Windows when the drive is connected, I can't run chkdsk on it. Is there anything I can do? It's very annoying as the drive isn't that old and was quite expensive.

I only have Windows 7 on my PC with a SATA connector. I have Windows 10 on a laptop but I guess I can't use that because there's no SATA connector.

Answer 1

Windows is terrible at handling drives with unreadable sectors in file system meta data as it will try reading this sector Ad infinitum, where Linux does not. And Windows will try reading all drives and, if it's a recognizable file system, interpret the file system.

Here I capture what Windows does as soon as it discovers a drive (clearer video here):

If at any point it runs into a read error it will just keep trying. If this happens during boot the system will appear to be hanging. If you attach the drive while Windows is already running it may hang Explorer or even lock up the system. You may be able to prevent the latter by disabling auto-mount:

Type mountvol /n into an elevated command prompt and press Enter. You can then try imaging the drive, for example using DMDE free demo will do).

Easiest way is to using Linux. Since the file system is corrupt, and assuming you want attempt to recover the data from the drive, you can clone/image the drive in Linux. Tools that can help you accomplish this are for example ddrescue or the demo of DMDE (use Native Linux version). I tend to prefer cloning to an image file (imaging).

Once you have the image file you can use file recovery software and try recover files from the corrupt file system.

Note about failing SSD's: It is my experience what once a SSD starts failing, it tends to happen rapidly so fiddle with it as little as possible. Make all disk access count. You best first set up everything for the recovery attempt:

• a system you can boot
• a drive you can copy to
• familiarize yourself with the software you'll use to clone/image the patient

I am all for DIY, but if the drive contains important data, take it to a data recovery specialist (see https://superuser.com/a/1758901/705502).

Answer 2

First get a SATA to USB adapter like this one:

Go to a linux PC and run dd to check the whole disk (replace sda with your disk):

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=4M status=progress

If this produces an error then your disk is broken. But it only checks if all sectors are readable.

Then install Samsung SSD Magician. Check the disk for errors and perhaps install firmware updates. This should be possible even if the disk is in an USB case.

Then connect the disk to a Windows PC and check the file system for errors. Go to "My Computer > right click on the disk > properties > Tools > Error-Checking".

I think if everything succeeds the disk is OK and the error is somewhere else. It would also be possible to check if all sectors are writeable using dd.