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I recently bought a new SSD to replace the one in my laptop. I took the old SSD out and stuck it in an external enclosure, planning to use it as an external drive. When I first plugged it in to windows, it wasn't being recognised on "This PC", but I could still see it in Minitool partition manager. I tried to wipe the disk with Minitool, but it gave me some error for the 2nd partition (some system partition). I deleted the other partitions first, and then finally it allowed me to delete the 2nd partition as well. I then created a new partition in all the unallocated space and formatted it as exFAT. I don't remember if it showed up in windows file manager after that, because I put it aside once I was done.

Today I was thinking of installing linux mint to it, but when I booted into linux mint, it showed up under lsblk as sdb, but it wasn't visible with fdisk, and I couldn't see it on the file manager. I tried booting into a live Gparted usb to try to reformat it, but Gparted just gets stuck on "Searching partitions" forever. KDE partition manager on lubuntu gets stuck at 50% on "scanning device sdb". It doesn't show up on windows file manager either, and minitool partition wizard won't even start up when it is plugged in. If I have it plugged in and I select "boot from device", my computer gets stuck and won't boot.

This leads me to believe that this particular drive has somehow been altered by partition minitool in a way that is making it impossible for BIOS, Gparted, fdisk, and minitool partition wizard itself to read. Thus all these programs get stuck whenever they are initiated with this particular drive plugged in.

Is there any way I can recover the SSD or did I somehow damage the partition table irreversibly during the process of wiping it?

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    What does dmesg show in relation to this SSD? From what you've said, "the partition table" is at a separate level and not relevant to the current issue... You say "shows as sdb" and "not visibile to fdisk", which contradict each other... what do you mean and/or what error does fdisk report?
    – Attie
    Commented Nov 26, 2023 at 20:20
  • does lsblk show its expected capacity?
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Nov 26, 2023 at 20:21
  • Apologies, I'm not very familiar with how drives work. Lsblk shows sdb and labelled with the correct capacity. Fdisk -l lists every other drive except sdb, then the function keeps running with no other output - presumably it is trying to detect sdb but running into errors?
    – cobaltB12
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 13:03

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It sounds like the drive itself might be bad. I would try wiping the drive and make a new partition and see if it works. Try MiniTool Partition Wizard or Gnome Partition Editor. If this doesnt work, the drive is likely dead.

Also try the enclosure with the old drive. Does it work? If so, then the new drive is bad. Also, if possible, try the new and old drives on another computer in that enclosure. If they dont work, the enclosure might be the issue.

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    Could be a bad/poor enclosure as well.
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Nov 26, 2023 at 20:29
  • @TomYan that is true... OP would have to test with a known good drive.
    – Keltari
    Commented Nov 26, 2023 at 20:35
  • That's true... I'm hesitant to put my new working SSD into this reader though, just in case it's faulty and damaging my SSD. It was definitely working before - that was how I cloned my SSD in the first place. I've tried a new usb c to c cable, but unfortunately will probably have to buy another enclosure or try to put this SSD into another computer (and boot from a live linux usb) to test it properly. I can't start partition minitool or gparted when the drive is plugged in - there's some problem preventing it from being detected properly.
    – cobaltB12
    Commented Nov 27, 2023 at 13:09

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