When SSDs die?

Technology and Internet
#1

G’day,

Last year when my son got his first PC (Dell Optimax 9020 “short”), I gave him an SSD that had originally been in my dad’s iMac. It was a 480GB drive, that was installed by a Mac place in Maryborough. They’ve ripped most of the label off, so no idea what brand. It would have had very light use from 2016 until about 2021.

Well - it appears the SSD has failed. The Dell no longer sees it.

I’ve never had to perform recover on an SSD before… Is there any way to actually attempt to recover anything from them - or once they’re dead, they’re dead??

There’s nothing crucial on it - he spends his time in Steam or surfing the net mostly, and his school stuff is on his laptop instead. But it would sure be a lot easier if I can clone the drive to another one, as getting Windows set up on it was a pain in the ass…

Cheers

cosmic

#2

Depends on how its failed. But determining that isn’t easy to the best of my knowledge.
If there is nothing crucial, probably best to save yourself the time.
Only thing I would try is using a SATA to USB adapter and see if any other computer recognises it.

Luckily, SSD’s are rather cheap these days.

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#3

Yeah, I agree. Probably not worth wasting time trying to recover it. You don’t have a backup? I’ve actually never had an SSD die on me.

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#4

Considering how hard it was to get Win10 installed- should have done a back up! I’d even put another drive in for him (in lieu of the optical drive) but he just uses Steam mostly and so didn’t need a lot of storage…

I will have to find my USB dock… that was my only thought too… just gotta find the right box.

#5

I don’t really know anything about backing up windows. The only time I have ever used windows (on my own machines) is in a VM so that’s easy to backup.

#6

Ahh yes - a back up!

Now that we’ve got his PC running again, we’ll have to see if we can get anything off the old drive, and then set up the 1TB 5400rpm drive that’s been sitting inside his PC since we first set it up, but not doing anything, to be his back up drive.

But yes - I have no idea what that looks like on a PC… Will have to start researching.