SSD Hiccup?

[d4m1r]

Hey guys, something very weird happened yesterday....I have a 128GB Crucial M4 first off and was booted into Windows 7 when all of a sudden my MBP just shutoff with no warning or errors 😕 Like not restart, but just cold shutdown.

Thought that was weird but ok.....Tried to boot it back up, and it wouldn't after 2-3 restarts. I would only get a blinking file folder icon, which I guess indicates no file system found? All the while, I could hear my SSD trying to boot up but not being able to. After 5-10 minutes, while I was panicking searching for a solution on my iPhone, my MBP just randomly booted back up 😱

Now, everything seems normal, SSD sounds and boots up normally, no SMART or other errors, etc....Nothing. Has this happened to anyone else before? Should I be worried and what could have caused this? Just in case I made a backup of my files but I don't know if I should now pre-emptively replace the SSD before/if it is gonna crash again....

 

[neilmacd]

You can 'hear' your SSD??

 

[Weaselboy]

Now, everything seems normal, SSD sounds and boots up normally, no SMART or other errors, etc....Nothing. Has this happened to anyone else before? Should I be worried and what could have caused this? Just in case I made a backup of my files but I don't know if I should now pre-emptively replace the SSD before/if it is gonna crash again....

Yes you should be worried. It sounds like your SSD is failing and should be replaced.

 

[alex0002]

Check the firmware version of your M4, as the very early ones had a bug where after a certain number of total power on hours - approx 5000 hours - the ssd resets and you get a reboot/crash every hour. The firmware revision 0009 and older had this problem, but it was corrected in 0309, 000F and later revisions.

If this happens again, even if you have a newer firmware, just let it sit there with power on. e.g. boot with the option key pressed, but don't select a drive. The M4 does garbage collection at idle (powered on but no reads/writes). Sometimes that will help.

 

[d4m1r]

Well, I have good news 🙂

I didn't think updated to the latest firmware would completely fix the issue (thought it was hardware related) but it did! Since updating, this hasn't repeated itself onces and as soon as I turn on my MBP, my SSD boots up instantly everytime and finds all my OS's.

I thought for sure it was dead because that is exactly how my previous OCZ Vertex 2 died....Restarted the thing 4-5 times in a short time span and it just didn't spin up the 6-7th time...Restarts are hard on SSDs appearently for some reason....

 

[simonsi]

Did you work out what you were hearing as the SSD booting? They should be silent....

 

[d4m1r]

Did you work out what you were hearing as the SSD booting? They should be silent....

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example. I heard nothing (it was completely silent) when it didn't want to boot.

Now it boots up normally everytime and it sounds normal too 🙂

 

[T5BRICK]

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example. I heard nothing (it was completely silent) when it didn't want to boot.

I guess it is possible that I'm just not hearing it, btu I've never heard my 256GB Crucial M4 or my 256GB Samsung 830 make a peep.

 

[leman]

SSDs are mostly silent, but it is normal to still hear them a tiny bit. They should make an electrical sound which they are booting up for example.

I can confirm this — the Vertex2 in my old MBP was also sometimes producing a quiet electric whine.

 

[simonsi]

I've never heard my Crucial M500 but I suspect a) there are other noises coming from the MBP and b) it may be outside my frequency range.... 🙂