SSD won't boot, flashing folder

[Blinny83]

Installed a Crucial SSD as a second hard drive in my 2011 21.5" iMac a few months ago using the OWC kit. It's been working fine up until a week ago. Started getting the error that I had "disconnected a disk without ejecting" when waking from sleep. Random beach balls and unresponsive.

Well today it crashed and wouldn't restart, so I forced it by long pressing the sleep button. When it restarted I got the flashing question mark folder. Tried to run the recovery partition, same flashing folder.

Ended up restoring a time machine backup to the original hdd and formatting the ssd. My question is this, before I go tearing the thing apart again, is it possible that my ssd came unseated, or that I have a bad cable? Or is the SSD shot? Is there a way I can tell without opening the iMac again? Thanks.

 

[billib]

? and System Won't Boot

I assume a Folder with a "?" appeared
instead of your Mac Booting. The Question
Mark on a Folder usually means that your
Operating System couldn't be found so your
Logic Board couldn't load it. I had the "?"
on Boot in the past and it was my Logic
Board failing. It may not be that in your
case though. It could be a failing Hard Drive
or a failing System Bus. It could also be
something simple like a bad (week)
connection of the SATA Cable thats
connects to your Hard Drive.

From what you've described it sounds
like your SSD is failing or has failed.

 

[paul-n]

Your described issue sounds like a hardware failure. Can you try to boot your system with a thumbdrive or cd. Then you can check if only the OS is dead or the whole drive.