Crucial MX500 1TB SSD can't be seen in BIOS

[eru777]

Hello everyone, is there a way to fix this 1TB drive by myself? I may have a multimeter somewhere, and I can buy a soldering iron. What advice do you have for me? Complete beginner, never soldered before.
Do you see anything wrong with it?

[ataradov]

1. If you are just considering buying a soldering iron, there is zero chance of you fixing anything this complex.
2. You have not told what is the problem with the drive. How would we know if it is fixable even in theory?

[elektryk]

If you want to recover data, better look for a recovery service, it will be so expensive, but tools and software for data recovery are incomparably more expensive.

As you can se this SSD consist mainly of BGA chips, so you won't do too much with plain soldering iron.

[eru777]

I have in the title, the drive can't be seen suddenly.

[ataradov]

What kind of testing have you done? Are you sure it is not your motherboard, for example?

Get external USB adapter and see if it can be seen by the OS this way. If you can, get a USB power meter and check the current consumption.

[pickle9000]

What kind of testing have you done? Are you sure it is not your motherboard, for example?

Get external USB adapter and see if it can be seen by the OS this way. If you can, get a USB power meter and check the current consumption.

yup, do this

[eru777]

I have tried putting it in a USB caddy, it can be seen by the disk manager but it can't be initialised (fatal error)
I've had this for four years only.
I have also tried power cycling it. Nothing.

[ataradov]

Are the any error codes or anything like this? Why do we need to pull information from you?

I would try under Linux, it might produce better error messages. And other than this, look for some manufacturer tools. But if you want to recover the data, then professional data recovery services are a way to go. You will screw something up if you try to do that yourself, that is pretty much guaranteed.

[eru777]

There are no errors sadly, it just stopped working one week ago, and the disk doesn't look bad 
When I tried to initialise it under hard drive options, I get "the request failed due to a fatal device hardware error"
Hm, linux huh, interesting idea. Might do it with a USB stick.

[elektryk]

In such situation you can try ddrescue command on Linux (it can be live CD), and then play with disc image, messing with it directly can only make things worse.
If controller or its firmware is dead, above approach won't help you.

[fzabkar]

There are two sides to this PCB. The other side is more interesting.

https://myce.wiki/wp-content/images_reviews/reviews/Crucial_MX500_1TB/image007.jpg

If you have a multimeter (a cheapie will do), I can show you the voltage test points.

That said, the typical fault with SSDs is firmware "panic". You can confirm this by trying to get the SSD into "ROM mode". I believe that JP3 is the ROM mode shorting point, but I'm not absolutely certain.

Edit:

Can you retrieve the SMART report with CrystalDiskInfo?

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

[eru777]

Yes I have a multimeter somewhere, please show me the points.
Also, here is the other side, nothing looks broken.

I will try the linux method tomorrow.
BTW apparently the MX500 series had a firmware issue like you said, sadly I didn't know this until now. So you might be right. There are no voltage issues with my PC as I always use a UPS.

[fzabkar]

Measure the voltages at L500, L501, L502, L503. These are inductors, and are located at each side of the PCB, at the SATA end, above the NANDs and below the cutouts. You can use any screw hole as your ground reference.

[eru777]

Thanks so much everyone for your help, I will do all these things and will post here if I find a solution.
Also, to the person who asked me for crystaldisk, it doesn't see the disk at all, windows doesn't see the disk so any program won't either.

[fzabkar]

CrystalDiskInfo requests a SMART module, which is part of the firmware. That helps to narrow down the fault.

[eru777]

They don't look to be shorted. I guess I'm SOL.

[Ground_Loop]

I had the same thing happen to me.  BIOS could not see the boot drive. I found a decoupling cap shorted that was bringing down the power supply on the drive. I was able to find it because it was hot.  I replaced the cap and good as new. If you’ve never soldered and don’t have a stash of SMT caps your chances of repair, assuming that’s the problem, are slim.

[eru777]

I threw the drive in the garbage, but thanks everyone for trying to help!

[Mechatrommer]

I've had this for four years only.

coincidentally i have the same issue with my 240GB WD SSD few days ago (bought 2019, damaged 2024) while trying to restore older backup point of my Win10, it took 12 hours to restore 100GB data what the hell? when completed and reboot, BIOS reported SMART disk problem, and quickly after that, the SSD became unreadable.

I had the same thing happen to me.  BIOS could not see the boot drive. I found a decoupling cap shorted that was bringing down the power supply on the drive. I was able to find it because it was hot.  I replaced the cap and good as new.

i just checked my SSD for this using thermal camera, nothing is hot except the SanDisk IC inside is a little bit warmer at 36degC. i read about WD SSD FW issue on the other model, SanDisk affected as well (apparently WD using SanDisk IC), but not specifically my SSD model, but well, only 4 years of lifetime? WD and SanDisk is going to be my unwanted brands after this.

edit: reply to post below...

https://community.wd.com/t/wd-blue-250-gb-sa510-issues/279814?page=2

We have discovered that we have an epidemic of drive failures all WD BLUE 2.5 inch 1tb and 500gb drives. They are dropping like flies

FYI ...
Power Management ICs (PMIC):
https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=3345&p=24243#p24243

btw my WD SSD is green, not blue.. model is WDS240G2G0A. fwiw...

[fzabkar]

https://community.wd.com/t/wd-blue-250-gb-sa510-issues/279814?page=2

We have discovered that we have an epidemic of drive failures all WD BLUE 2.5 inch 1tb and 500gb drives. They are dropping like flies

FYI ...

Power Management ICs (PMIC):
https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?t=3345&p=24243#p24243

[eru777]

You can't escape it guys. It's every brand, every single brand fails. If it hasn't failed yet, it will eventually fail.
Individual experience may vary, for instance Crucial drives have failed twice for me, first time it was defective out of the box. Second time, it failed after 4 years of mild game usage.
The moral of the story is , keep important files on the cloud or on a HDD backup.