Crucial M4 issue.

glynf

I have a 256GB crucial M4 drive, and its acting up. Turned on the PC this morning, it was working fine. Powered it down as I was heading out, and when I came back and restarted, nothing. Went into the BIOS and the SSD was not detected, only a connected 3.5" storage HDD. Checked that AHCI mode was enabled in case this was the issue, it was.

So I removed the SSD and connected another drive with Win 7, which booted 1st try-proving the SATA & power connections were OK.

So then I put the SSD into a 2.5" external HDD enclosure, and hooked it up to a laptop. Nothing. Left the room for a bit (coffee make it all better), came back and when I unplugged the external HDD enclosure with the SSD in it, I heard the windows 8 sound you get when you unplug an external device, USB key etc.

So I plugged it back in and ta-dah-there's my SSD with all my files & OS contact.

Rang amazon for a replacement/refund, as this is my second 256GB crucial M4 drive-the first one died within 2 days of installing it back in March.


So what the hell is happening, could it be a dodgy batch of SSD's ?

Could something in my rig be causing it, something like a faulty PSU, over-voltage/current issue? I will check this later with a multimeter, but I had a 128GB M4 installed for 9/10 months before this without any issues..

Anyone else have similar?

MC_G

I had the same issue and it was flaky for a few hours while I was sh****ng myself.

I followed the power cycle procedure outlined in this post/thread here and everything has been fine for about 3 months since.

I may have read from a different or official thread on it so you're welcome to search around for other documentation, but it seemed to have solved it in my case.

The issue I had was pulling it out of the laptop and sitting through the 30 odd minutes with it plugged into a data cable in the desktop rather than the power cable before I realised it....

Hope that helps.

Monotype

I've seen this sort of thing happen loads of times - to myself and various other people. It seems to be an issue with Intel motherboards rather than any SSD manufacturers. The most common chipset seems to be H61 for it to happen with. I'd say your drive is fine in reality.

That power cycling method is interesting. I'll have to try that if I come across the problem again.

glynf

Thanks lads, will do some research later.

Just delighted my files are back, but a crashed a biometric system/database I spent the last few days working on.:( Could be worse though.