On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 11:15:43 -0400 (EDT) "D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Two years ago one of the m.2 SATA SSDs suddenly stopped working. If I remember correctly, it didn't even show up as a disk.
Last week the same thing happened on the second notebook.
The only warning was that a few days earlier the firmware forgot what to boot. I easily fixed that by telling it again. This could easily have been a CMOS battery problem but I guess it wasn't.
The computer acted as if the drive were not there. I installed it in a different machine and it was not detected in the other machine either. The firmware ("BIOS" is not the correct term) on both machines failed to see it. A live Fedora system (booted off a USB stick) failed to see it. It's dead, Jim.
Lesson: SSDs don't give you warning about failures. Much worse (in my modest experience) than HDDs. Backup now. I'm skeptical about S.M.A.R.T. for SSDs.
Hugh, When I bought a hard drive at Best Buy, I asked about SSDs. I understand that there is a maximum number of writes you can do to them, and the number is rather small. I was buying a backup drive that runs at night while I am in bed, so I went for cheap and reliable. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca jhowardgibson@gmail.com http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson