My SDD "might crash at any moment" - help!

Hello

My PC seems to be working fine, except that when I reboot it I am getting a dire error message on the American Megatrends AMIBIOS screen

"WARNING! Please back up your data and replace your hard disk drive."
"WARNING! Your HDD/SDD might crash at any moment."

If I press any key, it then goes into a loop with the same error message appear, UNLESS I turn the power off completely. If I do that then it boots normally.

How worried should I be?
I mean the PC itself seem to be running just fine...

J


PS Here is some more about my system

CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K Kaby Lake CPU, 4 Cores, 3.8-4.0GHz (slightly over-clocked) - SKU CM8067702868219SMotherboard: Asus PRIME Z270-A Motherboard (Rev 1.02 / "PCIEX16 2" / 32Gb/s M.2 X4 - SKU PRIME Z270-ARAM: 16GB DDR4 3000MHz Memory (2 x 8GB Sticks) - CORSAIR - SKU 16GBDDR42133MHZ2X8Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Graphics Card - SKU NVIDIAGTX10603GBDrive: 512GB Samsung SM961 M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive - SKU MZVKW512HMJP-00000 Model: MZ- VKW5120 "MSIP-REM-SEC-MZ-VKW1T00" "1644 REV 0 SM961 F/W CA7300Q 2016.10"O/S: Windows 10 Pro (x64)Power supply: Corsair RM650X 80 PLUS Gold 650W PSU - SKU CP-9020091-UKCase: Chillblast Silent Gaming PC Case - Black - SKU GMXCSSILENTCPU Cooker: Gelid Tranquillo Rev.4 CPU Cooler - SKU Tranquillo-Rev4Thermal Paste: Standard

Yes, as mentioned, save your data and also create a system image backup immediately. Even though the computer seems to be running fine, it isn't: having to turn off the power and then start up again as a habit is "pushing the button for imminent, possibly instant failure".

I noticed you have a Kaby Lake CPU. I'm not familiar on when they came out but if you bought the computer less than a year ago or the SSD is less than a year old, it might be replaceable for free.

Thanks, yes I've been backing up. And I did a Macrium Reflect copy ("image"?) of the hard disk onto an external hard disk.
The PC is still under warranty, but it would mean losing the thing for about 5 or 10 days or similar.

But is there going to be no way to repair the SSD? I do find it odd that the thing can be literally about to crumble and yet everything seems to still be working okay even if it isn't. It must have amazing built-in redundancy or error correcting something...

PS What will have caused it to start to fail? Could some sort of malware/virus cause this sort of thing.
Also if I copy my data now how likely is it that some of my data will already be corrupted?

"What will have caused it to start to fail?" I'm not really a hardware person unless what needs to be done is pretty simple. Your computer specs look overwhelming to me but maybe the issue with your particular SSD is in this benchmark report.
http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTe...MSUNG-MZVKW512
Although It reports Outstanding average bench there is Terrible consistency under varying real world conditions.

CountMike said:

S.M.A.R.T. is built in all HDDs and SSDs, the BIOS is just reading from it. If you want to make sure about HDD/SSD health, it would be better to use a program for further analysis, like Hard Disk Sentinel download ddu for instance. S.M.A.R.T. has some detailed parameters but also some estimates like for disk like left on the basis of time a disk worked. That doesn't necessarily mean that anything is wrong with it.

Those are excellent comments and recommendation.

I just noticed the AMIBIOS screen includes "Detected ATA/ATAPI devices"
--- I checked IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers in Device Manager on my computer that I use an SSD on
--- @ship69, It might also be a good idea to check your system and see if there are any warning flags

I also checked my SSD's properties and it optimizes itself automatically on a weekly basis: see if yours does the same.

For completeness...

Yes, Hard Disk Sentinel said I had "50% errors" or similar.
I have now sent the PC back to the suppliers who cloned the entire disk onto a new SSD.
Thanks for your help, folks

J

ship69 said:

For completeness...
Yes, Hard Disk Sentinel said I had "50% errors" or similar.
I have now sent the PC back to the suppliers who cloned the entire disk onto a new SSD.
Thanks for your help, folks J

Thanks for letting us know.