Failure may be imminent

Hi , i have win10 version 20H2 all working fine its running on Samsung SSD 860 Evo and i have 1TB hard drive. i added about six months a nvme m.2 western digital 500gb and its installed ok and i have stored stuff on it and all going ok. I never changed anything on SSD or H/D and stuff on those still working ok. My issue is when i switch PC on sometimes i get the screenshot attached. So you'll see the nvme isn't listed even though its installed and working fine. The warning message implies possible failure imminent and when i press F1 as prompted i'm unsure what to do i can't see nvme listed. What i usually do is rather than press F1 if i press CTRL ALT DEL windows then boots normally and all ok. This warning screen sometimes appears for weeks then never appears again and then after more weeks it re-appears as its done last week. Any clues what's going on and is this because the nvme just isn't recognized at start up even though as i keep saying its installed and working fine.

zepvillian, Hello and welcome to tenforums

I would download both HD Sentinel and Crystal Disk Info to check drive health.

We recommend Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect to make full backup images here.

See if WD has any tools to check the m.2 and also make sure it's seated in the socket properly and screwed in securely, if applicable.

Hi,

Thor said. "Check this Barracuda. They are unworthy".

Verify smart reports. My bios indicates which drive is failing, Not yours ?

Here's a thought. I installed my OS on a Samsung 970 Pro NVME SSD last spring. It was continually dropping its expected lifetime and by August is was about 28% left. During this time I was checking with Crystal Disk Info and Samsung Magician.
I installed HD Sentinal Pro and confirmed the lifetime was dropping. In Task Manager I noted that something was constantly writing to the SSD. Some more investigation showed that Copernic Desktop Search was writing some kind of cache file to User\AppData\Local\Temp. I changed the location of this folder temporarily to a location on a HDD. I then contacted Copernic for answers and if the default location for this file could be changed manually. Turns out they didn't have an answer either.

Later while working on other issues, Copernic couldn't find it index file, and when I manually tried to attach to it, said it was corrupt and needed to be recreated. I did so and the issue with the cache file went away. Its been several months now and the SSD lifetime has not dropped. I updated Copernic about the issue.

My suggestion is then to find out if any application is writing frequently or continuously to the SSD and find out why its doing so and go from there

IRQtheCat said:

Here's a thought. I installed my OS on a Samsung 970 Pro NVME SSD last spring. It was continually dropping its expected lifetime and by August is was about 28% left. During this time I was checking with Crystal Disk Info and Samsung Magician.
I installed HD Sentinal Pro and confirmed the lifetime was dropping. In Task Manager I noted that something was constantly writing to the SSD. Some more investigation showed that Copernic Desktop Search was writing some kind of cache file to User\AppData\Local\Temp. I changed the location of this folder temporarily to a location on a HDD. I then contacted Copernic for answers and if the default location for this file could be changed manually. Turns out they didn't have an answer either.

Later while working on other issues, Copernic couldn't find it index file, and when I manually tried to attach to it, said it was corrupt and needed to be recreated. I did so and the issue with the cache file went away. Its been several months now and the SSD lifetime has not dropped. I updated Copernic about the issue.

My suggestion is then to find out if any application is writing frequently or continuously to the SSD and find out why its doing so and go from there

@IRQtheCat
Ok... thats poor, Copernic caused massive write amplification and destroyed your drive...

spunk said:

@zepvillian, chances are great your Seagate 1TB drive is about to fail. Try to copy any files want to keep to another drive ASAP. You can run Diagnostic HDD programs to diagnose but that will just confirm the inevitable. The drive needs to be replaced.
You also don't need to download HDD Sentinel and Crystal Disk Info. You can download Disk Genius in my signature which does what both of these programs do, plus it is a Backup Program and Partition Software.
Your drive is probably too damaged to be able to make an image file of it with Macrium, besides, it is just a data drive, but you certainly should have an Image of your SSD C: drive and keep that on an external USB HDD.

I would recommend using either Crystal Disk Info or HD Sentinel to continuously monitor drive health and temperature in the system tray - I have CDI run at startup in resident mode - don't want any drive failure surprises. Not sure if Disk Genius has that option.

I use Macrium Reflect (like most people here) and MiniTool Partition Wizard too, so don't need all those features in one app, in my case.