SSD read in BIOS but not accessible

[noobadmin81]

We have 2 SSDs that are able to be read in BIOS but not usable at all for storage or installing OS

When using a media recovery device we are able to list the drive in diskpark. We can select it and list the volumes but any attempts to clean the disk or work on the partitions comes back as an error

For cleaning the disk the error states: A device which does not exist was specified

when listing the volumes there are 3

Vol 1 - no file system - Healthy

Vol 2 - RAW - Healthy - Hidden

Vol 3 - RAW - Healthy - Hidden

Drive is a Lexar NQ 100 x 240G

How can i go about getting this SSD usable again if possible. There is no data on the drive that needs to be recovered so data loss is not a concern.

Thanks

[peterw2300]

Try booting it up with https://gparted.org/ and formatting the drive to NTFS. Whilst there I would check the SMART values.

[noobadmin81]

GParted was able to see the SSD, however now instead of showing fs=raw the fs=ntfs. Volume 1 still showed as no\unknown file system.

When trying to remove partitions I was met with an error : Input/Output error

Warnings for Volume 1

Warnings for Volume 2 (Volume 3 displayed the same warnings)

Its telling me to run a disk check scan in windows but i cannot do that as the disk does not show in file explorer nor can i select the drive in terminal to run the scan.

@peterw2300

[peterw2300]

It will be a case of trying various possible fixes. You should be able to check the SMART values of the SSDs with gparted “smartctl -a /dev/sda” just to make sure that it is not reporting any faults. I would try ntfsfix Ubuntu Manpage: ntfsfix - fix common errors and force Windows to check NTFS . Then work my way through the ideas here: Solid state drive/Memory cell clearing - ArchWiki . I did think about using the dd command to zero out the first 200MB similarly to what you do on a USB stick that is write inhibited.

[foo]

Boot into a linux live cd, or dock them to a linux system

sudo -s
(Enter sudo password)

fdisk -l
identify the id of the disk, not the partitions, so for instance /dev/sdb will have partitions such as /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb2, etc
YOU want the device root name /dev/sdb… where b is the drive you want.

Type dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=5

where /dev/sdb is the drive you want to clean.

This will direct overwrite the first 5 MB of the drive, overkill for length really, but will totally obliterate the partition table.

The drive should now be all free nonpartitioned space and free to reconfigure however you like.

BE VERY CAREFUL to choose the correct target disk, this can cause damage to another disk of you choose the incorrect one!

[noobadmin81]

@genemoody2 ​ your suggestion worked like a charm! Very quick and simple. Thank you.