Question Previously working 2TB SSD on USB enclosure suddenly needs initialization. What to do?

[fuzzybabybunny]

I have the 2TB version of this Asgard AN3+ SSD and it is barely a month old with less than one write cycle on the drive:

Asgard 1TB AN3+ NVMe M.2 Internal 3600MB/s SSD Metalic Red - Asgard Memory

Asgard AN3+ 1TB NVMe M.2 Internal Gaming SSD Metalic Blue Experience the super speeds with one of the very best NVMe M.2 drives on the market today. The Asgard AN3+ series of NVMe is blazing fast with READ speeds exceeding 3.5Gb/s and WRITE speeds higher than 3Gb/s. Asgard NVMe AN3+ series...

asgardmemory.com

It's in a working Ugreen USB-C enclosure:

Ugreen Enclosure for M.2 PCI-E NVME SSD

UGREEN USB C 3.1 Gen 2 to M-Key M&B-Key NVMe PCIe 10Gbps External Enclosure Compatible with MacBook Pro, WD, Samsung, Toshiba, 2230/2242/2260/2280 NVMe PCIe SSD

www.ugreen.com

The drive has 1.5TB of photos and videos on it. I was midway through copying files from a memory card to the drive when things suddenly stopped responding.

- In Windows Disk Management it now says I need to initialize the disk with either MBR or GPT.

- It shows the disk as Not Initialized and the 2TB of space as Unallocated.

- I've tried the disk on a second Ugreen enclosure and it does the same thing.

----------------

- Why would this suddenly happen?

- Should I initialize with MBR or GPT?

- What are the steps I should do to safely recover all of my data? Do I need to buy a second 2TB+ drive first to recover to? Or is there a way for me to initialize the drive and have it go back to being totally normal with all my files?

- Is this AN3+ drive defective then?

 

[damian101]

Don't initialize the drive. By initializing Windows will create a new partition table which will overwrite all the partitions on the drive.
I remember being able to repair a damaged partition with DMDE, not sure. But it's definitely a great tool to get your data off a damaged partition.

 

[UsandThem]

I never heard of that brand (before now).

It sounds like you could have a defective unit. Do you have a motherboard that you could install it in to test?

But like mentioned above, if you initialize the drive, you will lost whatever is on it.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I never heard of that brand (before now).

It sounds like you could have a defective unit. Do you have a motherboard that you could install it in to test?

But like mentioned above, if you initialize the drive, you will lost whatever is on it.

Asgard is a somewhat well-known brand in China.

Unfortunately I don't have a motherboard, only a laptop, and the drive itself doesn't fit inside my laptop because it has double-sided memory chips and my laptop only has room for single-sided SSDs.

Sent from my LM-V500N using Tapatalk

 

[UsandThem]

Is whatever data is on the drive backed up someplace else?

If you can afford to lose whatever is on the drive, you can initialize the drive (I usually use GPT), and run a SSD health utility to see if the drive has issues. Even though it's in an external enclosure, CrystalDiskInfo should be able to run a quick test to if there are any obvious issues flagged.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Is whatever data is on the drive backed up someplace else?

If you can afford to lose whatever is on the drive, you can initialize the drive (I usually use GPT), and run a SSD health utility to see if the drive has issues. Even though it's in an external enclosure, CrystalDiskInfo should be able to run a quick test to if there are any obvious issues flagged.

No, it's not backed up.

I don't really understand disk initialization or partition tables. The partition table is just a bit of code that tells the OS which sectors or physical parts of the drive are in which partitions, right? My SSD was just a storage drive, so the entire thing was just one big partition.

How does corruption of this little bit of code end up making 1.5TB of data completely inaccessible?

Sent from my LM-V500N using Tapatalk

 

[UsandThem]

No, it's not backed up.

I don't really understand disk initialization or partition tables. The partition table is just a bit of code that tells the OS which sectors or physical parts of the drive are in which partitions, right? My SSD was just a storage drive, so the entire thing was just one big partition.

How does corruption of this little bit of code end up making 1.5TB of data completely inaccessible?

In simple terms, it's basically a map to everything that goes onto the disk. Windows needs it for the disk to be usable. A drive that Windows thinks has never been used (initialized/formatted) before often prompts Windows to display the message you are seeing.

If the drive is truly defective, something like bad NAND can totally hose random sectors of the drive. SSDs are complex, so the issue could very well be with other components of the drive (something like the controller).

I'm not going to lie, as far as not losing the data at this point (depending on what is wrong with the drive), is going to be tough. There are programs out there that can try to save data to another drive, but I've never really had a need to use any of them, so I can't recommend a particular one. Maybe someone else can chime in on a program they have used.

 

[Shmee]

GPT for NVMe drives, but you will need to try to recover data first. I would try another adapter, or even better, a native m.2 connection to a motherboard.

 

[mikeford]

Do you "know" if it has ever worked in the past?
When you first started using it, did you do a quick or long format?
You may need to do some sober thinking on the value of the data you have potentially lost and whether or not the cost of professional recovery services is worth it.

A quick google of asgard is not reassuring.