Crucial M4 not detected after BSOD

[cloaknsmoke]

I have had a 64GB Crucial M4 for about 10 months. It is on revision 0002 firmware. I have not had any problems with it at all until yesterday. I left my computer for a while and when I came back it had BSODed and was just at a blinking light that comes on after POST. I ctrlaltdel and it still stops there. The odd thing is that when it goes to detect AHCI drives, it finds all 3 of my HDDs and not my SSD, so it makes sense that it can't boot into Windows. So I shut off the power and turn it back on and it works. Come back in the morning and the same thing happened. It's like the drive suddenly no longer detected by the system after a while, but when detecting drives in BIOS it takes a long time to decide there is nothing there. I tried to update the firmware using crucial's updater, but it tells me none of my connected SSDs need to be updated. Any thought on what the problem could be? I guess it could be something else, but it really seems to be the SSD. I guess I should try other Sata ports on my motherboard. I've heard that can sometimes be a problem.

System:
CPU: Phenom II X3 stock 2.8 OC to 3.4GHz
Mobo: ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3 870
Memory: 2x2GB G.skill 667@XMP800
Graphics: XFX HD5850 stock speedss

 

[cloaknsmoke]

Ok, I have a little more information. I don't know if it's useful or not. I figured out how to replicate the problem once. I played SC2 and when it tried to autosave, the SSD's utilization as measured by Hard Disk Sentinel went up to 100% before the computer BSODed about a minute later. The autosave never completed and all the programs froze after a little while. I have since deleted all of the files SC2 used on the SSD, so it's not replicable like that any more. In retrospect, I probably should have left them to test solutions.

 

[dhvd79a]

Crucial recommends a power cycle procedure when the BIOS does not recognize the drive.

1: Attach the SSD to power but do not attach the SATA cable.
2: Turn the computer on and let it sit for 30 minutes.
3: Power off
4: repeat 1-3
5: Attach the SATA cable and power on.
6: if it works you must update the microcode to 000f. There is a bug that causes random errors after 5,100ish hours of use.
7: if not call crucial and RMA your drive.

 

[Chainzsaw]

Hello,

The latest firmware is 000f. I reccomend you update to that.

http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx

Just remember - you should back up your stuff before you do. Also use the "Manual boot file". It's an ISO - so you should be able to burn it to CD and reboot and update your SSD via CD.

So how much space do you have left anyways? You have a very smallish SSD. That might be the cause of your BSODS (not enough space).

 

[cloaknsmoke]

Ok an update. I installed Windows on a partition on one of my HDDs so I could try to isolate the problem. Sure enough, the SSD appeared when the computer booted up, but it just disappeared a moment ago after about 20 minutes of normal post windows install setup. I'll try the power cycle thing and try to update the firmware from BIOS if possible (I don't have any CDs, so hopefully I can do it from a usb drive or something). Also, space is never an issue for me. I use my SSD only for the OS and programs that benefit from its low seek time/high read rate. This mostly includes productivity programs which I don't install many of anyway besides Office. Occasionally I will put a game I am playing a lot on there then move it off to my HDD programs partition when I finish with it.

 

[cloaknsmoke]

I really should have read those notes more carefully. The power on time problem is what I was having. The drive started having issues yesterday which is right around the 5184 hour mark. It's actually about 2 days over that, but I guess the whole drive becomes unresponsive every hour thing is what was happening. I was able to use unetbootin to put the firmware updater on a usb drive, so hopefully the problem will stop now that it is updated.

 

[benk7690]

Hello,

The latest firmware is 000f. I reccomend you update to that.

http://www.crucial.com/support/firmware.aspx

Just remember - you should back up your stuff before you do. Also use the "Manual boot file". It's an ISO - so you should be able to burn it to CD and reboot and update your SSD via CD.

So how much space do you have left anyways? You have a very smallish SSD. That might be the cause of your BSODS (not enough space).

I really should have read those notes more carefully. The power on time problem is what I was having. The drive started having issues yesterday which is right around the 5184 hour mark. It's actually about 2 days over that, but I guess the whole drive becomes unresponsive every hour thing is what was happening. I was able to use unetbootin to put the firmware updater on a usb drive, so hopefully the problem will stop now that it is updated.

As the original poster never updated his status, I thought I would reply here. I had the exact same problem, and this was indeed the solution.