SSD losing connection

I built my system at the end of Nov 2011 and it has been running fine. The stats are in my signature. Last week the computer froze in the middle of something (can't remember what) and I had to do a hard shutdown. On powering up it did not find the SSD which is connected with a SATA cable to a SATA port. Did another hard shutdown and it came up fine this time. Two days ago it happened again while I was in a Word document. I did a hard shutdown and about 5 restarts before I gave up and cracked the case.

I checked the connections, cleaned out the dust and when I put the case back together still nothing. I then went into the BIOS and changed the time it has to look for drives and that seemed to solve it. After that I tried SSDfree which gave me no useful information for this case. I checked the MB BIOS updates but the only one I don't have has to do with USB3.0 connections. The SSD had no new firmware update.

Now this lasted over a year on the lower setting I had for the search for attached drives. I never had any freezing problem before this. I did not change ports because frankly the build is pretty tight around the video card and didn't want to take the card out.

Any one have ideas if it the SSD, motherboard, or SATA cable?

Other thoughts?
 
some old drives and ssd had power on bugs/firmware issues. where ssd got to a set number of hours on and would then brick. i would use hd tune see if there any smart warnings and see what controller on that ssd and see if there other 3 party software you can use. if it not a bios bug it may be that the ssd need a clean errase..may be there a bad spot on the ssd. ssd have set number of writes and your drive may have worn out a spot.