Cant initialise Sandisk SSD?

Akagi

Akagi

Akagi

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jul 2011
Posts
37,049
Location
In acme's chair.
Hi guys, so I recently bought a 120GB Sandisk Extreme SSD, and I can't seem to initialise it. It shows up in the BIOS just fine, and it shows up in device manager as uninitialised disk space, but it won't let me initialise it so that I can assign it a drive letter and format it. :(

Looking in SanDisk SSD dashboard, it looks like it may be because the drive has "ATA Secure enabled in BIOS", and the SanDisk software won't let me erase the SSD or anything because of this.

Can anyone shed some light on this please?

Some screenshots below in spoiler tags:

0ZP7oHD.png

GaX4RAL.png

MpiIlCm.png

TAzy2vk.png

mwdaxsM.png
 
bledd. said:
Did you buy it new?
Checked the BIOS?
Click to expand...

No I didn't buy it new, I bought it from the MM. The seller is happy to re-fund me if it turns out to be faulty, so that isn't an issue. :)

I am just confused because he provided screenshots showing that it was in good health before he sent it. It is detected by the PC as unallocated space, the SanDisk software says the health is good and so on but it won't initialise... :(

What should I look for in the BIOS? I think I exhausted all of the menus and didn't find anything relevant.
 
Did the last owner have a password set on it?

I've never meddled with hard drive passwords before so can't advise you here.
 
No password set I've never used that in my life , all I did was a secure erase then checked the was fine then took it out.
 
Try enabling hotswap in the BIOS for the port its plugged into, its all I can think of off hand,maybe try another secure erase with parted magic
 
Hotswap is enabled, that didn't do anything. I will try partedmagic later today, thanks.
 
Partedmagic wont let me do the internal secure erase thingy, or if it is, it isn't working.

Anything else I can do with partedmagic?
 
Nope, it isn't saying that. :( It shows all those screens apart from that one, and then just flashes through to a window saying it is complete, with a start time and end time which are exactly the same.

The version of partedmagic im using is from 2013, but that shouldn't matter since that article is from 2011... :(

This damn SSD was just supposed to be a cheap and SIMPLE upgrade for my nans old PC. :(
 
Last edited:
Nope no luck, tried it in two other machines. Am currently trying another wipe method, I doubt it will work... Hah, I'm such a pessimist. Or am I perhaps a realist? :p
 
I've never known an ssd be so hard to initialise

Was it part of a raid array? Try setting ports to raid then press Ctrl and i at startup to enter raid console,then delete any array
 
I'm not sure, you'd have to ask clone. It was he whom I bought it from. :)

I'll have a look at that in a moment.
 
First things:
Have you installed the latest SATA drivers, and Intel RST tools if applicable?
I'm presuming so, and you seem to have tried Parted Magic, which *ought* to rule out this sort of issue as it's *Nix based, but you never know :)

A slightly long shot here, but try this:
Turn PC on with SSD power & data connected.
Pull SATA power followed by data.
Replug data then power.

Doing this can sometimes kick things back into life.

Other than that, I'd definitely try different SATA ports and a different PC if at all possible, as I've seen some combinations throw a wobbly.
(The most memorable was an older IBM Thinkpad and a Kingston SSD. This worked perfectly on warm boots, but froze on cold boots and had me scratching my head for days)

-Leezer-
 
Everything including SSD firmware is up to date yeah. I'll try the plug faffing after this erase has completed. :)
 
Had this myself with a S/H ssd, I had to use my linux install and dd it. Then partition it in linux first. It should then allow you to wipe it in windows and repartition/format it.

This was on a OCZ drive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom