Nvme dead after removing heatsink!

[Guinny]

I bought a WD Black SN850 drive a few weeks back and added an Akasa stick on hetasink.
Today I rebuilt my system with a new board and removed the heatink in order to make use of the onboard heatsinks. The heatsink was really stuck on but I managed to get it off with just my fingers and no tools - after this the drive is dead and wont show up in the bios!
I tested the board and slot with an old Nvme and it works fine. I've lost some data also so absolutely gutted!
Anyone else experienced this?

 

[Guinny]

You sure you didn't pull something off the pcb on the nvme drive or bent it? Take it out and inspect again, i would lean towards bending it if it took some strength to pull the heatsink off.

I may have bent it slightly but I was as careful as possible -I wont be sticking highly adhesive heatsinks on the new one I can guarantee that!

 

[Guinny]

I have with a stick of RAM. It had tall manufacturer fitted heatsinks that would have blocked my CPU heatsink, so I tried to prise them off. I could hear the tearing noise as the BGA (Ball Grid Array) package came off with the heatsink. I wasn't too bothered as they were old 2nd hand sticks and not ones for my current PC.

I've done a similar upgrade today with my NVMe sticks and luckily one was barely stuck on with a heatpad and the other had AS5 paste on it. Phew! It's a bit painful/learning experience when it goes wrong. I know it doesn't help now, but you'll know to backup the most important stuff before you start next time.

Luckily I cloned my drive to a spare SSD about 4 days earlier so haven't lost anything important. I have new drive arriving today. Arcronis is a friend for life - should do this every week!