SSD is in "Frozen State" - can not Secure Erase??

snadge · 17 May 2013 at 21:34

I have a Samsung 840 120Gb - I have secured erased it before.. I loaded windows from my HDD so I could do it from windows, when I opened Samsung Magician (stupid name for useless program) it said there were a firmware update so I updated it, rebooted etc - now I went to secure erase as I want too completely reinstall windows due to issues and I can not as it says "drive is in a frozen state" - ive done it before from this HDD so it seems the update has screwed it or changed it...the drive still functions, just cannot be secured erase

heres what ive tried:

1) unpluggin the Sata cable (as per its instructions) = no joy.

2) unpluggin the Sata cable, turning on, loading windows THEN pluggin it in = nothing happens, no drive appears, there appears to be no "hot swap" options in the BIOS of my Gigabyte H77M-D3H motherboard.

3) killing power to the PC and rebooting = no joy.

4) created a USB version to run at boot = mixed results, it said the same thing "drive is frozen - unplug sata cable for 2 seconds then plug back in" and run it by typing seguio.exe - so I did that but typing the instruction done nothing, so I reboot and this time it went further to erase it but it stopped saying FATAL ERROR!! - so I reboot and tried again and it said the drive was frozen again!!

this has to be the stupidest thing ive experienced, I can not "UNFREEZE" the drive following samsungs instructions, ive read that freezing the drive is done by the OS at boot, so how is it detected as frozen without the OS running??? I just dont understand it - this only happened after updating to latest firmware!!! - so now I can not do a clean install!!

can anyone help with this please?

thanks

snadge · 17 May 2013 at 23:03

it states "remove the sata cable" - not the power sata cable - I have had the power off too the computer and cable removed to simulate that anyway and also had it out of the machine and its still the same.

I have re tried the USB option and it keeps saying its frozen, even when I remove sata cable then pop it back in and restart the program (as per instructions)

snadge · 17 May 2013 at 23:12

sorted... my bad! it DID say Power Cable...!!! I done just that and it worked, seems this must unlock the drive for a few seconds allowing the secure erase to work... i say this because ive had power off, drive out and everything..

anyway thanks a lot guys!

snadge · 17 May 2013 at 23:18

yes.. in haste to get things done quick i "speed read" it and missed the word "power" right next to SATA lol... ive been struggling for 3 hours with it hehe, now i can reinstall windows, this time I will be making weekly full backups with Acronis 2013 as something caused a few crashes on comp and its never been the same since and few odd things going on so just gunna reinstall and be more vigilant with backups - I thought system restore would do but it seems to have made the problem worse

anyway thanks again guys

snadge · 17 May 2013 at 23:25

@ Dervious - hehe , yes, it reminds me of the time I had a leaky valve on new radiator and valves I installed and tried everything to stop it... it drove me up the wall and lost my temper many times.. turned out the valve was damaged from when i tightened it on with a radiator spanner thinking I would just "nip" it up and not harm them chrome...but it was softer than I thought and it created to little valleys where the water was getting out, i fixed it by putting ample PTFE tape on the olive and some special valve sealing string (that was akin to dental floss) on the threads... worked a charm! hehe

learn lessons every day i suppose

snadge · 18 May 2013 at 02:18

i know and I aint got the best temperament either... I should walk away but it nags at me so i prefer to finish it - obviously sometimes you cant lol

anyway, thanks again... busy install windows updates now

snadge · 18 May 2013 at 14:12

@ phil2008 - I have run Magician from within windows which is running of an HDD, it becomes an unregistered drive, windows picks it up and says it needs to have one of two things assigned to it, cant remember what, just choose the recommended one then it turns up in disk management as unallocated and you can set it up, but i just reboot and started windows install...it picked it up as unallocated and i just clicked NEXT and let it set it up rather than me create partitions etc..

@ dervious - Iam finished almost, i am busy putting floorboards down today so wont get it done till later, i have flash, java and updates installed, i will now make a backup later then continue as you say making regular backups, then once done I will make weekly full backups, only takes 5-10 minutes on this computer