SSD no longer recognised - recovery software?

[gaz1]

cloning a hard drive and creating an image are 2 different things

to clone the hard drive its this one

these are old videos but the new models also have this options on it

to image your hard drive its this one

you have to remember what i do

i install the operating system and all the programs what i need on the pc first onto a brand new hard drive or a newly formatted drive makes no difference if its an old hard drive or a new sata drive or even the new faster sata drives

when its all done i then turn off the pc and reboot into aconis using the second video above this creates a tib image that image i can save anywhere on another hard drive or even a usb stick

the size is only whats on the original hard drive lets say 30gb then you will create an image of say 20-25gb

if the hard drive fails or gets a virus on it then all ive lost is some files and some new updates to that machine

as all i do is reinstall from the tib image and it creates a brand new os and program system that i saved then all i do is update to the newer software like firefox and some other programs out there

all this is done in 6 mins from ssd drive to ssd and its fast alot better than installing windows and installing your programs then updating programs which takes longer than 6 mins

if anything its saving the info from a virused hard drive that takes the longest time or going after important files to save

and thats all free from the acronis iso or usb stick image file from acronis as its all you need
or you get an iso and make it usb using ruffus

 

[prepman]

I suspected an issue with the boot area or partition table as the drive reports healthy smart values.

I downloaded Disk Drill which seemed like it might be able to deal with Linux filesystems. Initially I installed it on a little laptop, but the drive kept dropping out, felt like it was a current limiting issue on the USB port so I installed it on the computer in the garage and that worked. It took 2 hours to scan the disk. The way it presented the file structure was a bit confusing but I managed to extract all files since the 11th which was my last backup.

Luckily I didn't follow the recommendation I had seen on a website about doing a quick format, also I was running the drive from a USB adaptor which turned out the right thing to do as connected by SATA would have changed the TRIM values and maybe lost data (according to a better website I came across).

I looked up Testdisk and it seemed promising given my assessment of what the problem could be. Was fairly easy to use with the bootable USB I used to install Linux with in the first place. It fixed the partition table and I was able to boot the drive again. I then ran my backup program again to ensure I hadn't missed anything when I tried Disk Drill.

I'm getting an "environment block too small" error on boot, but when I press any key I am able to continue. I will probably reformat this disk and relegate it to temporary storage or something. As it happens I've got parts arriving at the moment to build a new PC anyway.

As a long time Linux Mint user I find the the 'Disks' prog. is usually more than adequate for most events and then (g)parted which has data recovery. I have an SSD (Micron) drive in laptop which is backed up to Raid1 server, both linux mint (UEFI).
Like you I have to be prepared for the SSD to go tits up at some point. Statistcally I believe that the mechanical drives are still more reliable? The SSD drives are basically yet another computer.

 

[Seadog]

I reformatted the SSD and installed Windows 10 just to run some particular software for a bit. It's still working fine at the moment but I back up after every little session.

The new computer is almost built at which point I'm not sure what I will do with the old SSD (I have an NVME one for the new computer).

I just back up my data as I'd rather do a fresh install of o/s and applications each time to ensure no glitches or rubbish left behind. It's quick and easy enough to do with Linux Mint anyway. Just backing up changes in data takes like 5 seconds with a USB stick anyway so I'm not put off doing it all the time. I use FreeFileSync which works equally well on Windows and Linux.

I have two SSDs mirrored through BIOS.

 

[ukracer]

I have two SSDs mirrored through BIOS.

Interesting...not sure what that actually means though.

 

[Seadog]

It means that, in theory, I don't need to back up, since there are two copies of tge system disc.
All of my other data is on my NAS.

 

[MoreWellie]

I have two SSDs mirrored through BIOS

I get why you did this but surely they will both write the same data and therefore reach their life time write limits at the same time

you do have some protection against early faiure though

 

[Seadog]

Failure rate is an average figure. The chances that two will fail at the same time is pretty remote.

 

[ukracer]

I get why you did this but surely they will both write the same data and therefore reach their life time write limits at the same time

you do have some protection against early faiure though

It means that, in theory, I don't need to back up, since there are two copies of tge system disc.
All of my other data is on my NAS.

I was not aware you could do this. Is this board specific?

 

[Ed.]

I was not aware you could do this. Is this board specific?

 

[Seadog]

I was not aware you could do this. Is this board specific?

Most likely it is.
My machine is an old HP workstation, 2011 ish.

 

[Ed.]

Never been a big fan of mirroring and the downside to mirroring is that if you get a corrupted file/disc due to a power failure, glitch, ransomware or virus you will then get that same corrupted problem on both drives, my suggestion would be to make a clone after you have installed the original software and are happy that every thing works the way it should, then afterwards isolate the second drive (clone). Should the first drive give up the ghost by either dying or being corrupted you have the second one you can boot up from. I have found that it takes much, much, longer to do a clean install with all your software that you need in case you have a dead/corrupted drive. With a checked/verified image you can get a replacement drive and clone it from the original copy. At least that way you have the original software/data all setup and tested.

I run a LTO-5 tape setup and also a hardware RAID 5 SAS setup. (4 drives plus one automatic spare). That way if one drive dies it will rebuild using the spare drive. For the Tape, I also use 2 different brands of software as you would be surprised how many times that you try and get some deleted files back and one software says "Sorry, computer says No! Despite both programs having verified the backup on completion. Backup software is notoriously unreliable. I have only been hit by one episode of ransom ware, and it only took about 20 minutes to have everything working again. A friend of mine rang me one day and said her computer had ransom ware, I asked about her spare external backup drive, however it was also connected at the same time, so big loss, only managed to recover some files

I have photos of all my kids, holiday trips etc., and if I loose them, how can you ever get them all back, sure some of the kids will have some on their computers but not all, then there all the tax receipts, share trading details I do, the list goes on and on. I probably have spent way too much money on computers, but at least I have taken what precautions I can to mitigate most of the risks. I have been into computers in before 1986 DOS 1.1 days and over this time I have found you can never have enough protection. System software and programs you can always reinstall but not Data if you don't have copies.

 

[gaz1]

like you ed i found fathing around with reinstalling all my software was a right pain to do

save info from old drive reinstall said drive again and then reinstall the programs have taken me well over into 24hrs

i found the image tib via acronis its like clone but not and that does take 6 mins to fully reinstall the hard drive back to a basic fully reinstalled operating system and then its just small updates way better than reinstalling all the software onto a new hard drive

 

[MoreWellie]

then afterwards isolate the second drive (clone)

which only protects you against failure up to the point of disconnection, granted it will allow for faster restoration of the basic system but you won't have your up to date data. An image backup would give you the same basic system restoration

Ransomware is where mirrored drives and permanently connected raid drives really fall down as everything will be encrypted

A rotating set (minimum 3 but more prefereable) of external drives with one or more always being off site is a reasonable solution as the external drives are only exposed whilst connected for the backup

A simple solution (for Windows) for copying the data from the main drives is to use Robocopy which will allow mirroring of file structures to multiple external drives and it is then easy to extract files on to different machines in the event of an issue

This doesn't backup operating system and installed programs but you have to decide whether it is data or programs that have the most importance

A dual strategy of image copies mixed with file structure copies provides most protection

Even this isn't foolproof but gives a fair amount of protection for minimal cost

 

[Ed.]

I find that the biggest problem and most time consuming I have is the re-installation of programs/OS on my system as it can take many days and then checking everything to make sure that it all works, new OS's can break older software. Because after you do a complete reinstall and update some of the out of date software you had before, check that everything works properly, then back that up takes the most time. My data drives are Isolated and all backed up on tape as well. So the usual full backup and incremental. Those are the important bits as the OS/Programs are a pain in the backside, time consuming but do-able. I just recently upgraded my old 2012 workstation to a much more modern setup, so I have huge capacity to store backups, both when doing tape and also to hard drive at the same times, but I still prefer to do those separately.

My last workstation I think had 7 PCI-E slots, this one has three so by the time you put in the graphics and the RAID card, you have one 4x PCI-E slot spare and that is to fit the supplied daughter card to hold more NVME drives, which I don't need/want, (unless the price comes down significantly) the main working NVME and its' clone have the OS and programs on it, all my data is on the RAID drives, tape and some SATA SSD drives which are in the case but not connected. So hopefully I have my system pretty well protected and this system should last me another 10 years unless there is a quantum leap in computing performance that I absolutely must have which requires a new setup but I doubt that will happen any time soon.

 

[Onoff]

I have two SSDs mirrored through BIOS.

As RAID 1?

 

[Shedendman]

Mint have a great help forum you know

 

[Kayos]

I have recently come back to Linux to resurrect some Surface Pro devices. It seems there has been an element of dumbing down, all in the name of useability I suppose?

I found it infuriating the default Grub settings made it impossible to access the Surface kernel, solved it but a newbie would likely struggle

To the Op, I would have gone straight in with DD, some linux filesystems have proven unreliable or had very odd stories behind them. ReiserFS anyone?