I upgraded to an nvme and decided to use Sandisk Dashboard Secure Erase on my “old” SanDisk Ultra II 960Gb SSD. The drive is out of warranty as of sometimes January 2019 and now is May 2019. The SanDisk Dashboard showed 94% of life right before Secure Erase. Secure Erase started went quite quickly and then showed a succes message then the SSD suddenly disappeared. I don’t see it in device manager, I don’t see it in disk management and I don’t see it in BIOS.
All my attempts to find it failed
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The following method: 30min on (without SATA cable), then 30sec off and then repeat, then connect - no result.
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In Linux I used fdisk, gparted and gsmartcontrol and in all cases it didn’t show up. The only thing showing up in Linux is that ata2 or ata4 or ata7 (depending on which ata controller I connected it to), showed comreste failed etc. I cannot use “hdparm” command method, to unlock a password (if ot’s there), because there is no /dev/sdX address for the drive. I’ve tried anyway, from sdb to sdg, no luck.
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The drive does not appear in Windows in any form anywhere, Diskpart within Windows doesn’t see it, but here is one Windows scenario where it does appear as a 0Mb drive - see below.
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Using Windows install media (and disconnecting nvme / or keeping it), I go into Command Prompt either under Troubleshooting or at install, when the 0Mb disk appears in the installation process (Shift + F10).
A. I go into diskpart and it shows as disk0 0mb. Select disk and clean commands are successful, but not “clean all” (or format or anything else) - if I use “clean all” it throws an error of The System Cannot Find the File Specified. Then the SSD disappears again. List volumes does not show it, as there is no volume.
B. After a restart, running CMD command “bootrec /FixMbr” shows success, but /Fixboot shows “Acces denied”. I entered Windows on my nvme and created an entry into Registry to remove the write protection. No luck.
I am out of warranty and Sandisk didn’t reply yet to my question about their software ruining the drive (warranty or not, it’s their software). A SanDisk manager did ofer a coupon, which brings their prices slightly($9) under the Microcenter price, I am find such an offer unfortunately useless.
I am curious and would like to find out:
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if anything else can be done? Perhaps in Linux?
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if SanDisk/WD takes responsibility for its software or should I address it to the consumer office in my state (in USA)?
Thanks!
