Is my SSD dead?

[Tiptizzle]

A couple of months ago the graphics card in my 2011 MBP died. I removed the 480GB OWC SSD I had installed in it and thought I’d be able to throw it in my 2012 Mac Mini to use and still have all my data. It didn’t work so I threw it in an external enclosure and couldn’t get it to recognize the drive still. Nothing shows up in disk utility.

So today I finally got a 2017 MBA and tried it in the external enclosure again and still nothing is coming up in Disk Utility. I had an HDD that I put in the enclosure and it works fine so it doesn’t seem to be a problem with the enclosure or USB cable.

I tried googling but I just keep getting the usual, check the cable, restart, try a different port etc. I’ve done all that and tried it on 2 systems where a different drive worked. Anything else I can try or is it toast?

 

[hobowankenobi]

You've done all the normal troubleshooting: rule out cable, enclosure/bridge, and ports.

Not aware of anything else to do to verify. If you had a PC handy, it would be interesting to see if any of the Win tools could see it. Doubtful, and it would not mount (if it was formatted for a Mac), but would further confirm it is dead.

 

[Tiptizzle]

Thanks. It's my first SSD. Any mechanical drives that I've had fail always show signs first and the computer can usually see them still. And it seemed like a coincidence that it failed at the same time as the graphics card, but I had restarted the computer a couple dozen times trying to troubleshoot that problem.

I'll plug it into a windows computer too just to confirm.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Yep...when they die, often they are bricks. Sudden and catastrophic.

Never thought I would miss the hum and clatter of an HD, at least as tell-tale clues about their health status.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've had 2 SSDs that just "went dark" on me.

I could physically connect them to the Mac, but neither Disk Utility nor anything else could "see" them. Dead as a doornail.

Platter-based HDDs often give warning that they're "getting ready to go", but when it's time for an SSD to fail, it looks like they pretty much can go "100% all at once".

And once they do -- no getting them back.