OWC 1TB SSD just died

[OWCskip]

Hi,
my 1TB SSD from OWC just died completely. Exactly 3 years and 2 months old. Was running in a Mac Mini.
I lost all the data. It is Mercury Electra 6G SSD. It was not heavily used, has no burned smell or something. Just did not start anymore.
I complained with OWC and they told me it has a 3 year warranty and I am 2 months over that and out of luck. And they said also that "The SSD lifespan reached its limit".
I find that really ridiculous. Doe they have it programmed to fail right after the warranty?
I tried all revival methods I cold think of, but the SSD does not show up in the finder and neither in the disk utility.
Took it out of the Mac Mini and tried it also on 2 other iMacs. No luck.
Does anyone of you have a similar experience?
Or do you have any idea how to get this thing running again?

Skip

 

[DJLC]

I had the same thing happen years back with an OWC SSD in my 2011 mini. It was totally dead with no recourse.

Since then, I typically go for Samsung Evo SSDs. No trouble with those in my experience so far.

 

[OWCskip]

Thanks,
Yeah, I did the same yesterday. Bought a Samsung EVO 870 1TB. Was on sale at Best Buy.
This one has at least 5 years warranty.
Installed also Samsungs in my 2 iMacs. No problems at all.

 

[CoastalOR]

I also had bad luck with OWC 2.5" SATA SSDs. I had one go completely dead with no warning in a 2011 MBP. Fortunately it was 1 month short of 3 years. I had no problem getting OWC to replace it. The replacement only lasted a couple of years in an external that only saw occasional use. That was enough for me. I only use Samsung or Crucial 2.5" SATA SSDs now. So far I have not had a failure with those brands like I did with OWC.

 

[now i see it]

If it didn’t go belly up in 3yrs/3mo, it would go belly up in 4yrs or 5yrs or eventually. At some point it was going to die.
3 years passed with plenty of time to create a backup strategy yet none existed - so all data was lost. It seems reasonable to assume that data on that drive was destined to be lost forever anyhow no matter how long the drive worked - because the drive won’t last forever and the data will never be backed up.
That = disaster in the making no matter what.

 

[mi7chy]

Can you get any SMART data from it to confirm that it succumb to drive health and not other outside issues like possibly bad power supply?

 

[LeeW]

Suspect the OP was just posting a moan and unlikely to return.

 

[OWCskip]

Can you get any SMART data from it to confirm that it succumb to drive health and not other outside issues like possibly bad power supply?

Problem is, that it does not even show up. Neither in the finder (Mac) nor in the disk utility. Tried it on 2 different Macs.

 

[jz0309]

any hard drive be it mechanical or SSD has a limited lifespan, sometimes earlier, sometimes later but it WILL happen.
the fact that you lost data is your own fault, it is your responsibility to backup your data. Learn your lessons from this incident.

 

[mi7chy]

I also had bad luck with OWC 2.5" SATA SSDs. I had one go completely dead with no warning in a 2011 MBP. Fortunately it was 1 month short of 3 years. I had no problem getting OWC to replace it. The replacement only lasted a couple of years in an external that only saw occasional use. That was enough for me. I only use Samsung or Crucial 2.5" SATA SSDs now. So far I have not had a failure with those brands like I did with OWC.

Did you get a chance to peek inside? Curious what brand of NAND (SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC) is used. It's known that all have limited endurance but some significantly more and some significantly less.

 

[mi7chy]

Problem is, that it does not even show up. Neither in the finder (Mac) nor in the disk utility. Tried it on 2 different Macs.

Bad luck that it suddenly just died. Usually it puts itself into read-only mode when SSD health gets too dire instead of self destructing. Maybe in the future install a utility to monitor SSD health and warn of impending issues. Samsung has Samsung Magician utility but I think it might be Windows only.

 

[OWCskip]

Bad luck that it suddenly just died. Usually it puts itself into read-only mode when SSD health gets too dire instead of self destructing. Maybe in the future install a utility to monitor SSD health and warn of impending issues. Samsung has Samsung Magician utility but I think it might be Windows only.

Didn't know about a utility to monitor the SSD health. Thanks for thew tip. Will look into it.

 

[russell_314]

Unfortunately SSDs have a limited lifespan. Things like how full they are and how often you write and read them affect that.

You said you lost all your data. I’ve been there and done that so I’m not going to be critical but please get a back up solution in the future. It will happen again. Never have your files on one drive.

 

[Freeangel1]

I don't like OWC anymore. 10 or 15 years ago they were great. Now they sell sub standard parts.

I just bought a brand new lighting cable for my 12.9 iPad Pro a few days ago . I lost the other one. Cable when hooked up says iPad is not charging. cheap inferior cable made in China.

I use Sandisk SSD's in my Mac mini's 2012 i7's. They have the best read and write times. and they last.

SanDisk SSD PLUS 1TB Internal SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 535 MB/s - SDSSDA-1T00-G26

SanDisk, a pioneer in solid state storage technologies and the brand pros trust, delivers improved speed and performance with the SanDisk SSD Plus. With sequential read speeds of up to 535MB/s [480GB, 960GB and 1TB]; 530MB/s [120GB & 240GB], this solid state drive performs faster than a typical h...

www.amazon.com

 

[OWCskip]

Unfortunately SSDs have a limited lifespan. Things like how full they are and how often you write and read them affect that.

You said you lost all your data. I’ve been there and done that so I’m not going to be critical but please get a back up solution in the future. It will happen again. Never have your files on one drive.

I had set up a backup, but my wife took it out in January when we went in a trip. (it is her MacMini) She never connected it again, so we did not lose everything, just everything since January 4.

 

[Freeangel1]

I can't live without backups and time machine. as a person who has worked Helpdesk and in the IT dept I have learned my lesson the hard way by not having current backups. I even keep multiple copies of hard drives. never use cloud storage either. you never know when you will be denied access to your data cause you are using some companies server to trust your data privacy to.

 

[Spock]

I can't live without backups and time machine. as a person who has worked Helpdesk and in the IT dept I have learned my lesson the hard way by not having current backups. I even keep multiple copies of hard drives. never use cloud storage either. you never know when you will be denied access to your data cause you are using some companies server to trust your data privacy to.

On-site, off-site and cloud if you can trust it.

 

[mi7chy]

Off-site isn't practical for end users vs on-site plus multiple cloud like OneDrive + Google Drive.

 

[nintendoswitch]

Maybe just buy another SSD or Put files in OneDrive or somthing related? Wish I could somehow help but I have never had an SSD (I think)

 

[SteveJUAE]

I also had bad luck with OWC 2.5" SATA SSDs. I had one go completely dead with no warning in a 2011 MBP. Fortunately it was 1 month short of 3 years. I had no problem getting OWC to replace it. The replacement only lasted a couple of years in an external that only saw occasional use. That was enough for me. I only use Samsung or Crucial 2.5" SATA SSDs now. So far I have not had a failure with those brands like I did with OWC.

Ditto on this, OWC off my shopping list since

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I had set up a backup, but my wife took it out in January when we went in a trip. (it is her MacMini) She never connected it again, so we did not lose everything, just everything since January 4."

Then... consider yourselves lucky.
You had a backup of MOST OF your data (if not quite all of it).

I've had two SSD's that just "went dark" on me.
That is to say, they "disappeared" -- never to be "seen" or recognized by the Mac again.
For all practical purposes, they became "unreachable" through disk utilities, recovery software, etc.

That seems to be "the way SSDs fail".
Certainly, they're far faster than platter-based hard drives, but when "an SSD goes"... it's generally gone.

All one can do is keep a good backup.
I have NEVER used time machine, EVER, and NEVER will.
For backups I rely on CarbonCopyCloner.
SuperDuper would work, as well.

 

[OWCskip]

Hhmm, what is wrong with time machine?
I am using it on my main computer all the time, but never really had to use it.
What makes Super duper or Carbon copy cloner superior?

 

[satcomer]

Hhmm, what is wrong with time machine?
I am using it on my main computer all the time, but never really had to use it.
What makes Super duper or Carbon copy cloner superior?

Clones on Intel were made to boot from in case of an internal drive went south! This was handy during the platters drive era!

 

[OWCskip]

Clones on Intel were made to boot from in case of an internal drive went south! This was handy during the platters drive era!

An Apple guy assured me that I can boot from my time machine backup if I have to.

 

[Fishrrman]

"An Apple guy assured me that I can boot from my time machine backup if I have to."

Only half-true.
You can boot from the backup, but NOT to the finder.
That is to say, the backup can't be used in any other way except to boot and "restore".

With a cloned backup (created by CCC or SD), you:
- plug the backup in
- boot
- get to the finder
- work as you worked before (if necessary)
... or... restore one file, several files, or the entire drive.