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Background

In 2014 I built my first computer with my first SSD. This has been my main machine and I leave it on a lot as it also acts as my media server. I bought the SSD knowing that they don't age well, so I've been lowkey dreading this happening.

Over the past several months I find my computer won't boot into the SSD, saying that I need to insert a bootable drive. I go into the BIOS and it doesn't recognize the SSD (but it recognizes my HDD and DVD drives). I swap sata cables around and eventually I can boot into the drive.

Over the weekend, I discovered that this "fix" doesn't work anymore. I'm stuck at "insert a bootable drive" screen and the BIOS doesn't recognize the SSD.

Question

Are these signs of a dead SSD?

Lux Claridge
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    Could you perhaps specify what your question is? Is it about determining if the SSD is failing? [There is already a question on that](https://superuser.com/q/467659/141595) and there are probably more. Is it about recovering data from a dead drive? Restore your backup. [There's also a question on it here](https://superuser.com/q/506410/141595). In general: please do some research and include what you've found in your question. If what you find in your research does not help you, no problem: just edit your question and include what you've tried and what's not working. – Saaru Lindestøkke May 13 '19 at 16:09
  • That first link was an interesting one. Though, it seems that it was for a particular bug in a particular brand of SSD and the fix was a firmware update. I will edit the question to narrow it down though. – Lux Claridge May 13 '19 at 16:22
  • The quick fix, finance-dependant, would be to just slap your backup onto a new drive [HD or SSD] & test that. MS won't need a relicense for changing just the boot drive. – Tetsujin May 13 '19 at 16:26
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    While older SSDs had shorter life expectancy, drives from the past 5 years have life expectancies which rival their spinning cousins. That said, that point is essentially immaterial here: a drive will die when it dies, based on many factors, and regardless of its architecture. Generally speaking, the best time to back up any sort of system is all the time, so that when it begins exhibiting signs of failure your problems are only hardware-related, not important data-related. Researching the specific drive and your symptoms, as @SaaruLindestøkke notes, is also helpful. – music2myear May 13 '19 at 16:34

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