Argthtjtr

Set up

I have an ASUS UX301LA-DE022H. It contains two SSD SanDisk SD6SP1M-256G-1102, 256G each, configured as an Intel Firmware RAID 0 (a.k.a. fake RAID).

What happened

I was using Windows normally. Went away for a few minutes and when I came back, the PC would display a black screen and would only boot to the UEFI configuration screen with no boot options.

So the PC has not endured any shock/physical damage. At this point I suspect a messy Windows update or a software/physical drive failure.

In a nutshell

One of the SSD is not detected anymore, making the whole RAID 0 disk invalid. The most relevant error from dmesg is failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4).

What is the problem? Is it a physical failure? What is the most likely component to fail? I would be curious to know which electronic component failed in that case.

How would a data recovery company proceed to recover the data? Would they replace the SSD controller? Would they look for a dead resistor?

Find below all details:

Investigation

• the computer takes 120 seconds to display the UEFI configuration screen


• there is no boot options available from the UEFI configuration screen


• 
  

  one SSD is functional (but it's only half of the RAID 0!):

  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    

    it is detected while booting on Linux USB stick

    
    
    

    > dmesg|grep ata2
    
    [    3.590698] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf7d22000 port 0xf7d22180 irq 43
    
    [   51.454606] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
    
    [   51.455389] ata2.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:09:00:00:00:b0 (SET FEATURES) succeeded
    
    [   51.456504] ata2.00: ATA-8: SanDisk SD6SP1M256G1102, X231302, max UDMA/133
    
    [   51.456510] ata2.00: 500118192 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA
    
    [   51.457752] ata2.00: ACPI cmd ef/10:09:00:00:00:b0 (SET FEATURES) succeeded
    
    [   51.459283] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
    
    

    
    
  
  

  • when the SSD is by itself, the PC starts immediately without any problem

  
  
  • when the SSD is by itself, it is correctly detected by the UEFI configuration
  
  
  
  

• 
  

  one SSD is not functional:

  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    

    it is NOT detected while booting on Linux USB stick

    
    
    

    > dmesg|grep ata1
    
    [    3.590697] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf7d22000 port 0xf7d22100 irq 43
    
    [    3.904513] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
    
    [    9.013343] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
    
    [    9.013356] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    
    [    9.327983] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
    
    [   19.466671] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
    
    [   19.466683] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    
    [   19.466690] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
    
    [   19.781305] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
    
    [   50.826666] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
    
    [   50.826678] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
    
    [   51.141298] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
    
    

    
    
  
  

  • when the SSD is by itself, the PC starts slowly

  
  
  • when the SSD is by itself, it is incorrectly detected by the UEFI configuration
  
  
  
  

• both SATA ports are OK: I tried the functional SSD on each port and it was correctly and quickly detected.


• when both SSD are present, the UEFI configuration screen shows both disks. That last point puzzles me: it seems like the PC is able to know there are two SSDs, but times out trying to reach one of them.

• both SSD present no visual damage

Additional info (only showing relevant part):

> blkid

/dev/sdb: TYPE="isw_raid_member"



> lsscsi -L

[1:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      SanDisk SD6SP1M2 302   /dev/sdb

  device_blocked=0

  iocounterbits=32

  iodone_cnt=0x6d

  ioerr_cnt=0x2

  iorequest_cnt=0x6d

  queue_depth=31

  queue_type=simple

  scsi_level=6

  state=running

  timeout=30

  type=0



> smartctl -iA /dev/sdb

smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [x86_64-linux-4.14.15-1-ARCH] (local build)

Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org



=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Device Model:     SanDisk SD6SP1M256G1102

Serial Number:    141196400698

LU WWN Device Id: 5 001b44 beb8b143a

Firmware Version: X231302

User Capacity:    256,060,514,304 bytes [256 GB]

Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical

Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device

Form Factor:      Unknown (0x0010)

Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]

ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 6

SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)

Local Time is:    Sun Jul 22 03:01:37 2018 UTC

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support is: Enabled



=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 4

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   253   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       3184

 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       16004

166 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       1

167 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       19

168 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       117

169 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       379

171 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

172 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

173 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       27

174 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       39

187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   058   047   ---    Old_age   Always       -       42 (Min/Max 18/47)

212 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

230 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       90

232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033   100   100   004    Pre-fail  Always       -       100

233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       7187

241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       1266

242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       1203

243 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

Other Linux commands such as dmidecode, fdisk, lsblk and lspci did not provide more relevant information.

NB: I found some related questions such as Failure of 1 SSD in Raid-0 that was bootdrive stopping computer from booting and How to fix missing RAID1 drive However I was not able to access the RAID configuration screen at startup.

If possible, I would like to retrieve the data from those disks. At this point, I'm not interested into scratching the data and turning the remainig disk into a single disk. Eventually, I will contact a data recovery company but I would like to know what is the problem and if there is anything I can do.

Please refer to In a nutshell section for the question.