My PC worked normally last night, but this morning it booted straight into the BIOS with no bootable device found. Windows is installed on a 1TB WD Blue SA510 SATA SSD. My M.2 drive and another SSD still appear in the BIOS, but the WD Blue is completely missing. The Windows installation USB also cannot detect it. I tried different SATA data cables and ports, but the drive still does not appear. The system has a Gigabyte B550 Gaming X motherboard, a Ryzen 7 3700X, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. Is the SSD likely dead, and is there another way to test or recover it?
3 Answers
Before declaring it dead, replace the SATA power connection as well as the data cable. Use a different power lead from the PSU if possible, not just another plug on the same chain. Also try a SATA port that is not disabled by motherboard lane sharing. On some B550 boards, installing an M.2 drive disables certain SATA ports.
If the drive is missing from both the BIOS and the Windows installer, this is happening below the operating-system level. That usually points to the SSD itself, its power connection, or the motherboard port—not a Windows, partition, or boot-order problem. The SA510 series has also had reports of drives suddenly dropping offline because of controller or firmware issues.
The best confirmation would be testing the SSD in another computer or with a USB-to-SATA adapter or enclosure. If it appears there, copy your important data immediately and treat the drive as unreliable. You could also check it with Western Digital’s Dashboard software and apply any available firmware update. If it remains completely invisible on another system too, the controller or the drive’s electronics have probably failed and replacement is likely.
That’s disappointing, but it sounds like the drive may really have failed.