900F + Vertex2 SSD = ALL IS GONE

This is the most unreal situation that has ever happened to me in my working life with a computer spanning many years.

One month ago I bought in Hong Kong a new OCZ Vertex2 100GB SSD for my D900F. I am back in the US now.

I had 3 partitions on it, C as my bootable partition and D and E for working files and data I usually do regular backups of but that since I bought this new drive and have been on the road working, have not had the time to do... so Murphy's Law never, ever, ever fails and gets in action.

Last morning I used the laptop for a few hours to work and then turned it off as had to leave for 30 minutes to run some errands. When I get back, I turn on the laptop and get an OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND message on post. Strange. Go into the BIOS, the drive is there selected as the bootable disk, try it again. Nothing. Next, I boot from another disk and try to see what's going on. The SSD is there on the Device Manager and working well but I realize its now a single unallocated space. No more 3 partitions, no data, nothing. I try several pieces of data recovery data software and also, nothing. There is absolutely nothing on the drive or files to recover. Its like its a brand new, still allocated space new Disk I just bought.

Next I go to a Data Recovery Center near where I live that Ive used before and do great work. They spend about 5 hours with the drive and then finally call me to ask me if I had given them my "used" drive or by mistake a blank one because there is absolutely no data or traces of any data on the SSD. Not one byte of anything that can be traced or recovered.

And thats it!

Basically, by itself, spontaneously, everything in the drive got obliterated. Its a totally "new", "fresh", "never used" SSD drive. The data I have lost is beyond a tragedy for me for which naturally I am the only one to be blamed, I should back up my data daily and not think for one second that the fact they are sitting on a Solid State Device makes them any safer than any traditional spinning hard disk. But, I didn't. But what I am truly and profoundly concerned about is on how can this happen. How can within 30 minutes a drive self-wipe itself out all in it to a total blank and unrecoverable condition? And the best part? The drive works fine again. Once re-formatted it works and benchmarks as usual and there is nothing "wrong" with it.

I am in shock and disbelief as to how this can happen and how. I do not have the first clue who to talk to... OCZ? They dont care. Clevo? Thats not their problem. So now, in the end, my my question I just one of data reliably and security... if on an SSD data is so volatile that can get eclipsed spontaneously pass any chance of recovery for no reason as if its a clean/fresh new disk, then the future or Solid State Drives, at least for me, has suddenly become a real-world impossibility. Surely I have lost data before, surely I have gotten disk drives that suddenly develop bad clusters and unreadable areas, surely Ive had drives stopping to spin or breaking a spindle... Ive seen on all, but, for the most part, most of the data is usually all there and can be taken out somehow after an unforeseen failure.

But this??? Total and lavish self-erase of all data in a split second and the next, the drive can get re-formatted again and work as usual? Till when? Where did all the data go? How can it all disappear like this? I am speechless and in shock beyond any words not to mention in a s..t hole of trouble for data I have lost that I will clearly never get back and that I have no excuse to have lost, no chance to get back and positively no possibility to just re-create. This is the first time in my life that I am in serious and near unrecoverable trouble, my personal and work life, my career... There is data you get past when you loose, data you can live with if you loose it and data that you simply cant afford to loose. Im the last one of those. And its because I have dropped laptops, shaken them too much and have had "stuff" happening to them, that i got an SSD to give the extra peace of mind and extended reliability again physical handling abuse and accident that happen when you are on the road moving a laptop 100 times a day from place to place. What an irony. I loose all my data as my laptop is sleeping on a table at room temperature in my house.

I do not want to blame anyone but myself for not backing up data but, just 3 words come to mind and I need to find an explanation for such a event: THIS CAN'T HAPPEN. I would understand the theft of my laptop or loosing it all on a fire, flood, earthquake, 2012, or whatever other fantastic event that would justify it somehow, but not like this. This is simply an impossible situation. Im livid, I feel numb and believe in "technology" less and less everyday, and there is nothing I can do.

Oh yeah... and yesterday my car needed a "software" update because it did not start. No, not battery, a plug, wire, or a coil... it needed a "software" update... What world is this? Windows 7 instead of XP, airplanes that fly by themselves, cars that need software updates, refrigerators that connect to the internet, cell phones that get updates faster than I make calls and when I hold hem I loose the signal, and now SSD Drives that "self-refresh" and self-obliterate all the data in them? Really? I dont think i recognize my world anymore... I must be getting old or the world uselessly more useless every day...

Till then, folks, stay away from anything that has the letters OCZ in it and by all means, forget about using SSDs no matter how fast they are and excited we get. The data in them goes away faster than their "blazing" I/O benchmark figures.

I miss my typewriter and my bicycle.

 

Yeah my ford truck has that stupid Microsoft Sync, I had to bring it in to the dealer because i couldn't do it myself, what kind of car do you have? Also, I have never had this problem on my Intel SSD, not sure what the problem could be.

 

Although they're generally quite reliable, when SSD's fail the data is usually irrecoverable.

 

The key word here seems to be: BACKUP.
How often will depend on how much important work you do and have stored on your drive, on a daily basis.

This is the first time I have heard about such a fatal and mysterious malfunction, though.

 

Couldn't help it
Sorry to hear your loss though.