New SSD recommendation

axe0

axe0

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Hi all,

I'm looking for a new SSD to replace my main SSD with. A bit of background story first though.

The big problem originally started with me having more and more problems accessing files and folders, with this I mean that Windows Explorer would crash. I ended up being unable to open the Downloads folder and thought I should check out what's going on and fix the problem. The Downloads folder is on a different HDD so I did a scan with SeaTools and chkdsk to see if there were any problems, but fortunately no problems showed up. I checked event viewer and noticed that Windows Explorer kept crashing for different reasons, like memory access violations and buffer overflows to name a few. Since I have Macrium Reflect as a second option in the boot menu, I thought I'd try accessing the Downloads folder through the PE there, but I made the mistake of opening Macrium Reflect and updating it first. That was a mistake, because as soon as I went and tried to boot into Macrium Reflect PE I saw one option of Macrium Reflect and another that didn't display anything. I don't remember exactly what happened afterwards since it's been a week, but I ended up with a SSD from which can't be booted off because there was a corrupt object or inaccessible object in the BCD or something like that.

I fortunately do have a USB containing Macrium Reflect PE as well from which I could boot, but once I plugged it in it took literally hours to even boot into it, then another hour or so to do anything like 'Fix boot' which basically fixes the BCD for you. That never finished. Thankfully, spare computers (or laptop in my case) to the rescue, I tested the USB and booted from my laptop into the USB in mere seconds. A good hint that something's very wrong with the computer itself. After a lot of time in trial and error reconnecting sata cables between SSD and HDDs, I found out that the SSD I had installed (Crucial MX200 with 500GB) and the cable connecting this SSD are both faulty. I found that if either is connected, I couldn't boot into the Macrium Reflect PE on my USB at all, even after waiting about a day the PE wouldn't load with either cable or SSD connected.

I ordered two new cables, one replacement and one backup, as well as a Samsung m.2 980 SSD which I chose because it was one of the first ones I found when searching quickly for a replacement, but that SSD was somewhat of a mistake I realized afterwards. I intended to restore the most recent backup I have on the Samsung SSD, which is a day old from the day that I started investigating the problem, but I learned that it screws up the partition letters as well as the BCD so I still ended up with an unusable system. Me being patient, I actually did not do a clean reinstall but rather took the opportunity to play around with the BCD and see if I can fix it manually, after all it's already screwed up and I can't make it worse than it is. If I screwed up severely, I could always just restore the BCD and start again. I ended up learning some things about the BCD but didn't manage to fix it because for a to me unknown reason some values weren't being updated correctly. I tried to update the Windows Boot Manager device's value to the new FAT32 volume stored on the Samsung SSD, but for some reason it updated to 'partition=G:' which is a partition letter from one of the HDDs.

Yesterday I thought of something new. I still have my older laptop laying around with a Crucial MX200 with 250GB that's quite a bit older but working at least. I figured I could try and restore the C: partition on that instead and keep any other data on the Samsung SSD, this thankfully worked, but my pc is noticeably slower. I do fear that the working Crucial MX200 might fail soon too, because it's quite a bit older than the other Crucial MX200.

I'm looking in advance for recommendations for replacing the Crucial MX200 250GB SSD
 
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Why was the Samsung m.2 a mistake? Form factor? If that's the case, then any of the Crucial MX line should be fine. The MX500 had served me well for 8 years.
 
I didn't realize yet that adding a new SSD to replace a current SSD on a different port screws up the partition letters and therefore also the BCD data and a whole lot more. If I had somehow managed to fix the BCD data, I'd need a lot of luck that the partition letters were good too otherwise I'd get a lot of errors/app crashes from programs not installed in the right place. I'm lucky there that I remembered which cable should be going in which port allowing me to make sure the drives are in the right order, otherwise the partitions would've been assigned the wrong letter.

There were 3 drives in total at the time, two HDDs and one working SSD (Samsung). I also had a USB prepared with Windows install media for testing some things, which recognized the Samsung SSD as the third drive when the bad Crucial MX200 SSD was the first one. Restoring the backup containing Windows on the SSD meant that the partition letter for the Windows partition would be something like L instead of C when attempting to boot, and the BCD data points to C. Most programs installed originally on a G partition would be screwed up as well, because the partition letter for that partition could be E, F or D for example. To avoid that disaster, the working Crucial MX200 is on the same port connected and I'm lucky the other partition letters are correct too.

The mistake was really just my logical thinking, thinking that if you replace a sata connected SSD with another one connected to a m.2 port then everything will be fine. I don't regret buying it, I do regret attempting to use it for that troubleshooting step.
 
I just went through something similar at work. One of my many jobs there is IT. Unfortunately, if it's not something I do regularly, I don't readily commit it to memory.

I had a heck of a time with the partition letters. Like you, I had multiple drives, with apps regular and portable, not always installed to C: This took me a while to figure out.

The problem is, that I can't remember all the steps I took to remedy. I remember letting it do its thing, then utilizing cmd (diskpart) to change the drive letters back. Somewhere in between, I figured out which drive was which.
 
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