SSD Failure

[VK5ZD]

Just a heads up for anyone that has a SSD in their PC/Laptop, make sure you have a backup. The most common failure mode for 'conventional' hard drive (i.e. those with a spinning discs and read/write heads) is for the disc surface to degrade resulting in file corruption. While this can be annoying you can usually still recover some, if not most, of the data. If the electronics fails then you possibly have the option of replacing the PCB if you have access to another identical drive. Either way, you always have your backup to restore the data from, right?

I recently had a Solid State Drive (SSD) fail. This 480GB drive was the boot disc for my desktop PC. The failure mode was not subtle. There were no warnings. As far as the PC was concerned the drive just suddenly ceased to exist.
So, I bought a new SSD and restored everything from my Windows Image Backup.

If you don't have a Windows Image Backup (and the associated repair disk or USB) then I strongly recommend you make one now. This should be in addition to your normal data backups. It will save you a world of grief if you should suffer a SSD failure like I did. If, like me, your copy of Windows 10 came from the free upgrade (my PC came with 8.1) then you won't have a Windows 10 installation disk should you need to start from scratch with a new drive.

All of the above really applies regardless of the type of disc drive you're using. I just want to point out that SSDs can fail in an instant with no warning at all.

[VK7HH]

Cloud based backups are also a plus

[VK5MCB]

Thanks for the hint, i never gave it a thought. Up dating my SSD now cheers 73