WD 500G SSD bricked after Microsoft update

Murby · Mar 22, 2026

I built a new desktop computer for my wife back in December. Installed Win11 operating system on a WD500 Blue SSD drive and all has been fine.
Yesterday, her computer did a Windows 11 update. The first thing (symptom) that happened was she lost her internet connection. I had to go into the settings and reboot the network card because even a reboot of the computer wouldn't fix the problem. Finally I got it working and all was fine.

She shut the computer down for the night, and when she booted up this morning, the computer went straight to the BIOS. After messing with it, I noticed the BIOS doesn't even see the SSD drive her operating system is loaded on.

So I pulled the SSD out and hooked it up to the SATA port in my computer.. even after telling my system to rescan to discover drives, the SSD doesn't show up.

This SSD is a brick.

What's going on?

TVeblen · Mar 22, 2026

This is a brand new (4 months old) 3.5 inch SATA desktop SSD, correct?

If a disk drive goes brick - just blinks out entirely - it is typical that it happens after a large read/write process. Applies to spinners or SSDs.
Unfortunately also typical that if a drive goes bad it happens in the first few hours - days - weeks of service. Less likely to happen after a few months though.

Do you have a drive image backup of this disk?
Is the drive under warranty?

bobkn · Mar 22, 2026

Does the drive show in Disk Management when it's connected to your computer?

Murby · Mar 22, 2026

TVeblen said:
This is a brand new (4 months old) 3.5 inch SATA desktop SSD, correct?

If a disk drive goes brick - just blinks out entirely - it is typical that it happens after a large read/write process. Applies to spinners or SSDs.
Unfortunately also typical that if a drive goes bad it happens in the first few hours - days - weeks of service. Less likely to happen after a few months though.

Do you have a drive image backup of this disk?
Is the drive under warranty?

The drive was purchased Sept 25, 2025 and installed in early December of 2025.
The drive was her C drive with Windows 11 installed.

No backup.. and I gave her a boat load of scolding about it since backing it up would have been as simple as transferring the important stuff to a USB drive. Foolish and sloppy where among my scolding words..

Even if it is under warranty, it has all our sensitive information on it, and no way do I want to send that drive out to anyone with all our personal info on it..

Murby · Mar 22, 2026

bobkn said:
Does the drive show in Disk Management when it's connected to your computer?

No.. I shut my machine down and plugged her bricked SSD into one of my SATA ports and rebooted. My machine's Disk Management shows nothing, nor does my own bios show it even being connected. I have a PCIe SSD and a SATA SSD in my machine, both show up fine.. but not her SSD.

Was wondering if there was a way to recover it.. or at least the data. But I don't see how that's possible if my machine can't even see the drive is connected.

TVeblen · Mar 22, 2026

You could try the "power cycle" method first. A long shot.

Turn your PC off. Then connect her drive using only the power connector. Don't connect the data cable.
Turn your PC on and run it for 30 minutes or so.
Then turn your PC off, connect the data cable to that drive, and boot up.
See if it shows up in BIOS.

Murby · Mar 22, 2026

TVeblen said:
You could try the "power cycle" method first. A long shot.

Turn your PC off. Then connect her drive using only the power connector. Don't connect the data cable.
Turn your PC on and run it for 30 minutes or so.
Then turn your PC off, connect the data cable to that drive, and boot up.
See if it shows up in BIOS.

Trying it now... 30 minutes left, 30 minutes left, take one down, pass it around, 29 minutes left.. tick tok.. tick tok..

Catnip · Mar 22, 2026

Let me use my electrical engineer's intuition:

1. Drive worked before the update.
2. Computer functioned normally afterward, with the exception of the network adapter (possibly not related)
3. Powering down the computer one night after the update, the computer will not boot in the morning. Nor is the drive visible in BIOS or Disk Management
4. Hooking the drive up to USB in an enclosure still won't let Disk Management see the drive. There may be a reason for this.*
5. Drive also cannot be seen if hooked to a SATA port inside another machine.

I think I have summed things up, but please tell me if I got something wrong.

So, assuming the drive's boot sector ( I know, it's an SSD ) was not damaged (but you still would see it in BIOS and Disk Management), the only cause I can think of for this is controller failure, or a failure of the power supply inside the SSD itself.

Unfortunately, there is no way for a local electronics shop to fix it for you as it requires specialized equipment, and controller chips are sometimes hard to come by. Sometimes you do get some bad silicon, even though this stuff is tested pretty thoroughly. There isn't alot you can do about it, sadly.

The last hail Mary you can do after you have tried everything above (and I certainly hope what's been said works) is to try a different SATA port. Also check your BIOS to make sure the port isn't turned off.

In my estimation, your drive sounds like it is indeed bricked and that is unfortunate. This is one of those things that teaches us the importance of backups. I feel bad for your wife losing all of her data, but she learned an important lesson.

*USB enumeration in Windows has always been a little quirky and sometimes fails requiring multiple insertions to get things to work. I doubt that is what happend here, though.

Murby · Mar 22, 2026

Catnip said:
Let me use my electrical engineer's intuition:

1. Drive worked before the update.
2. Computer functioned normally afterward, with the exception of the network adapter (possibly not related)
3. Powering down the computer one night after the update, the computer will not boot in the morning. Nor is the drive visible in BIOS or Disk Management
4. Hooking the drive up to USB in an enclosure still won't let Disk Management see the drive. There may be a reason for this.*
5. Drive also cannot be seen if hooked to a SATA port inside another machine.

I think I have summed things up, but please tell me if I got something wrong.

So, assuming the drive's boot sector ( I know, it's an SSD ) was not damaged (but you still would see it in BIOS and Disk Management), the only cause I can think of for this is controller failure, or a failure of the power supply inside the SSD itself.

Unfortunately, there is no way for a local electronics shop to fix it for you as it requires specialized equipment, and controller chips are sometimes hard to come by. Sometimes you do get some bad silicon, even though this stuff is tested pretty thoroughly. There isn't alot you can do about it, sadly.

The last hail Mary you can do after you have tried everything above (and I certainly hope what's been said works) is to try a different SATA port. Also check your BIOS to make sure the port isn't turned off.

In my estimation, your drive sounds like it is indeed bricked and that is unfortunate. This is one of those things that teaches us the importance of backups. I feel bad for your wife losing all of her data, but she learned an important lesson.

*USB enumeration in Windows has always been a little quirky and sometimes fails requiring multiple insertions to get things to work. I doubt that is what happend here, though.

Thank you. I took her SSD and plugged it into my computer.. Not recognized by bios.
Tried power cycling it by leaving power connected but removed SATA cable. 30 minutes, no change.
Did some googling and they say to perform the power cycle 30 minutes with power, then 30 minutes without power and repeat. So I'm going to repeat that cycle a few times but I don't have a lot of hope at this point.

I went to the WD website and it turns out this drive is handled by San Disk.. So went to San Disk website to check the serial number.. it was an Amazon purchase and I thought it could be a fake. Turns out it is a genuine drive and still under warranty. Unfortunately, this thing has my personal info on it.. Everything a person would need to steal my identity.. Drivers license number, social security numbers, family information, taxes, banking, everything. So no way am I sending it back with an RMA number.. Going to see what San Disk has to say after I explain that to them.. although I suspect these people must know that anyone with sensitive information on their drive (everyone?) isn't going to want to send the thing back..

DJNelson · Mar 22, 2026

Unfortunately, Microsoft will not admit to problems like this until denying them becomes as ridiculous as pretending the sun isn't rising somewhere in the world, because they're not willing to accept the liability that comes with releasing defective updates. Microsoft updates have bricked a lot of hardware in recent years, and the only solution I've been able to come up with is "never keep important files on the system drive"

glasskuter · Mar 22, 2026

Murby said:
So no way am I sending it back with an RMA number.. Going to see what San Disk has to say after I explain that to them.. although I suspect these people must know that anyone with sensitive information on their drive (everyone?) isn't going to want to send the thing back..

Sandisk really could care less since, if is not returned, they are under no obligation to replace it. If one has sensitive info on his drive and is concerned about it, there are steps that he can take. Just as one backs up the data so he himself can recover his data, his drive should be bitlocked so that data can not be accessed by anyone else without the 48 digit bitlocker recovery key.

Anibor_11 · Mar 22, 2026

Murby said:
I went to the WD website and it turns out this drive is handled by San Disk.. So went to San Disk website to check the serial number.. it was an Amazon purchase and I thought it could be a fake. Turns out it is a genuine drive and still under warranty. Unfortunately, this thing has my personal info on it..

Al WD SSDs are Sandisk SSDs, and currently all all branded as Sandisk.

I don´t keep sensitive personal information in the internal SSD, but in an external USB SSDs. To protect it, I use VeraCrypt volumes (containers), and I keep all passwords encrypted in KeePass 2. I also keep backups of the most important information in Samsung Bar UFDs, encrypted with Bitlocker.

dacrone · Mar 22, 2026

Hook it up via any method and boot the pc that it’s connected to into a Linux live (or hirens) usb. See if it’s recognized. Can also try gparted to see if it even shows.

JLArranz · Mar 23, 2026

Like 3-4 years ago I bought 2 Seagate ST1000DM010 HDDs, intended as secondary disks. One was defective, it vibrated like hell, although in data it was functional, so I could delete everything I had recorded. I was ready to return it physically and I did everything they asked, mainly send them photos of the device with all codes readable, but at the shop they were kind and refunded its cost w/o requiring me to send it. I have it in a pile of stuff to recycle that I've been lazy to carry yet. Maybe I don't carry the disk just in case.

Murby · Mar 24, 2026

DJNelson said:
Unfortunately, Microsoft will not admit to problems like this until denying them becomes as ridiculous as pretending the sun isn't rising somewhere in the world, because they're not willing to accept the liability that comes with releasing defective updates. Microsoft updates have bricked a lot of hardware in recent years, and the only solution I've been able to come up with is "never keep important files on the system drive"

Yeah.. I've always run my computer that way too.. My operating system and unimportant files (audio books, downloaded movies, etc) are on my C drive, while my D drive carries all the important stuff.. and then that D drive gets backed up to a USB stick every now and then.

My wife isn't as careful as I am.. although I think that's about to change since she just learned a painful lesson. She's pretty upset.. 5 days of processing our taxes.. home, rental units, business taxes, investments, etc.. and now she has to do it all over again. I thought she was going to cry.. And I've told her over and over that she doesn't run her computer the way she should but it always starts an argument so I gave up.

I tried everything with that bricked SSD drive.. Power cycling it at least a dozen times, and I even put it in the freezer to see if that would get it working.. Then warmed up in the oven to 115 degreesF to see if a bit of heat would do it. It's dead.. and its not even heavy enough to call it a brick or a paperweight..

I think bitlocker might be a good idea..

XxXxX · Mar 24, 2026

Murby said:
Yeah.. I've always run my computer that way too.. My operating system and unimportant files (audio books, downloaded movies, etc) are on my C drive, while my D drive carries all the important stuff.. and then that D drive gets backed up to a USB stick every now and then.

My wife isn't as careful as I am.. although I think that's about to change since she just learned a painful lesson. She's pretty upset.. 5 days of processing our taxes.. home, rental units, business taxes, investments, etc.. and now she has to do it all over again. I thought she was going to cry.. And I've told her over and over that she doesn't run her computer the way she should but it always starts an argument so I gave up.

I tried everything with that bricked SSD drive.. Power cycling it at least a dozen times, and I even put it in the freezer to see if that would get it working.. Then warmed up in the oven to 115 degreesF to see if a bit of heat would do it. It's dead.. and its not even heavy enough to call it a brick or a paperweight..

I think bitlocker might be a good idea..

please burn a Linux live distro to a USB stick
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS would be ideal.

Download Ubuntu Desktop | Ubuntu

Ubuntu is an open source software operating system that runs from the desktop, to the cloud, to all your internet connected things.

ubuntu.com

boot into the live desktop. this will not install anything to your computer.
then using the Ubuntu file browser you can try and transfer the data.

this could save your work/data on that system.
best of luck Steve ..

glasskuter · Mar 24, 2026

You said that bios does not see the drive. If uefi bios does not see the drive, then disk management won't see the drive nor will a live Linux distro see it either.
The old freeze trick was only for HDDs, not SSDs

gunrunnerjohn · Mar 24, 2026

Backup... backup... and more backup! You can almost never have too much backup, but you sure can have too little! I have around 50GB of "active" data that I really don't want to lose, that gets copied every day to three other physical drives/systems/cloud. At least weekly, it is distributed two two other locations. My much larger archives of pictures, audio files, etc. are copied to multiple locations but on a lower frequency.

Murby · Mar 27, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
Backup... backup... and more backup! You can almost never have too much backup, but you sure can have too little! I have around 50GB of "active" data that I really don't want to lose, that gets copied every day to three other physical drives/systems/cloud. At least weekly, it is distributed two two other locations. My much larger archives of pictures, audio files, etc. are copied to multiple locations but on a lower frequency.

We have some files that I never EVER want to lose. Digitized real estate stuff, family pictures, etc. I recently discovered something I didn't know.. the fact that DVD's do not last forever was quite surprising to me. So now I'm looking into something called an M-disc, which is basically a DVD manufactured with materials that don't degrade..
Any advice on those M Disks? Do I need a special DVD burner or will anything work? Are they really that reliable?

glasskuter · Mar 27, 2026

While having longevity M discks are not re-writable. May I ask why you do not choose more modern storage solutions than DVDs. Optical storage of any kind is a dinosaur and makes no sense to me in this day and age..

WD 500G SSD bricked after Microsoft update

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