[mkirklions]

Does this explain why I often can access my 'dead' SSDs with my Ubuntu install rather than Windows?

I havent run into this issue for ~4 years, so I'm not sure if this is a solved problem or I got lucky a few years back.

[soundwave106]

Several years ago I was able to revive a "dead" SSD simply by updating the firmware to the latest version.

I haven't had a dead SSD problem in a while though, so I don't know how common firmware issues are now.

[nneonneo]

FWIW I switched entirely to using Samsung’s SSDs and haven’t had any issues. They seem to be above average for firmware quality, but I don’t have statistics to back that feeling up.

Sometimes the dead SSDs will respond to a handful of commands anyway, meaning that you can attempt a firmware upgrade or reset. That’s the lucky case. But in the majority of cases I’ve seen, the firmware/controller goes into some hard lockup where it no longer processes SATA commands at all. I wish these things had JTAG ports...

[pnutjam]

I have a laptop where the SSD wouldn't accept a Windows install, but worked fine with Linux. Months later, it took Windows with no issue...