0

I'm running a Windows 7 system with an ASRock H61M-HVS motherboard which boots from a 128GB Kingston SV200 SSD. The drive has been in use in this capacity since 2010, and until recently has had fast boot up times.

For the last few weeks, I've noticed that during boot, a blank screen shows after the Windows boot logo, and persists for between 30 seconds to a minute before the login screen finally appears. The fact that this happens on boot makes me suspect that after almost a decade in use the SSD is finally about to die.

However, what's throwing me off is that CrystalDiskInfo and a smartctl long scan show the drive as being healthy, and all the attributes seem to be safely above their thresholds:

enter image description here

Obviously I have backups, but if I need to spend the money to buy a new SSD, I'd rather know sooner than later to avoid any downtime.

Is my SSD about to die, or is there another likely cause for the long blank screen?

4
  • 1
    Diagnostics are not infallible, and can overlook imminent failure. If your motherboard supports it, an M.2 drive can be less spendy since it's circuit board+chips only, no metal enclosure. If your motherboard supports NVMe PCIe drives, that's faster still, but more spendy. Your mileage may vary.
    – K7AAY
    Nov 20, 2018 at 19:05
  • @K7AAY The motherboard is an ASRock H61M-HVS, and as far as I can tell it doesn't support M.2 or NVMe - just SATA 2.0 (3.GB/s) and PCIE 2.0 x16. I'm on a low income so if I do have to sink something on a new SSD, I'd probably go up to 256GB, but I'd probably be limited to SATA instead of the PCIE 2.0. Nov 20, 2018 at 19:47
  • I really would like a second opinion on this though. If the SSD is failing, then I can buy one in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, but if it isn't, I really can't afford to spend the money there if it's not actually needed. Nov 20, 2018 at 20:26
  • 1
    Wise move. BTW, if the PCIe x16 bus slot is open in your PC, you can obtain an inexpensive (well, for Yanks, anyway) PCIe bus card google.com/search?num=100&q=PCIe+card+for+M.2+NVMe+drives which will accept M.2 NVMe SSDs and run at PCIe x4 bus speed. tomshardware.com/answers/id-2839021/ssd-pci-adapter-worth.html
    – K7AAY
    Nov 20, 2018 at 21:45

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .