Why won’t the SSD boot when it’s cold

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I know that some SSDs rarely have an issue with "cold boots" under certain firmware and software configurations. However in this case I have had two SSDs (different brands) that would literally not boot when they were physically cold. If I placed them under my arm until they warmed up to my body temperature, they would boot fine. If I however attempted to boot when they were cold, they would not even appear in the BIOS.

Both SSDs did not develop this issue immediately, the first one did after about 7 months, the second after a couple of years. Both developed it abruptly, there was no slow transition; one day they both just refused to boot cold. I don't see any pattern in the situations. I've changed a lot of my computer between the first one and this one developing this issue (new motherboard, RAM, PSU, etc). About the only hardware thing in common is I might have used the same SATA cable for both, but I can't conceive of any way a cable could do something like this, even if it was shorting (all I can imagine happening is it fries the drive because of an electrical short).

I live in Canada, so we have particularly cold winters. However the computer is in my house and isn't exposed to temperatures my body couldn't withstand. The temperatures are still far above the normal operating temperatures for an SSD, or pretty much any electrical component.

Any ideas? I spent plenty of time researching this issue when it first happened, and did again when it happened with this drive today. All I get is results for drives experiencing "cold boot" issues, none of which have this temperature variable.

Best Answer

My SSD has been doing the same for 3 months. Last night I left my heater next to MY PC set at 65 and pointing at the computer case 1 foot away. Sure enough the computer booted just fine today, the first time in months that it didn't crash on bootup. And I have been assuming the SSD was at fault the whole time... Maybe some other component but this PC never had this issue with cold when I had a normal hard drive. I'm getting a new SSD.

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