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To enable Safe Mode on the Mac: Restart holding down either Shift key on the keyboard. Safe Mode operates with minimal drivers, and can be a useful way to see if software is making your computer malfunction. To troubleshoot, restart the computer in Safe Mode and see if the problems continue. It may not be the hardware to blame at all-instead, a rogue app may be to blame. Have problems cropped up since installing a new external device? It’s possible an external device might be contributing to the issue, so remove any peripheral that isn’t necessary to the computer’s basic operation and see if that fixes the problem. Check those cables to make sure they’re in place.Īlso consider peripheral connections. An SSD replacement for a spinning hard drive uses the same physical connections for data and power. If it’s a laptop, remove the battery if possible. Let’s assume for the moment that there’s no sign of activity. If the SSD is powering up, the problem may be with a software misconfiguration or a setup issue. If you can directly observe the SSD (if, for example, it’s a replacement for a spinning hard drive), look for any sign of activity, such as a data transfer or power LED. Let’s start with the basics: Turn the computer off then turn it back on again. The following issues can explain some of these failures, so feel free to use this as a troubleshooting guide to help isolate and correct the problem. Frequent “blue screen of death/black screen of death” errors.The computer won’t boot, you get a flashing question mark (on Mac) or “No boot device” error (on Windows).Files can’t be read from or written to the drive.Any of these could be indications that an SSD is on its way out. Let’s go over some of the warning signs of a potential SSD failure.
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Need help troubleshooting a problematic solid state drive (SSD)? Here’s a list of problems SSD users commonly run into, along with some suggestions on how to fix them.
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