System fails to boot on PC despite being a dead NVMe SSD.
System fails to boot on PC despite being a dead NVMe SSD.
Hello, I have a desktop/server installed in April 2022 that has a couple of problems. I'm using Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS. When I tried to connect via SSH today, the system asked for a reboot. After restarting, it worked for a short time before suddenly beeping and showing filesystem errors. It looked like the boot drive vanished from `/dev`. Since I couldn't run any commands after disconnecting it, I powered it off by holding the power button. In BIOS I noticed the boot drive was missing, but the HDDs were okay. I ran memtest86 on a USB stick and got no errors. Then I booted into Linux Mint from another USB, which still showed the missing drive, though the ZFS pool seemed normal.
I moved the boot drive from the top slot to the bottom, but couldn't enter BIOS anymore. After that, I removed the SSD, but still couldn't access BIOS—after turning it on, the monitor turned off because it didn’t receive a signal. I unplugged everything except the monitor and a different wired keyboard, but nothing changed; neither HDMI output appeared.
I tried clearing the CMOS by shorting CLRTC (see this link: https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1040820/). When I pressed power, the Power LED blinked rapidly, then slowly between 1-3 medium blinks, and eventually stopped. No visible damage was seen on the motherboard or SSD.
I connected the SSD to another PC using an external enclosure, but it displayed the same issue regardless. I’m wondering if there are any solutions to get the system running with a USB boot device instead. The specs are: CPU Intel i5-12500 M/B, ASUS PRIME B660M-A, 16GB RAM (2 sticks), Crucial DDR4 3200MHz CL16 Ballistix Black, PSU Fractal Design ION+ 760P NVMe, boot drive ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite 256GB, HDDs 4x WD Red Plus 4TB.
This seems unusual... Looking back at my tests, I realized I had disconnected the Ethernet cable. It appears the system can't start without it, even after resetting the CMOS.