I've been using my intel 520 120gb ssd for about 6 months on windows 7 without a single problem. Last night everything worked fine and this morning when I turned on the computer I get invalid boot disk. I pulled it out and connected it to a work computer and it says its all unallocated space. Seems like it will let me format it and install windows again but I dont know if I should trust it now. Any ideas on what could have happened? I have backups so I can live without saving the data on it.

Ouch!  Hate to hear that with an Intel ... I've NEVER (knock on wood) had an Intel SSD unit fail 

 

If you have an image of the OS, just restore the image; then restore your data and you should be good to go.    Otherwise you'll need to reload the OS and then restore your data.

 

But it's really strange that this happened.    Is the system UPS protected?  If not, did you have a power outage that may have "spiked" the drive?

 

I'd reload it; then see if all is well.    If not ... or if this happens again ... I'd contact Intel and get a replacement.    The good news is these drives have 5-year warranties 

It's on a pure sine ups so it shouldn't be power related. I did run the intel ssd optimizer just before turning it off last night so I hope that didn't do it. I will re image it when I get home from work and see what happens.

Try this app

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=18455

Try this app

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=18455

 

He DID ...

I did run the intel ssd optimizer just before turning it off last night so I hope that didn't do it ...

 

... unfortunately running that is what (apparently) hosed the drive 

 

I've been using my intel 520 120gb ssd for about 6 months on windows 7 without a single problem. Last night everything worked fine and this morning when I turned on the computer I get invalid boot disk. I pulled it out and connected it to a work computer and it says its all unallocated space. Seems like it will let me format it and install windows again but I dont know if I should trust it now. Any ideas on what could have happened? I have backups so I can live without saving the data on it.

 

Did you shutdown the computer or leave it running? Recently, like again this morning, Windows has taken to rebooting in the middle of the night, while engaged in tasks. Somethings, like optimizers will not take kindly to being interrupted.

I ran the intel toolbox and continued using the computer for another half hour without problems. Did a proper shutdown with the start menu. I've reinstalled windows and all seems well now. Don't know why the drive decided to crash but I will see what happens over the next couple weeks.

Glad all's working well, but it's certainly strange that this happened.  I have to believe it has SOMETHING to do with the SSD Toolbox actions you ran ... perhaps there were some deferred items that were done on the next reboot and didn't work correctly.  But in any event all is well now ... and will hopefully remain that way.    I've used a LOT of different SSD brands over the years, and now use ONLY Intel and Crucial units, as they've been by far the most trouble-free.    In fact, as I noted above, I've NEVER had an Intel unit fail !!  (Nor have I had the issue you just had !!)

 

 

I had a somewhat similar issue, due to a dumb mistake I made when adding a new email account to Outlook 2010. My mistake resulted in corrupting my outlook.pst file which caused Outlook to crash. I also had Firefox open at the time of the crash. On reboot the BIOS (UEFI) wouldn't recognize my SSD (Corsair) boot drive. So I manually booted from the SSD into Windows safe mode and ran chkdsk on the SSD. Chkdsk found and repaired two corrupt files, the outlook.pst and a Mozilla cookie. I rebooted into the BIOS and reassigned the SSD as primary boot again, upon which Windows booted fine. I restored my outlook.pst from a backup before running Outlook again, and everything has worked fine since.

 

So I'd speculate that in the OP's case running the SSD utility possibly corrupted a file or two on the SSD, which made it suspect to the BIOS.

It has happened again after running the intel utility so I think I will just avoid it. Can't do much right now as we had a pretty bad ice storm and have had no power for over 24 hours.

I've read some accounts that the SSD Toolbox has some issues with some models with specific firmware versions => personally, I've never run it since the early X-25 days (when it was necessary to do some firmware updates).