Disabled Intel Optane, now Automatic Repair bootloop

[snovvman]

On a circa 2018 HP Spectre 13 (8565U) with Intel Optane NVMe:  Disabled Optane via Intel Optane & Memory Manager in Windows.  The app threw an error and prompted to reboot to "complete repair".

Upon reboot, Windows "Preparing Automatic Repair", "Diagnosing Your PC", then "...couldn't repair your PC".  Windows will not boot in safe mode. Under Advanced Recovery (AR) command prompt (mount point x:), c: returns "The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."  Under AR Reset PC, it fails both local and cloud install.  System Restore Point is not accessible.  System Image recovery cannot find any image.

In the UEFI/BIOS, disabling secure boot did not work, nor did enabling legacy boot.  There is no option to disable Intel RST and no other options that looked like it would help (no setting for Intel disk controller). The Optane disk did pass the HP hardware test fine and UEFI sees the drive (Optane+data) fine.

Mounting the NVMe on another computer via USB did not help. Though the computer saw the drive, it could not mount the file system.  Ran several data recovery tools such as Disk Drill and Easeus against the Optane mounted via USB, but the tools did not find any user created files, just Windows file system such as \Windows, \Users\Public, etc.  Putting the Optane drive in two other current generation laptops (Dell XPS and Asus Zenbook) yielded no results, no additional UEFI settings that helped.

Bottom line:  The drive won't boot, Windows automatic repair does not work, will not boot in safe mode, no UEFI options to disable Optane/enable SATA, no way to recover the data so far.

There are a few posts from others with similar problems, but no solutions that works for this case.  How can the SSD be rendered so quickly inaccessible from clicking "disable" in the Intel Windows app?  Any ideas how data recovery can be done?  Or, is the Optane device now "bricked"?  Naturally, the key is getting the data back. Any help would be much appreciated.

[BrusC_Intel]

Hello, snovvman.

Thank you for posting in the Intel Community Support forums.

I reviewed your thread regarding your system not being able to boot after trying to disable the Optane Memory, I understand the huge inconvenience, especially if this is the only copy of the data.

There are no additional data recovery steps we can offer. If you connect the SSD/HDD to a different computer and the data cannot be recovered via regular means, the best option would be to contact a data recovery professional or use third party application to try to recover the information, you will find some options for data recovery companies in the following link:

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006357/memory-and-storage.html

I will keep the thread open in case other community members would like to share any recommendations, but it will not continue to be monitored for support, if you require assistance with anything else in the future, you can always contact us back by opening a new thread or using any of the other support contact methods: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/contact-support.html

Best regards,

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[snovvman]

Thank you for your reply.  Do you know why the Optane device failed/become corrupted?  I followed Intel's instructions to disable Optane and there were no unusual situations.  I've lost confidence in Optane from this event.  I've read others having similar issues and have also lost data.  Again, why did this occur? 

Also, does the Optane device do any sort of automatic TRIM or garbage collection?  If yes, does it mean that the longer I left the computer on, the less of a chance that data recovery is even possible?

Lastly, how does data recovery from an Optane NVMe differ from a standard NVMe SSD?