ROG Ally SSD Corrupted / Partition Table "Exploded" - Stuck at 99% Scan - My Recovery Journey

Hi everyone,

I’m sharing a pretty stressful experience I just had with my ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) to see if this is a known issue or if my original SSD is simply dying.

The Incident: Out of nowhere, my Ally refused to boot and sent me straight into the BIOS/Aptio Utility. The SSD was detected in the BIOS, but it wouldn't load Windows.

I pulled the original 1TB Kioxia SSD and connected it to my desktop PC via a NVMe-to-USB enclosure to see what was going on.

The Nightmare:

1. Windows Disk Management: The drive appeared as "Not Initialized" with a Black Bar (Unallocated Space).
2. TestDisk / Repair Tools: I tried using TestDisk to restore the partition table. It found the partitions, but every time I tried a Quick or Deeper Search, it would hang at 99% indefinitely. It was impossible to "Write" the partition table back because the software would freeze at the very last sector.
3. DMDE: This tool managed to see the partition as "NTFS", but the File System was too corrupted to be mounted by Windows.

The "Solution": The only way I managed to save my data (about 200GB of files in the Users folder) was using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

• A modern version found the files in 30 mins.
• I ended up using an older Pro version I owned (11.8) which took 8 hours to do a Deep Scan, but it successfully let me copy everything to my desktop.

Questions for the community:

1. Has anyone else had their SSD "explode" like this (visible in BIOS but corrupted partition table)?
2. What could be the cause? A bad Windows update? A sudden power loss during sleep mode?
3. This 99% hang in recovery tools—does it mean the SSD has physical bad sectors at the end of the drive, or is it just a massive logical glitch?
4. Should I trust this Kioxia drive after a diskpart clean and Cloud Recovery, or should I just buy a 2230 WD Black/Sabrent and move on?

Thanks for any help or similar stories!