Solid state drives fail abruptly and almost silently: present on Monday, undetected on Tuesday. In most cases the NAND still holds everything and the layer that reads it has stopped answering, which is recoverable. Two things decide whether it is worth attempting, and we settle both before you commit to anything.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/nvme0 → Device: Samsung 990 PRO · 2 TB NVMe → Status: NOT DETECTED — controller in safe mode → Client: confidential · Oxford, Oxfordshire $ bdr engineer-working → Controller: reached · garbage collection halted → Translation layer: rebuilt from NAND → Imaging: 1.9 TB / 2 TB · 9sectors mapped $ bdr verify → ✓ documents — 19,400 files → ✓ photos — 22,800 files → ✓ drive recovered — data back
A firmware update rewrites the service area a recovery needs to read, and on an already-unstable drive an update that stalls can leave it permanently unreadable. Secure erase is irreversible by design. If the drive has started dropping out, stop using it.
SSDs give almost no warning, and the symptoms look identical whatever the cause.
Both can end a recovery before it starts, so both are established at the diagnostic rather than discovered later.
Encryption. Many SSDs encrypt by default — Class 0, TCG Opal, Samsung’s portable T-series, or BitLocker layered over the top. Without the password or key, perfectly healthy NAND yields nothing usable, and no laboratory changes that.
TRIM. If what you want was deleted from a working drive, TRIM has almost certainly erased those blocks within minutes and there is nothing left to read. That is genuinely different from a drive that failed while holding your data — a dead drive cannot run TRIM, which is why failure preserves what continued health would have destroyed. Guide: Samsung 860 EVO controller and firmware corruption.
Two routes, and the diagnostic establishes which applies before you commit to anything.
SSD work is manufacturer-specific, so the make, model and capacity determine the route before the drive is even opened.
Where the controller can be revived, it is placed in its diagnostic mode so the service area and translation tables can be read directly.
From there the drive is cloned, with unstable regions re-read until they return consistent results rather than accepting a first pass.
Where the controller cannot be brought up, the flash is read directly — then de-interleaved, ECC-corrected and unscrambled to that controller’s arrangement.
NTFS, APFS, ext or exFAT reconstructed from the image, with files verified by opening rather than counting.
One price for SATA, M.2 and NVMe alike.
SSD and NVMe recovery is from £300 +VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic and a written quote. Most jobs are no fix, no fee; controller-level physical work carries a 50% deposit with the balance due only on success.
Send the bare drive rather than the machine, and tell us the make, model and capacity. If the SSD is soldered to a laptop board rather than removable, say so — we will tell you straight away whether it is something we can take on. Full write-ups: an Asus ZenBook NVMe gone overnight, a Lenovo SSD knocked offline by a power cut and Samsung NVMe Recovery: A School’s Overheating SSD.
Send the drive in for its free diagnostic with a brief fault description; an engineer evaluates it and confirms the exact quote in writing before any work starts.
Getting your data back starts with getting the drive to us. Pack it safely, enclose your contact details, and once we've run the free diagnostic we confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Need a scoped quote first? Describe the drive and fault on the form and an engineer will assess it and reply with a tailored quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 01865 593000.
The technical questions we get most about failed SSDs.
Usually. Most serious SSD failures are the controller or its firmware rather than the flash, so the NAND still holds your data behind a layer that stopped answering. It is reached in vendor mode and imaged read-only.
Typically a controller or firmware fault. The tells are a drive that vanishes from the BIOS, shows a blank model string, or reports an absurd capacity. None of those indicate the flash has failed — only the layer that reads it.
Usually not from a working drive. TRIM erases the blocks behind deleted files within minutes and the erasure is genuine. A failed SSD cannot run TRIM, which is why a dead drive is often the better prospect.
It can end it entirely. Many SSDs encrypt by default and BitLocker may be layered on top, so without the password or recovery key the data cannot be decrypted regardless of the drive’s condition. We establish this first, before any work.
Not where the storage is soldered to the board and the board has failed — on T2 and Apple Silicon Macs in particular the encryption key dies with the board and the data is beyond everyone. Tell us the model and we will say straight away.
From £300 plus VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic and a written quote, with most jobs no fix, no fee. Controller-level work carries a 50% deposit with the balance payable only on success.
Free diagnostic, a flat £300 + VAT per drive, no fix no fee on most jobs, and every make of SSD and NVMe drive recovered in-house at controller, firmware and NAND level. Start your recovery today.