Professional SSD Data Recovery

Aesonlabs provides professional data recovery from failed, damaged and non-responsive solid state drives. We recover data from SATA SSDs, M.2 SATA and NVMe drives, external solid state storage and other flash-based devices affected by controller failure, firmware corruption, NAND degradation, electronic faults, damaged translation tables, encryption-related complications and logical corruption.

SSD data recovery is fundamentally different from conventional hard drive recovery. There are no platters or read/write heads, but the absence of mechanical parts does not make a failed SSD simple to recover. Modern SSDs depend on a controller, firmware, NAND memory, internal translation tables and, increasingly, hardware encryption to turn the raw contents of the memory chips into the files seen by the operating system.

Every SSD is therefore diagnosed individually before a recovery method is selected.

SSD Problems We Recover

Solid state drives can fail with very little warning. An SSD may work normally one day and become completely undetectable the next, while other drives begin freezing, disconnecting, reporting an incorrect capacity or entering a state where the controller responds but user data can no longer be accessed normally.

The symptoms are only the beginning of the diagnosis. Two SSDs showing exactly the same behaviour can have completely different underlying failures.

SSD Not Detected

An SSD that disappears from BIOS, the operating system or a storage controller may have an electronic fault, damaged firmware, a failed controller, problems within the NAND memory or another failure preventing normal initialization.

In some cases the controller remains responsive even though the SSD cannot provide normal access to user data. This can create opportunities for controller-specific technological access using professional recovery equipment.

A completely electrically dead SSD presents a different problem and may require board-level diagnosis before communication with the controller is possible.

SSD Detected With the Wrong Capacity

Some failed SSDs continue to identify but report an incorrect capacity, generic identification information or otherwise abnormal parameters.

This can occur when the controller is unable to correctly load or reconstruct the internal information required to translate logical addresses into physical locations within NAND memory.

The fact that an SSD is still detected does not necessarily mean it is safe to continue attempting normal reads.

SSD Freezing, Disconnecting or Becoming Extremely Slow

NAND memory wears and degrades over time. As read errors increase, the controller may spend progressively more time attempting error correction, managing unstable memory or performing internal background operations.

A failing SSD can consequently become extremely slow, disappear during file transfers or repeatedly disconnect and reconnect.

When important data is involved, repeatedly restarting large file copies or running diagnostic benchmarks can make an unstable recovery situation more difficult.

Electronic and Power Circuit Failures

An SSD contains considerably more than NAND memory and a controller. Voltage regulators, power-management components, capacitors and other supporting circuitry must operate correctly before the controller and NAND can initialize.

Power surges, failed components, liquid damage, incorrect power conditions and shorted circuitry can leave an SSD apparently dead even when the NAND containing the data remains intact.

Board-level diagnosis can sometimes identify a power-related fault and restore sufficient operation for controlled data extraction.

Controller and Firmware Failures

The SSD controller is responsible for managing NAND memory and presenting stored information to the host computer as conventional logical sectors.

If the controller cannot correctly initialize its firmware, service information or translation structures, the SSD may remain busy, report incorrect information, become inaccessible or stop presenting user data entirely.

Professional SSD recovery systems can provide specialized technological modes for supported controller and firmware families. These methods may allow access that is not available through an ordinary SATA or NVMe connection.

How Professional SSD Recovery Works

SSD recovery begins by determining what the device is actually doing electrically and logically rather than assuming that a non-detected drive has suffered NAND failure.

1. Diagnosis

The SSD is identified by interface, controller family, NAND configuration and observed failure behaviour.

Depending on the case, diagnosis can include examination of power consumption, supply voltages, PCB condition, controller response, firmware state, NAND behaviour and the manner in which the device identifies to professional recovery equipment.

2. Electronic and Controller Assessment

If the SSD is electrically dead, the power circuitry and PCB must be evaluated before more advanced recovery methods can be considered.

If the controller responds but normal data access is unavailable, the next question is whether the controller and firmware combination has an established technological recovery method.

This distinction matters. An SSD that appears dead to an ordinary computer may still provide diagnostic communication, while an SSD with no controller response may require electronic work before firmware-level recovery can even begin.

3. Firmware and Technological Access

For supported SSD families, professional recovery equipment can provide controller-specific access to internal SSD functions that are not available to ordinary operating systems or consumer software.

Depending on the controller and failure, this can include work with firmware structures, translator information, initialization procedures and other internal mechanisms required to regain access to user data.

4. Stabilization and Data Imaging

Once access to user data has been established, the objective is to acquire the readable contents to separate storage.

As with a failing hard drive, the goal is not normally to repair an SSD and return it to everyday service. Temporary access may depend on specialized recovery procedures and the underlying device may remain unstable.

Imaging strategies can be adjusted around unreadable or unstable regions rather than repeatedly forcing conventional file copies from the original SSD.

5. Filesystem Reconstruction and File Recovery

After the available data has been acquired, the resulting image is analyzed for partitions, filesystem structures, directories and files.

Whenever possible, subsequent filesystem reconstruction and file recovery are performed from the acquired image rather than continuing to work from the original failed SSD.

SATA, M.2 and NVMe SSD Recovery

The term M.2 describes a physical form factor and does not by itself identify how an SSD communicates.

An M.2 SSD may use SATA or PCI Express/NVMe, and determining the actual interface is important when selecting diagnostic equipment, adapters and recovery procedures.

Aesonlabs works with a range of solid state storage formats including:

• 2.5-inch SATA SSDs
• M.2 SATA SSDs
• M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs
• mSATA SSDs
• PCIe solid state drives
• Supported Apple solid state storage
• External and USB solid state drives
• Enterprise solid state storage

NVMe does not eliminate the underlying challenges found in other SSD technologies. NVMe drives still rely on controllers, NAND memory, firmware, translation mechanisms and supporting electronics, although the interface, controller generations and recovery methods can be substantially different from older SATA SSDs.

SSD Controllers and PC-3000 Support

One of the most important differences between SSD and conventional hard drive recovery is that advanced recovery capability can depend heavily on the controller and firmware used inside the device.

Aesonlabs uses professional PC-3000 SSD recovery technology for supported solid state drive families. Current PC-3000 SSD systems provide technological support for numerous controller families used by manufacturers including Samsung, SanDisk, Western Digital, Kingston, Crucial, Micron, Intel, ADATA, Lexar, Seagate and many others.

Support should not, however, be interpreted simply by the brand printed on the SSD.

Two SSDs sold under different brands may use closely related controllers, while two drives carrying the same brand name may contain completely different controller and NAND combinations. Even SSDs using the same controller can run substantially different firmware.

For this reason, the controller and firmware combination is identified during diagnosis and compared with currently available technological support.

View the current PC-3000 SSD supported drive and controller list

What if an SSD Controller Is Not Supported?

There are thousands of SSD models and controller/firmware combinations on the market, and new ones appear continuously. No professional recovery platform can provide a ready-made technological solution for every controller immediately.

An SSD that is not listed as supported by PC-3000 is therefore not automatically considered unrecoverable.

The first step is determining why the SSD is inaccessible. If the failure is electronic rather than an internal controller or translation problem, component-level diagnosis may still provide a path to the data.

In other situations, an unsupported or poorly documented controller may respond differently when power conditions, initialization behaviour or other electrical characteristics are investigated.

We have encountered cases where carefully controlled changes to power conditions or voltage behaviour allowed a device to initialize sufficiently for data acquisition even though there was no conventional controller-specific recovery procedure available.

These methods are case-specific and are not a universal workaround for unsupported controllers, but they are one reason we do not determine recoverability solely by checking whether an SSD model appears on a software support list.

Encryption and Modern SSD Recovery

Encryption is one of the major complications in modern SSD recovery.

Many SSD controllers use hardware encryption internally as part of normal operation, even when the owner never deliberately enabled a password or full-disk encryption product. The relationship between the controller, firmware, translation system and stored NAND data can therefore be critical to successful recovery.

This is also why simply removing NAND memory chips from a modern SSD does not necessarily produce usable files.

Raw NAND may contain data that has been distributed across multiple memory dies, transformed by the controller, mixed with error-correction and management information, and encrypted using controller-dependent mechanisms.

On some modern SSD architectures, preservation or successful operation of the original controller can therefore be essential.

Additional software encryption such as BitLocker, FileVault or other full-disk encryption can introduce another layer. When the underlying SSD can be successfully acquired, access to encrypted user data may still require the appropriate password, recovery key or other credentials.

NAND Memory Failures

NAND flash memory has a finite endurance and becomes increasingly difficult to read as cells wear or deteriorate.

Modern SSD controllers compensate for this through error correction, wear levelling, bad-block management, over-provisioning and other techniques. These mechanisms normally operate invisibly to the user.

During failure, however, degraded NAND can interfere with initialization, firmware structures or access to user data. Some drives become extremely slow or unstable before failing completely, while others provide little obvious warning.

Recovery depends on the architecture of the SSD, the condition of the NAND and whether the controller can still provide or be made to provide the translation necessary to reconstruct user data.

Why Removing the NAND Chips Is Not Always the Answer

Older flash recovery techniques are sometimes described simply as removing the NAND chips, reading them and rebuilding the data.

Modern SSDs can make this considerably more complicated.

The controller may distribute data across multiple NAND devices, perform wear levelling, apply error correction, maintain complex translation structures and use hardware encryption. A raw NAND dump therefore does not necessarily resemble the logical data that the computer originally saw.

Where controller-based technological access is possible, retaining the original controller's ability to interpret the NAND can be considerably more useful than immediately moving to invasive chip-level methods.

The appropriate approach depends on the SSD architecture and the actual failure.

Logical SSD Recovery and TRIM

Not every SSD case involves failed electronics or firmware.

Data can also become inaccessible because of partition damage, filesystem corruption, accidental formatting or deletion while the SSD itself remains functional.

SSD logical recovery differs from hard drive logical recovery in one particularly important respect: TRIM.

When deleted blocks are released through TRIM and subsequently processed by the SSD's internal garbage-collection mechanisms, the underlying contents may no longer remain recoverable in the way deleted sectors sometimes remain recoverable on magnetic hard drives.

For this reason, an SSD containing accidentally deleted or formatted data should be powered down as soon as practical rather than continuing to run the operating system or installing recovery software onto the affected device.

What Not to Do With a Failing SSD

What happens after an SSD begins failing can affect the eventual recovery result. If the drive contains important data:

• Do not repeatedly power-cycle an SSD that is disappearing, freezing or failing to initialize.
• Do not initialize or format the SSD because Windows or another operating system asks you to.
• Do not run CHKDSK or filesystem-repair utilities before the physical condition of the SSD is understood.
• Do not run benchmarks or stress tests on an unstable SSD.
• Do not update the SSD firmware in an attempt to make an inaccessible drive work again.
• Do not write new data to an SSD containing deleted or accidentally formatted information.
• Do not assume that removing the NAND chips is automatically the correct recovery method.

The safest course depends on whether the problem is electronic, firmware-related, NAND-related or logical, which is why diagnosis comes first.

Why Aesonlabs for SSD Data Recovery?

SSD recovery is performed directly by Aesonlabs rather than being forwarded to an unknown third-party laboratory. Each device is evaluated according to its controller, interface, NAND configuration and actual failure rather than simply by its advertised model.

Our SSD recovery work can involve electronic diagnosis, component-level troubleshooting, professional PC-3000 SSD technological access, controlled imaging and filesystem reconstruction.

Cases involving controllers without an established technological solution are also evaluated individually rather than automatically rejected because a particular model does not appear on a support list.

Customers also have access to a case-management portal where the progress of an active recovery case can be followed using the unique case number assigned when the device is submitted.

For customers who cannot bring an SSD directly to our laboratory, shipping options are available throughout Canada. Local delivery and pickup options may also be available depending on location and case requirements.

Starting an SSD Recovery Case

To begin, submit a recovery case with the SSD model and any information available about what happened before the data became inaccessible.

If the SSD came from a laptop, desktop, external enclosure or another device, include that information as well. For M.2 drives, photographs of the label can also be useful because the physical M.2 format alone does not establish whether the device is SATA or NVMe.

Once the case is created, you will receive a unique case number and instructions for delivering or shipping the SSD to Aesonlabs.

After diagnosis, we can determine the nature of the failure and the most appropriate recovery procedure.

SSD Data Recovery FAQ

Get Your SSD Evaluated

If your SATA, M.2 or NVMe SSD has stopped detecting, reports the wrong capacity, repeatedly disconnects or contains inaccessible data, avoid unnecessary attempts to repair, initialize or update the device.

Submit a case to Aesonlabs with the SSD information and symptoms you have observed. We will evaluate the device, identify the controller and failure where possible, and determine the appropriate recovery procedure.