SSD data recovery pointers - where to start?

[adrko]

Hello

Apologies if my question is uneducated, I tried to find sources of good quality information, but there is just too much garbage to go through whenever I try to google something related to data recovery.

I am somewhat proficient with fixing electronics, fixing laptop motherboards almost daily.

Would like to start learning about data recovery, I just don't know where to start.

1. I have contacted major suppliers of data recovery tools and asked about tools, training courses and prices
(ACE Labs, Dolphin, Rusolut)
2. Right now I could potentially spend 3000-5000$ but from what I understand this is not enough
3. I do get couple of failed m.2 SSD drives every couple months, are there some ways to attempt data recovery on those?
(of course as a principle - I will never try anything that might make things worse or potentially damage the drive)
4. For example I have 2 cheapo stock samsung ssd drives, and a flash drive - that show up in windows and windows disk manager, but for example cannot be accesed or I cannot assign a letter ti the particular drive.

Is this the point where I absolutely have to spend 7000$-15.000$ on tools (and more on training) or I can hope to achieve some results completely on my own

Apologies if this is not the best place for this type of question and thank you for reading this.

[Lardman]

Depends on what you're trying to recover. Your budget isn't enough for anything more than UDMA, I doubt you'd get the ssd extension for that sort of cash either. You could of course try something like mrt instead.

Nobody has any support for any of the more recent samsung drives and Ace's focus appears to be on the drives at the budget end found mainly in the emerging market to the East. Support for nvme drives is improving but still limited the list is here https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-ssd- ... dated.html but just because a drive is supported that doesn't mean your sure to get a recovery from it.

There's still work to be found even with unsupported drives fixing things at a component level. Id suggest you spend time and money on the ability to distinguish the failure modes properly and leaning how to fix the drives you can without the capital investment. A decent power monitoring device at least and perhaps deepsar usb stabiliser.

Last time I sat and did the maths the ROI on most DR pro tools is around 20 recoveries if you're working retail at current going rates. It's very easy to keep a list of what you're getting sent in, if it's recoverable, the cost of doing it and the value of the case. Too many jump in without doing the background work to see if it's actually a viable business and then struggle with the costs of providing the service.

Flash recovery is it's own rabbit hole which your budget will only just get your foot in the door of. The main difference now being that very few client will actually pay decent money for the recovery. Those who will are likely to will be using high capacity, modern devices which are usually LDPC and unrecoverable, you can put a lot of time in and get nowhere.

You don't mention hdd recovery - that's a far simpler path to take.

[Arch Stanton]

Hello

4. For example I have 2 cheapo stock samsung ssd drives, and a flash drive - that show up in windows and windows disk manager, but for example cannot be accesed or I cannot assign a letter ti the particular drive.

Potentially, depending on what you mean by "can not be accessed", is recoverable using software and perhaps DeepSpar USB Stabilizer.

https://youtu.be/fuO3t89lQno?t=1865

[adrko]

Hello

4. For example I have 2 cheapo stock samsung ssd drives, and a flash drive - that show up in windows and windows disk manager, but for example cannot be accesed or I cannot assign a letter ti the particular drive.

Potentially, depending on what you mean by "can not be accessed", is recoverable using software and perhaps DeepSpar USB Stabilizer.

https://youtu.be/fuO3t89lQno?t=1865

In one of the ssd drives I found a line that has 12V and goes under the NAND, so that one if fried I assume. Power IC failure?

I usually work on macs, and there is always a schematic and a boardview. When it comes to ssds I am kinda lost, cant even find datasheets for most of the chips.

[adrko]

Thank you for your reply and taking your time to reply to my questions

Depends on what you're trying to recover. Your budget isn't enough for anything more than UDMA, I doubt you'd get the ssd extension for that sort of cash either. You could of course try something like mrt instead.

Dolphin tools (2 of them) can be purchased with one time payment or "pay as you go" with initial payment of 1400$.
https://www.dolphindatalab.com/product/dfl-pcie-4x-data-recovery-express-recharge-version/
But this is a China based company so not sure about how reliable their support really is.

Nobody has any support for any of the more recent samsung drives and Ace's focus appears to be on the drives at the budget end found mainly in the emerging market to the East. Support for nvme drives is improving but still limited the list is here https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-ssd- ... dated.html but just because a drive is supported that doesn't mean your sure to get a recovery from it.

Sales person from Dolphin says their tools: SRP USB3.0 and All In One adapter (USB3.0)(4599$ + 799$) can recover data from:
1. SATA and IDE drives.
2. U.2 NVMe SSD,
3. M.2 NVMe SSD (both M key and M+B key),
4. M.2 SATA SSD
5. USB flash drive and USB hard drive.

There's still work to be found even with unsupported drives fixing things at a component level. Id suggest you spend time and money on the ability to distinguish the failure modes properly and leaning how to fix the drives you can without the capital investment. A decent power monitoring device at least and perhaps deepsar usb stabiliser.

I looked into that stabilizer, seems like a very good investment.
I highly doubt I will get a lot of jobs where failure is obvious, like user caused physical damage. Its most of the time m.2 ssd drives just being dead or throwing errors.

What kind of power monitoring device do you have in mind? USB one for m.2 usb adapter?

Last time I sat and did the maths the ROI on most DR pro tools is around 20 recoveries if you're working retail at current going rates. It's very easy to keep a list of what you're getting sent in, if it's recoverable, the cost of doing it and the value of the case. Too many jump in without doing the background work to see if it's actually a viable business and then struggle with the costs of providing the service.

I do not expect to start making a profit or tools paying for themselves, but there is basically no competition in this field in my area.
And I do understand that without knowledge and experience the tools are pretty much useless.
I already have well established electronic repair business, 150 perfect google maps reviews and good SEO.
I'm getting data recovery jobs even without advertising them or doing SEO for this type of service.

I'm just pretty much clueless about where to start, for example for macbook board repairs there is a ton of very good quality information and resources.

Flash recovery is it's own rabbit hole which your budget will only just get your foot in the door of. The main difference now being that very few client will actually pay decent money for the recovery. Those who will are likely to will be using high capacity, modern devices which are usually LDPC and unrecoverable, you can put a lot of time in and get nowhere.

This I understand and agree with, from what I have seen - this is a whole another field.

You don't mention hdd recovery - that's a far simpler path to take.

Apart from obvious cases like a repair or HDD pcb - opening a HDD drive is out of the question.
I dont think I will have space for a clean room/hood anytime in the future. But I do get asked about HDD data recovery also. But for example HDD with stuck heads might require opening it at some point.
Not sure if this is a good idea for me to invest time in this particular branch of data recovery.

[Flash]

Hello, From my own experience over many years in Data Recovery, i started like you in 2008. The biggest mistakes i have done is buying toys. I lost many times and of course many money in toys that have to solve any problems and in reality didn't solve many problems with no support. Finally i invest in tools from AceLab and i could solve many many cases. You can speak with all good data recovery guys, they all will tell you AceLab is the only good product and you can increase your ability with their very good support.
If you really want to start in Data Recovery and don't have enough money to buy good tools, you should try to have a credit from your bank and pay every month with the succeeded cases instead of buying toys.
For your information, i had a case with a SAMSUNG 990PRO 4TB NVMe that was not recognised and not in the list of AceLab. Finally i could read it in modifying read parameters and timing in AceLab software. My client were very happy. But you have also to know that every cases are not solvable for this moment but the list is growing slowly.
I just can say now : I don't have enough money to buy cheap "tools".
Good luck in your new job.
Alain
Belgium.

[Lardman]

There's no problem with DFL as a company - although they expensive for what they're selling. You need to read between the lines as to what you're getting and what you're not.

AFAIK the DFL-PCIe is an general imager with firmware support for mechanical drives only. The all in one adapter is just that - a physical adapter and requires additional tools to image drives. None of their tools provide any NVME firmware support and I've not seen and SATA ssd firmware support (although I haven't bothered looking too deeply) as Acelabs really have a monopoly on it.

Its most of the time m.2 ssd drives just being dead or throwing errors.

Dead in what way? throwing error in what way?

There are a heap of faults that present a standard windows machine with what looks like a dead drive. You need to start being able to determine if it's a hardware failure, firmware, controller or nand and if the available tools are even available to work with the drive. You can spend a lot of cash just getting to the stage of fault finding.

Most of the decent tools will have power monitoring inbuilt, but you need something that will provide you with a power profile from working and failed drives to compare.

M2/SATA SSDs that are just reporting bad sectors can be worked on with the usual multipass imagers, voltage and thermal manipulation.

[adrko]

Hello, From my own experience over many years in Data Recovery, i started like you in 2008. The biggest mistakes i have done is buying toys. I lost many times and of course many money in toys that have to solve any problems and in reality didn't solve many problems with no support. Finally i invest in tools from AceLab and i could solve many many cases. You can speak with all good data recovery guys, they all will tell you AceLab is the only good product and you can increase your ability with their very good support.
If you really want to start in Data Recovery and don't have enough money to buy good tools, you should try to have a credit from your bank and pay every month with the succeeded cases instead of buying toys.
For your information, i had a case with a SAMSUNG 990PRO 4TB NVMe that was not recognised and not in the list of AceLab. Finally i could read it in modifying read parameters and timing in AceLab software. My client were very happy. But you have also to know that every cases are not solvable for this moment but the list is growing slowly.
I just can say now : I don't have enough money to buy cheap "tools".
Good luck in your new job.
Alain
Belgium.

Hello

Thank you, that is a very good advice and I 100% agree with what you said

[adrko]

There's no problem with DFL as a company - although they expensive for what they're selling. You need to read between the lines as to what you're getting and what you're not.

AFAIK the DFL-PCIe is an general imager with firmware support for mechanical drives only. The all in one adapter is just that - a physical adapter and requires additional tools to image drives. None of their tools provide any NVME firmware support and I've not seen and SATA ssd firmware support (although I haven't bothered looking too deeply) as Acelabs really have a monopoly on it.

Its most of the time m.2 ssd drives just being dead or throwing errors.

Dead in what way? throwing error in what way?

There are a heap of faults that present a standard windows machine with what looks like a dead drive. You need to start being able to determine if it's a hardware failure, firmware, controller or nand and if the available tools are even available to work with the drive. You can spend a lot of cash just getting to the stage of fault finding.

Most of the decent tools will have power monitoring inbuilt, but you need something that will provide you with a power profile from working and failed drives to compare.

M2/SATA SSDs that are just reporting bad sectors can be worked on with the usual multipass imagers, voltage and thermal manipulation.

Understood

I took your and other peoples advice on this and I managed to recover data from one of mentioned drives with R-Studio. There was a corrupted NTFS partition, it was taken out of a laptop, that would often crash due to cracked solder joints in RAM memory slots.
So now I understand a little bit more about SSD drives and I kind of know where to go now.

The other m.2 SSD I had to give up on:
- I checked the power consumption by connecting it to PC with USB adapter and USB C power meter.
- It was heating up significantly and was consuming roughly 3x times the power of almost identical working SSD
- So I decided I have no skill or tools required to work on that one

I am really grateful for all the advice, thank you

[fzabkar]

In one of the ssd drives I found a line that has 12V and goes under the NAND, so that one if fried I assume. Power IC failure?

I usually work on macs, and there is always a schematic and a boardview. When it comes to ssds I am kinda lost, cant even find datasheets for most of the chips.

Enterprise SSDs sometimes use the SATA 12V supply, but consumer SSDs are 5V-only. Some consumer SSDs will generate a 12V supply from the 5V supply via a boost converter within the PMIC. This supply is used by the NAND during writing (and some other purposes which I don't understand).

I have a database of SSD/HDD datasheets at hddoracle.com.

Also here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230522144629/http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/Datasheets/DATAURLS.HTM

https://web.archive.org/web/20230522152022/users.on.net/~fzabkar/Datasheets/datasheets.txt

[adrko]

I would like to use this opportunity to ask about USB flash drive data recovery.

I hate to be a "please bro" but I also hate to be misinformed.

Kingston 100 G3 USB 3.0 DataTraveler 64GB:

1. Not detected in windows or R-Studio
2. Voltages present, but I can find proper data sheet or schematics/boardview. This is the first time I attempt something like this
3. It gives a chime when connected but then I get "USB device not recognized" error
4. Nothing is getting warm, checked under a thermal cam

I managed to find this:
http://flash-extractor.com/library/PS/PS2251/PS2251-07-V/PS2251-07-V__2c_84_64_54__2x2
But I don't know what I'm looking at.

Also those:
https://www.usbdev.ru/cics/icphison/
https://monitor.espec.ws/files/ps2251-33_datasheet_700.pdf

I did some basic measurements and there is a short on pin 1 (marked on the picture)

My questions are:
1. Can I get 100% identical flash drive and transplant both chips to the working one?
2. Can I get an adapter and read contents of those chips without expensive tools or software?
If yes then could someone point me in the right direction?

[adrko]

In one of the ssd drives I found a line that has 12V and goes under the NAND, so that one if fried I assume. Power IC failure?

I usually work on macs, and there is always a schematic and a boardview. When it comes to ssds I am kinda lost, cant even find datasheets for most of the chips.

Enterprise SSDs sometimes use the SATA 12V supply, but consumer SSDs are 5V-only. Some consumer SSDs will generate a 12V supply from the 5V supply via a boost converter within the PMIC. This supply is used by the NAND during writing (and some other purposes which I don't understand).

I have a database of SSD/HDD datasheets at hddoracle.com.

Also here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230522144629/http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/Datasheets/DATAURLS.HTM

https://web.archive.org/web/20230522152022/users.on.net/~fzabkar/Datasheets/datasheets.txt

Thank you, I stumbled upon those links when doing my research.
But unfortunately I couldn't find my stuff in there and most of the links seem to be broken

I will definitely check out the hddoracle, thank you so much!

[fzabkar]

You can usually find the broken web URLs at the Wayback Machine.

You might like this ...

https://blog.archive.org/2017/01/13/wayback-machine-chrome-extension-now-available/

[Lardman]

- It was heating up significantly and was consuming roughly 3x times the power of almost identical working SSD

That should be an easy enough short to find then. Check the resistance on each of the power rails. If you don't know where they are follow VCC from the connector.

Data Traveller - that's not shorted, it looks to be PO_FLH_REB0 active low.

It's more than likely the dive has failing nand rather than anything else and will need chip off recovery. You have already found FE, VNR or PC3000 Flash are also options but will dent your wallet around 4-5K, it's far more cost effective to sub the odd flash drive out than do them in house. As the issue is with the nand not the controller or pcb moving them to another stick is likely just to move the problem.

[Arch Stanton]

My questions are:
1. Can I get 100% identical flash drive and transplant both chips to the working one?

Some times yes, sometimes no. https://youtu.be/HkLxV6q7Yww

2. Can I get an adapter and read contents of those chips without expensive tools or software?
If yes then could someone point me in the right direction?

No, these tend to be expensive. Even if you dump the data, it will be a binary blob. Not a neat scannable file system.