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Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 28th, 2014, 9:47
by zzattack
My sisters 128GB Kingston SSD died, which is apparently common for a batch of these drives as long as they haven't received a critical fw update. I learnt about that too late. Symptons I'm seeing now is that on some motherboards they no longer get past the BIOS screen, while others the disk is just not recognized. In a USB enclosure the disk usually isn't recognized. Sometimes it's seen as a 4MB uninitialized disk. Probably a flaky USB enclosure.

I want to try recovering some data if this is still possible, or to just flash the drive. Are there any knowns techniques I can perform at home?
Two images from both sides of the board:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rrfmlq937l1oj ... RST003.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/es35hawgp58il ... .22.34.jpg
There appears to be a number of unlabeled pins. Perhaps they can be of aid in debugging? Maybe there's an UART interface somewhere?

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 28th, 2014, 16:05
by arvika
Write name of the controller (Toshiba ....).

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 28th, 2014, 16:27
by fzabkar
arvika wrote:Write name of the controller (Toshiba ....).

The subject says "JMF618".

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 28th, 2014, 17:39
by arvika
But on photo i see Toshiba description. Just want to know how exactly model is it.

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 28th, 2014, 23:59
by HaQue
Hi
The most important chip number for raw recovery would be the large square one
I believe it is a toshiba

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 29th, 2014, 4:38
by fzabkar
HaQue wrote:The most important chip number for raw recovery would be the large square one. I believe it is a toshiba

Toshiba rebranded JMicron's JMF602/618 controller, as did Western Digital.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... rs-guide/4
http://www.thessdreview.com/wp-content/ ... 00x283.png (TC58NCF618GBT)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2954/2

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 29th, 2014, 6:58
by HaQue
fzabkar wrote:
HaQue wrote:The most important chip number for raw recovery would be the large square one. I believe it is a toshiba

Toshiba rebranded JMicron's JMF602/618 controller, as did Western Digital.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storag ... rs-guide/4
http://www.thessdreview.com/wp-content/ ... 00x283.png (TC58NCF618GBT)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2954/2

Ok, thanks Franc, I was reading this thread while on the road on my phone with a cracked screen.
If it is that controller, then recoverable with standard flash memory recovery technique, unsolder chips, read them all and reassemble image.

Best take to a DR shop that does flash. (not a local computer shop)3

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 29th, 2014, 9:42
by pcimage
It could maybe also be recoverable using PC3000 Flash "Active Utility" feature, which doesn't require unsoldering the chips and re-assembling the data.

This is much easier, and therefore a lot cheaper :-)

Happy to take a look if you (OP) are willing to ship to UK and pay a reasonable fee.

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 29th, 2014, 11:50
by HaQue
Its a good offer, I will vouch for pcimage

Would be good to see how it performs too :)

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 30th, 2014, 7:23
by zzattack
Thanks for that offer, can I contact you in PM pcimage?

Don't have the disk on my at this moment but I'll add the full Toshiba part nr. once I do.

Re: Recovering off Kingston SSDNOW / JMF618

Posted: March 31st, 2014, 3:41
by pcimage
You have PM