HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi, thanks for the replies, in order to take pics of the PCB won't I have to disassemble the SSD? If so I'm pretty sure that voids the warranty.

I was told that I could open a support ticket @ OCZ's website to RMA it for them to attempt a recovery (apparently.)

I really don't understand modern hard drives, I really don't. Or could it just be my piss luck? I mean, I have PC's sitting here dating back to 1996 that I used to use constantly and up until the move over to SATA drives a few years ago I was completely oblivious to hard drive failures. All of these old PATA/IDE hard drives are still kicking at full throttle without a hiccup....

My first drive failure was back in 2007 being a 320GB WD followed by a Seagate both of which where SATA but luckily I was only using them as backup drives.

/rant.

OCZ pulled a number on me thats for sure.

I assumed they would be doing the data recovery, but they referred me to a 3rd party who quoted on average of $2000 for the recovery.

Regarding the powering on of the PC, I connected the SSD back up and the PC boots fine to BIOS, but obviously fails to recognize the drive.

I tried multiple power cables and SATA cables, plus three separate ports, I also moved the modular power cables around on the PSU but with no luck.

HaQue wrote:It may be possible to perform Flash recovery depending on what chipset it is. I don't recall seeing you post that anywhere. If it is Sandforce controller, I don't think there is a solution for most, if not all of them. If it is intel or Indilinx like an 1100 or something then a possibility.

I could do a recovery if you want to post depending on the chipset.

Do not start fiddling around with it until you have a good ide what each operation you try on it does.

If there is any firmware bug, corruption or an issue with the drive then unless you know exactly what that is and can take that into account when looking at the drive info, stats , settings and parameters... then you cant know what it is going to do next.

lets hope that there is a chance of recovery if the chipset is a sane one.

Slight possibility it could be a pcb issue did you want to ship it to AU?

all the best

Hi, I wouldn't mind shipping to the AU but what would it cost for the recovery if succeeded?

Also how do I figure out what the chipset is? I'm guessing it requires me to open it up, which would void the warranty (what ever use that is now....)

Let me know, thanks!

Interesting the 3rd party suggested $2000 for a recovery, this would imply they think it is recoverable. So wondering what questions they asked you to ascertain this? and what they are using as fodder to give you that figure. Or simply quoting so high they know you wont accept.

Can you post pics of front and back so we can see model numbers etc?

Ill PM you about shipping to me.

PentiumCore wrote:I was told that I could open a support ticket @ OCZ's website to RMA it for them to attempt a recovery (apparently.)

Yes one person will tell you one thing, and the outcome after you follow their processes look nothing like what you have imagined.

PentiumCore wrote:I really don't understand modern hard drives, I really don't. Or could it just be my piss luck? I mean, I have PC's sitting here dating back to 1996 that I used to use constantly and up until the move over to SATA drives a few years ago I was completely oblivious to hard drive failures. All of these old PATA/IDE hard drives are still kicking at full throttle without a hiccup....

My first drive failure was back in 2007 being a 320GB WD followed by a Seagate both of which where SATA but luckily I was only using them as backup drives.

Well the hard drives you are talking about are totally different to the SSD, and in any case, any of your other disks could go at any time. You have to admit with the billions of drives being manufactured, a pretty small percentage fail after they get out in general population. So yes, it is a bit of bad luck.. but also the newer ones have smaller tolerances everywhere, so once bad things start happening.. better get onto backup pronto.

SSD's are basically big flash drives. they are built on a technology that is going to have things go wrong, so what they do is design them smaller faster and then work on correcting the errors. There is a massive amount of processing and error correcting going on in all types of drives. Te amazing part is you can carry them around in laptops, throw the hard drive in your bag all year, pull out flash drives in the middle of writes etc, and only a relatively small amount of issues happen. We only focus on the bad stuff, so on forums like this it looks all doom and gloom.

The very best thing anyone can do is sto going nuts about hard disk utils reporting little fluctuations, running all kinds of tests, trolling interwebs for the "best most reliable drive" and instead focus on backups.

Its just the amount of random data loss I've had in the last 2 months is really really unimaginable.

First, I accidentally deleted about 300GB of data off my 750GB HDD and messed up the recovery major league by installing the recovery software on the same drive then trying to recover.... to the same drive (yeah, laugh away.)

Then my 32GB Samsung S4 memory card fried in the middle of an update.

Then my 3TB drive lost half its data and the other half needs recovery.

Now my 256GB SSD went up in smoke.

I mean, its UNTHINKABLE all of this could happen in one setting to one person.

Anyways, I'll try to get the pics up ASAP.

EDIT: I can't seem to get my laptop to reconize my phone so I can't get the pics up. Here is the Part Number, I'm sure thats what your after?: VTR1-25SAT3-256G.

Here are pictures of the inside of it, I'm sure they'll be useful to you somehow:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-OCZ ... 154.0.html

You have had a bad run. The thing that sucks is that most people are not using their tech any different than they have for years.. meaning they are just using it.
But with the technology being less forgiving, more complex and data being a hell of a lot more for everything, Backing up is more important than ever, but in my opinion not easy for the average family.
It takes a conscious effort, and a bit of understanding of the tech they have to perform it properly, while the tech vendors strive to take every bit of knowledge about the tech and compress it into a few finger swipes on a touchscreen.

Most people think a hard drive is the big black box all the cables go into, so what hope is there that things will get any better?

Lets hope you start having some things go right from now on!

PentiumCore wrote:Hi, thanks for the replies, in order to take pics of the PCB won't I have to disassemble the SSD? If so I'm pretty sure that voids the warranty.

AIUI, data recovery involves desoldering each NAND flash chip, sticking it in a chip reader, and then running data recovery software against the dumps. My experience in this forum is that nobody attempts to perform any physical repairs, assuming that is the problem (unlikely). However, you can take some simple voltage measurements with a multimeter to at least rule out this possibility. IIRC, there was a recent thread where the test points were identified.

Haha, you can add another to my list.

My Kingston Datatraveler just failed....

I'm actually having a laughing fit right now !

If all these faults are occurring in the same PC, then I would be replacing the power supply, or at least examining it. Specifically, I would be checking the +5V supply, as this is common to your SSD and USB devices.

The typical faults in PSUs are dried out, leaky, or swollen capacitors. See the following forum for hundreds of examples:

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32 (Power Supply Design and Troubleshooting)