Samsung 860 EVO SSD M.2 components

[ruede]

I am trying to recover data from a faulty 1tb Samsung 860 EVO M.2 which appears to be missing the two components which I have circled in red on the attached image (downloaded from samsung alongside a close-up of the faulty SSD). Can anyone tell me what they are?

The SSD (which has Win 10 installed) is not detected either on boot up or when plugged in as an external drive. However, when warmed up with a hair dryer it boots normally and gets past the login page then freezes before I can access/copy files from it.

Attachments

[fzabkar]

Those components are not populated:

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/12408/imgp0268.jpg
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12408/the-samsung-860-evo-m2-2tb-ssd-review

[ruede]

Thanks for pointing that out.

One more question please: to identify any short, bad connection, bad components etc, that may be responsible for the lack of function, my plan is to run a very low voltage through it and watch for hot spots on a thermal camera. Does that sound like a sensible next step to identifying what's wrong?

[Lardman]

If warming the drive up gives you access I'd clone it ASAP before doing anything else with it. Which chips are you warming the controller or the nand?

[ruede]

Yes my goal is to clone it asap but it freezes a few seconds after accepting the Win10 password on start-up. The mouth of the hairdryer was too large to focus just on the controller (and surrounding micro-components), but that was what I aiming to warm up. Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks in advance.

[fzabkar]

If you can provide a detailed photo, I could show you the voltage test points. That would at least tell you if your problems are due to an intermittent fault in one of the power components.

[Lardman]

Yes my goal is to clone it asap but it freezes a few seconds after accepting the Win10 password on start-up.

You're not trying to boot into windows from the drive are you ? Clone it from another operating system on another drive. hhdsuperclones livecd should do.

If this is important take it to a professional before the drive dies completely.

[ruede]

If you can provide a detailed photo, I could show you the voltage test points. That would at least tell you if your problems are due to an intermittent fault in one of the power components.

Thanks fzabkar - that would be a big help. Hopefully the attached photo is clear enough.

Attachments

[ruede]

Yes my goal is to clone it asap but it freezes a few seconds after accepting the Win10 password on start-up.

You're not trying to boot into windows from the drive are you ? Clone it from another operating system on another drive. hhdsuperclones livecd should do.

If this is important take it to a professional before the drive dies completely.

Thanks for the hhdsuperclone suggestion - the direct USB mode on it is what I need. My problem is that this SSD is not recognised by my system when plugged in as an external drive.

You're right about the wisdom of taking it someone who knows what they're doing but I live in a remote rural part of France where such persons don't exist. I'd like to have a go at getting it to work (ie. without taking silly risks) long enough to clone the contents. If not I'll take a trip to the big smoke to get help.

[fzabkar]

The photo is useless. Sorry.

As for USB, I wouldn't do this. Instead, purchase an m.2 SATA to 2.5" SATA adapter, and then plug the drive into a SATA port in your computer.

BTW, if your SSD works better when you warm it up, then perhaps you should consider removing the heat spreader.