HDD GURU FORUMS

Hello,
This is my first post here, and I have gone through and read the posts regarding rules and have been doing my own independant research into the issue, but I'm at a wall.
My wife's SSD on her laptop failed and of course there's data on there that was not backed up.
I don't have access to any professional tools like PC3000 etc.
I do have soldering experience, a degree in electrical engineering, and patience. Hoping to turn this into a learning experience.
Would anyone be willing to provide me with what steps I should take to rule out why the controller IC isn't working?
When plugged into a SATA to USB3.0 adapter, the SM2258H gets warm, and I have used a thermal camera to look at the PCB but didn't show me anything else on the board beginning to get warm or hot (was hoping it would be a simple short).
I would love to check the voltages going into the chip but as it's BGA without any exposed test pads on the PCB, I'm unsure how I could begin testing these.
I have found a page here:
https://flashboot.ru/data_recovery/2024/04/01/free-tool-to-recovery-important-file-for-smi-2258xt.html
It's not the exact same controller IC and there's very little info about what jumper to use etc.
I have attached some photos as well. Any help would be very appreciated! Thank you!

Measure the voltages at the inductors and load switches (?).

Very unlikely the controller itself isn't working and given that it's getting warm it's being powered. You're far more likely to be looking at degraded nand resulting in firmware issues, in which case you're going to be SOL for DIY. You can prove the controller by shorting it into safe mode, removing power to the nand or removing the nand chips.

fzabkar wrote:Measure the voltages at the inductors and load switches (?).

Would love to do this but I don't have access to any testpads or a microscope.

Lardman wrote:Very unlikely the controller itself isn't working and given that it's getting warm it's being powered. You're far more likely to be looking at degraded nand resulting in firmware issues, in which case you're going to be SOL for DIY. You can prove the controller by shorting it into safe mode, removing power to the nand or removing the nand chips.

I would love to try putting it into safe mode, but I have no idea what jumper would do this. Could I temporarily short them and then plug them in and if it doesn't work try another jumper? If the NAND is degraded that doesn't sound like there's anything I could do with it.
The NAND for storage is where the firmware or microcode for the controller is? That sounds like a really bad design philosophy

Vorde wrote:

fzabkar wrote:Measure the voltages at the inductors and load switches (?).

Would love to do this but I don't have access to any testpads or a microscope.

???

Just use a multimeter to measure the voltage between the inductor and ground, eg a screw hole.