Hello Gurus,

I apologize for any mistakes or shortcomings in advance.

[I had a laptop 14 years ago approximately (a macbook A1342, the white unibody case from 2010 -sorry for apple haters )
I upgraded it with a 2nd hardrive : a crucial MX300 275 gb (at this time you could easily add a 2nd hardrive by swapping it with the CD-DVD Drive) in 2017 approximately.
Everything worked fine : I installed the OS on the crucial SSD and put it in the place of the original HDD (that I put in the "CD-DVDAdapter"), I was proud of myself.
Until in 2018 approximately the macbook stopped working showing the "question mark folder" at boot up. I was not very careful at this time and I though it was the flat cable connecting the drive that was faulty, the piece costed 40 € and as a student I decided to wait because it was too expensive for a 8 years old macbook.
A few months later I bought a mac pro (entreprise second hand from 2012) and installed the ssd on a SATA-slot but nothing happened, I though it was some kind of apple security (between different OS's) that didn't allow the reading of the ssd data. I wasn't really in a hurry because I though i backed up all the important data on the original HDD (a Hitachi 5K500 B250 TS5SAA250)
So time went by and 2 years ago I broke the Hitachi drive (I was trying to inspect "the insides" and messed up the head opening it), I though everything was done at this point but searching the web I discovered the world of data recovery which led me to this great forum !]

This was a long intro,

The things I tried with the MX300 SSD :

1) Connecting to various OS (macos monterey, macos catalina, ubuntu, kali and windows 10) with SATA-Usb Adapter -> nothing showed up, led from the adapter are lightning still as if nothing was plugged in.
2) Connecting to dell optiplex BIOS -> nothing showed up, Data slot empty on the BIOS
3) Trying to "unfreeze" the firmware with the "1-5 hours power cycle" method that I found on the web (Plug in the SATA power cable only on the dell pc, Boot on BIOS, Wait a couple hours, Try to connect the drive, Repeat 3 times) -> nothing showed up but I could feel the PCB was getting slightly warm.
That created some hope

I inspected the PCB but everything looked fine (beside once again I'm a noob, the circuits are shiny, no sign of oxydation) and I read the [Crucial MX300 - No SATA connection] topic from outbreak198x and fzabkar. [https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=42258&hilit=mx300]
And today I realized that the "MOSFETLoadSwitch" of my PCB looked pretty melted comparing with the ones on fzabkar pictures.
I tried to find good resolution pictures of the MX300 250gb PCB and datasheets but I just found blurry ones.

So this is what it looks like on mine :



And by inspecting it closely I found this other MOSFET soldering (i think) to be suspicious :



These are the top and bottom of the PCB :

Top :
-> I'm not sure which components could be involved and I didn't found the SSD datasheet on the web, outbreak198x and fzabkar topic is the most detailled thing I got into

Bottom :

So my question is :

What do you think of the pictures and my observation ?
What would you advise (go directly to a recovery lab -I'm afraid of the budget tho- ? fix it myself -afraid of the budget too because no tools for now-?) ?

Sorry for this long post I apologize for the mistakes again

the so called molten parts are just fine, they weren't fit by the factory, so those are not the ones you need to worry about.
Check the 0 ohm resistors near the power connector and the buck converters for their output (one terminal of the inductors is supposed to be connected to filter caps near it, that's the output). Check the supply lines for shorts (at the filter caps, without applying power), then for supply voltages at the same places with attaching sata power.
Or wait for Fzabkar to present a detailed guide...

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Hello pepe thank you, I ordered a multimeter
What do you mean by "they weren't fit by the factory" ?

Mquech

Often a PCB designer will implement optional components. These may be left unpopulated depending on the application or client. The first unpopulated "load switch" has a MOSFET bridging those same connections on the other side of the board.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.