Hi all,

Someone told me about this forum, I hope I'm at the right place.

My laptop suddenly froze and it would not get past the boot screen.

I spend my time between Groningen, NL and Athens, GR so when this happened I was in Holland and I went to a local data recovery center/repair shop and asked them if they recover it or bring it back to life somehow.
They told me they can't fix it because the SSD is very specific somehow?
Now it contains some important data in it, I have backups but unfortunately it's 2 months old and I've done A LOT of work for my thesis since my last backup.
My laptop is a Lenovo L13 model.

I see there is an HDD slot visible so I took the drive out.

I read around and someone suggested I opened the drive and take a look inside. The main chip is a SM2253XT and it has 4 other chips, I think this is where the data is kept?
Does that make any sense? I don't know, lol.
I;m not touching anything else, the data is very important.

I'm currently in Greece, but will go back to NL in a couple of weeks I hope, it all depends on thsi f*ckin coronavirus thing.

All suggestions are welcomed. Anyone has experienced with this drive and wants to work with it? I'm not rich, but I can spend some money on it. Or if you think there is easy solution let me know hehe.

Thank you..!

You could contact Northwind in greece, he should be able to get data out of it.
https://forum.hddguru.com/memberlist.ph ... ile&u=9788

pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

Hi Buddy,

I read your description of drive, at first what you are using is SSD, not HDD, SM2253XT is the controller from Silicon Motion, other 4 chips is NAND flash, which can store your data.
Okay, let's goto the point directly here, since it's SSD, if appear problem, there have several possibility:
1. Loose firmware, need write firmware into controller.
2. SSD NAND appear bad blocks.
3. Other components failed.

The item 2 is the highest possibility I think, if so need replace the NAND, you will loose your data.
Item 1 is also have possibility, but if rewrite firmware inside, all data will be deleted, loose data too.

Frankly speaking, SSD is very easy loose data, and if loose can't find back, HDD is different.
So I think your data is hard to find and I suggest you in future, you can use SSD as booting drive, HDD to store data, that is the best solution, because I am manufacturer of SSD and RAM, I know them well. haha

Hope it can help you.

Thanks pepe,

Yes we can take a look, however SM2253 sounds exotic
Must be SM2258 with blurry markings.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

+1 Northwind

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Thank you all for the answers.

I got in touch with northwind, will drop the drive to theirr location today.
Hope for the best!

You are in very good hands.

Good luck

_________________
BTC Wallet - 3AoQPTBsz9PbfoanCx44Lw76Y2TwtKa1x5
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/datarecovery_morde.pt/

Thanks

A kindof surprise with this drive, it's SM2259XT.
Let's see what we can do...

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

This page says it is LDPC, so if true, cuts out Chip off AFAIK.

SM2259XT SATA 6Gb/s (Revision 3.1) 4-CH Configurable LDPC ECC 1.8V/1.2V

https://www.siliconmotion.com/products/client/detail

Hopefully there are other options!

We have solution for most 2259 versions.

Our engineer is working on this drive as we speak.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

So, an update,
I got an email last night with a file listing.
Most of my files are saved. Thank god! There are some files missing but it looks like most of the 'sos' files are good.

Pricing was a little steep but I'm happy I'll get all the data I want, so 5 stars from me.

Thank you all for your help

A quick update, I just received my data!

Data recovered, case closed! !!

A small complain, I didn't get my old drive back in the mail, but it's not a big deal

Just logged in to thank you all guys ffor help and northwind for great service!

I detest this practice. There is no reason that a shop should retain the client's property. It just fosters mistrust. I always returned the client's goods when I was in business, even down to the actual components that I replaced.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I don't see it as a big deal, what are they going to do with it anyway?

My biggest actual concern regarding this gripe is that if there was something you didn't like about a service - any service -was it discussed with the business first before posting publicly?

There are many reasons for a service to not be 100% rated, and lots of these could be fixed with a follow up.

In this case there could be many reasons.

- business did not think they would want a broken drive back, just a simple, not discussed detail
- Drive is still in Lab and data was wanted to get back to client asap, a simple logistics thing
- drive has donor parts needed to be recovered
list goes on.

for me, this appears to be a success story, and should not be hastily tainted.

I'm not denying that this is a success story. I still say that there is no moral justification in retaining property which doesn't belong to you, whatever the reason.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Some customers are weird. Often they don't do a decent verification of the file listing, or they wake up after 10 days saying that some stuff is missing. Sometimes the only way to prove their claims are invalid is by showing proof on their own drive with pictures or video. This is generally good practice, as most places offer a service warranty.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Do your terms and conditions stipulate that the storage device becomes your property after a successful recovery?

Did the customer explicitly transfer ownership of the goods to you?

If the answer to both questions is no, then you have no moral or legal right to retain the goods, irrespective of your reasons. In fact the customer may choose to submit a warranty claim, in which case even a totally unserviceable item can have substantial value.

I understand that there are those occasions where the original storage device may need to be reassessed, but the customer should be made aware of all of this in the T & C. I know that some web sites spell this out precisely, but ISTM that most do not.

BTW, I accept that this practice is commonplace throughout the service industry, and I have had numerous arguments with my peers on this subject. Often people will be billed for expensive replacement parts, and the only way they can be reasonably certain that such parts have been replaced is if they can see them for themselves.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

There are many exceptions and circumstances, so having a particular policy under terms-n-conditions would not serve well.

Companies do not care much about failed drives. It is mostly an annoyance in having to properly destroy and recycle anyway.
Sometimes, drives and failure circumstances are useful for research, but this is not often the case.
After data destruction, some parts could be recycled and used as parts, but in most cases, this is not applicable.

For us specifically, it is about workflow interruption, along with extra notes, costs, etc, in providing the failed drive back to the customer. It is an unnecessary headache.
Most times, to prevent this interruption, we propose customers we provide a new drive to store their recovered files in exchange for the old failed drive. Customers save money, we save time. Win-win.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

We have returned the drive to the client.

It's funny, because client flagged this job as urgent and asked us specifically to send him his data in Netherlands ASAP.
So we copied his data onto new media and had it shipped with next day delivery to Amsterdam at 6pm. I had someone drive to UPS warehouse to catch that day's shipments.
We didn't include the original drive in this package because we had no time to do so.

We do not keep client's drive, UNLESS client specifically ask us to (ie. they're not interested in the media anymore) OR we offer client a discount for that purpose, if the drive interests us (ie. it's rare etc). Mind you, we have more than 25,000 drives in stock, and we're running out of space.

Client's original drive is in the mail and should be in his hands in the next couple of days.

HOWEVER, it would be much simpler if he could just request it instead of complaining in public forums.
It puzzles me because I personally discussed with him over the phone a couple of times and he struck me as someone who is very communicative and wants to discuss every single detail before he gives you to go-ahead.
Anyway, I'm sure it's a small misunderstanding.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

An excellent 5 star service so lets not make a mountain out of molehill.

Out of interest what was the actual problem with the ssd?