Hi, I’m just a regular user and don’t have professional data recovery or electronics experience.
I have a Samsung T9 1TB (MU-PG1T0B) with password protection enabled. It was working normally before, but now it no longer unlocks properly.
The original Samsung Portable SSD Software can distinguish between correct and incorrect passwords. Wrong passwords show an error, while the correct password is accepted.
However, after entering the correct password, the main data partition never appears. Windows shows the drive as Offline, and after turn it back online, still only the small ~73 MB Samsung security partition remains visible.
I tested it on two different Windows PCs, including Windows 10 and Windows 11, with the same result. I also tried a Mac.
I have not formatted, reset, erased, or repartitioned the drive.
Has anyone seen this kind of T7/T9 unlock failure before? Is there any non-destructive way to recover access to the encrypted data?
Thanks.

Can you retrieve a SMART report?

https://ww.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/0bAn_IqmReie5J6k4DoiveQupV9ykqmbhKfX3QoErS8.png

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks. Here is the SMART information and the DMDE Partitions tab.

Available Spare is down to 95% (= 0x5F), so the drive has already begun to degrade.

As for the 1TB partition, it appears to have disappeared from the partition table in sector 0, unless it is some quirk of Samsung's encryption. I would use DMDE to examine sectors 0 and 149504. Use Tools -> Copy Sectors to copy these sectors to a destination file on another drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks. I checked both sectors with DMDE.

Sector 0 contains a valid MBR with the ~76.5 MB FAT security partition, and 149504 is completely zero-filled.

Since the T9 is still locked, I suspect this may be Samsung’s encrypted/locked view rather than the actual underlying data.

I can also attach the two 512-byte sector dumps if useful.

I don't know anything about these drives. How do you normally unlock it? Do you launch some tool inside the FAT partition, and does this tool set up a password challenge?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yes. Normally, when the T9 is locked, Windows only exposes the small ~76.5 MB partition containing Samsung’s Portable SSD Software.

I launch the Samsung tool from that partition, enter the password, and the software sends the unlock request to the drive. I don’t know the exact challenge/authentication protocol used internally.

In my case, the correct password is accepted, but instead of the full volume appearing, the disk becomes Offline and remains in the locked/restricted layout.

In DMDE, if you check Advanced Mode and drag the vertical scrollbar from top to bottom, do you see anything other than zeros?

If you run a read benchmark in HD Tune, do you see a discontinuity between the two partitions? I'm wondering whether the drive is just serving up zeros instead of reading the actual data. You may need to experiment with the stroke setting to see the first partition.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.