Recovering data from a solid state drive

[laserblazer]

A mate of mine brought his laptop round because he said it was infected with ransomware. It wouldn't boot at all and when I used a boot CD there was no sign of his drive. It's a solid state sata jobby and I cannot access it via a caddy either. Can anyone recommend a utility that might recover at least some of the data?

[DAZZD88]

To be honest fella, sounds like it's knackered. It should atleast be accessbileby a caddy.

[SYNACK]

If the drive is fried under read/write cycles it may have dropped into panic mode and and may only read in read/only mode:

 

I've been using an Intel X25-M SSD for 3 years and it "failed" 3 times.

Every time I've been able to make it usable again with the same procedure:

- Boot under a Linux live CD that includes a NTFS driver (for example, ubuntu's "try ubuntu" mode)

- Mount the SSD in read-only mode (mount -t ntfs -o ro...)

- Copy the disk's data to another disk. This will recover most data, except files that were being updated when the disk failed

- Use "ATA Secure Erase" to completely erase the SSD: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

- Repartition and reformat the SSD

- Restore the disk from a backup.

- Copy data that was recovered while the disk was mounted in read-only mode (to partially recover data that's more recent than the last backup)

I'm not sure if that would work with other cases of SSD failures, but it could be a solution instead of buying a new SSD every time. In any case, you would still need a good backup strategy and use a non-SSD for documents (except those that really need fast IO).

 

Christos on May 2, 2011 10:09 AM

Coding Horror: The Hot/Crazy Solid State Drive Scale

[Arthur]

What make and model is the SSD?

[laserblazer]

I'll look when I get home.

[laserblazer]

What make and model is the SSD?

It's a crucial 128GB CT128M225

[laserblazer]

Here's the advice from Crucial. I've not tried it yet.

 

The purpose of performing a power cycle is to allow a seeminly dead SSD to be detected again.

 

1. In a laptop, install the SSD, power on and enter the BIOS.

2. Leave it in BIOS for around 30 minutes without using the laptop, then power off and disconnect the SSD altogether.

3. After 30 seconds, reconnect the SSD and repeat steps 1 and 2 again.

4. Power off, take out and reconnect the SSD and power back on.

 

After the above steps, the SSD should be detected in the system again. If not, we will need to arrange an exchange for you.

[laserblazer]

Well that didn't work. Would it be worth trying testdisk on it?

[nickelbackmicky]

Yeah it's possible to recover from your solid state sata jobby drive. once i had the similar kind of problem with my toshiba SSD and i began searching for an excellent utility which as the capability to perform solid state drive recovery. i happened to find one gem of a tool.

you can download the tool here!

in case if you have any queries regarding the solid state drive recovery do come back to me. wishing you the best recovery ever!

[laserblazer]

I'd have to recover it from the dustbin first but thanks for the advice