Forensic level data recovery? Anyone here?
Forensic level data recovery? Anyone here?
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Discussion

bristolbaron

Original Poster:

5,272 posts

229 months

Yesterday (10:58)
quotequote all
Hi,

I have an SSD that’s completely bricked after a windows update.

I had a company I use through work replace the drive but have now realised some files were saved onto the old one not onto the cloud. It would take me hours to replicate spreadsheets etc, so I asked them to quote for file recovery. They’d be sending it elsewhere, with an upfront charge of £75 to look into it and an expected cost of £700+ for full recovery on a ‘no recovery/no fee’ basis.

When plugged in it doesn’t allow access to the file system. If you try to initialise in disk management it doesn’t allow access to folder and never shows as a browsable folder. They had tried to block off pins on the drive to access but didn’t want to risk taking it further.

Does the quote sound about right to sort this? If anyone here does this for a living but cheaper I’m all ears!

Many thanks

megenzo

288 posts

153 months

Yesterday (11:08)
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Noel Lowden of Harper Shaw does in vehicle forensics, he may be able to assist

nvubu

621 posts

146 months

Yesterday (11:22)
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I've used SpinRite before - but not on SSDs (although it says it will recover from these as well).

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

JoshSm

1,791 posts

54 months

Yesterday (12:01)
quotequote all
I'd stop messing around trying DIY or even powering it and get it sent off.

It sounds like a classic SSD hardware failure and it'd be a reasonable bet that recovering it will involve direct intervention in the hardware that you can't do just by plugging it in.

frisbee

5,353 posts

127 months

Yesterday (21:23)
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JoshSm said:
I'd stop messing around trying DIY or even powering it and get it sent off.

It sounds like a classic SSD hardware failure and it'd be a reasonable bet that recovering it will involve direct intervention in the hardware that you can't do just by plugging it in.
A number of people have described the same issue with SSDs after a recent Windows update.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/mi...

Matty_

2,197 posts

274 months

Yesterday (21:37)
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Used these guys numerous times at my old company

https://www.lazarusdatarecovery.com/

Honestly, they worked miracles. Sent 5 drives to them, full recovery on 4 of them, the other which was completely f****d, they got 95% of it.
They're very resonably priced too....never used them for SSD's (was always spinny server drives) but can't fault their work or comms.


JoshSm

1,791 posts

54 months

Yesterday (21:43)
quotequote all
frisbee said:
A number of people have described the same issue with SSDs after a recent Windows update.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/mi...
Reading the original Japanese source there doesn't seem to be anything verifiable behind it. Just looks like a good thrashing kicking a tired SSD into failure.

Been there myself once or twice.