Forensic level data recovery? Anyone here?
Discussion
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
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
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
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
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.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.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/mi...
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.
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.
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.https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/mi...
Been there myself once or twice.
My 6-month old, 30% full 1TB Crucial T700 boot drive (with Phison controller) exhibited the same problem immediately after Windows wouldn't restart after that dodgy update.
SSD was not showing in the BIOS, nor when I put it into one of my many external enclosures. Couldn't see it on Windows or Mac machines.
Luckily I had a day old image that I could restore to a new drive (T710 with Silicon Motion controller), but it was a few days before I realised what was likely to have been the culprit. There was nothing important on the original drive, just Windows, apps, games launchers...but it was quicker to restore from a backup than to reinstall everything.
However, I'm not going to test that the new SSD is immune from the issue as I've now paused Windows Update until I'm confident the next update won't break anything...and no we hear Microsoft's planning on removing the 'pause updates' option so that these 'security updates' can be rolled out immediately.
But of course Microsoft will never accept responsibility for anything dodgy update that's forced on consumers.
SSD was not showing in the BIOS, nor when I put it into one of my many external enclosures. Couldn't see it on Windows or Mac machines.
Luckily I had a day old image that I could restore to a new drive (T710 with Silicon Motion controller), but it was a few days before I realised what was likely to have been the culprit. There was nothing important on the original drive, just Windows, apps, games launchers...but it was quicker to restore from a backup than to reinstall everything.
However, I'm not going to test that the new SSD is immune from the issue as I've now paused Windows Update until I'm confident the next update won't break anything...and no we hear Microsoft's planning on removing the 'pause updates' option so that these 'security updates' can be rolled out immediately.
But of course Microsoft will never accept responsibility for anything dodgy update that's forced on consumers.
Edited by mmm-five on Tuesday 2nd September 15:03
I haven't been particularly following the Microsoft/Phison story - saw stuff claiming there were problems but not that these claims had been "debunked".
However, JayzTwoCents seems to be able to trigger the problem pretty much on demand, if you want to take his video at face value :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbFIUu_7LIc
(from about 7'20 is where he starts provoking it, 9'00 for the crash)
As he describes it though, this is not a permanent failure - the drive comes back after a full cold boot (PSU off & on).
However, JayzTwoCents seems to be able to trigger the problem pretty much on demand, if you want to take his video at face value :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbFIUu_7LIc
(from about 7'20 is where he starts provoking it, 9'00 for the crash)
As he describes it though, this is not a permanent failure - the drive comes back after a full cold boot (PSU off & on).
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff