Devices · SSDs and NVMe drives
An SSD gives you nothing to listen for. The machine shuts down as usual, and by morning the BIOS lists no drive whatsoever. Three faults cover very nearly all of it: a controller that stops, firmware that corrupts, and power that goes during a write. An instrument PC out of a Pennyfoot Street lab in Nottingham and a family machine in Sherwood arrive with the same three, and WD and Crucial badges reach us more than any others. Work happens at the flash itself, sooner rather than later. One drive: £300 + VAT, once the free look is done.
Ask an engineer, and the first look is free
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| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| It gives its own name as SATAFIRM S11 | One cause only: a Phison controller running from its ROM | Leave the vendor utility alone |
| Nothing appears in the BIOS | Controller or firmware almost always, with sound flash behind it | That is chip-level work |
| Reported as 0GB, or at some plainly wrong size | The flash translation layer, which maps where everything sits, has failed | Stop restarting it |
| SMART health drops away overnight | Genuine cell wear — or a controller talking nonsense | Read the maker's advisory, then image the drive |
| 0x800701E3 on every read | That one is hardware | Image it; run no repair tool of any kind |
| Boot device not found, and it began with a firmware update | A firmware write that finished half-way, and nothing boots | Keep the power off it |
Your device picks up a case number the day it arrives, and an engineer then establishes what has genuinely gone wrong — at no cost, and ahead of everything else. Two things come back to you together: a plain account of what can be lifted and what cannot, and one fixed figure in writing. Agree to that figure, or turn it down and pay nothing.
Every power-on costs a failing drive something. On this bench it is instead started in a vendor service mode, which lets us speak to the flash directly and shuts worn-out firmware out of the conversation.
When the controller answers nothing, each chip is addressed on its own terms, and software rebuilds the translation table. On its own a raw dump means nothing. Hand the table back to it and your folder tree comes with it.
Wear levelling is meant to scatter a document across every die fitted, and it does. Sequence is then restored piece by piece, the volume goes back together, and each entry is checked against the listing that travels out with the job.
The file list reaches you before any invoice does. Say yes and it is billed; say no and it is not — and on most jobs, if nothing comes back there is nothing to pay. Whatever comes off goes home on media bought in for your case, carriage at our end. Nothing here is closed until you have opened those files on your own machine.
Before you take an update: flashing rewrites the map of where your data physically lives, and should the power drop part-way there is no older version underneath. Nearly all of them go through cleanly, so none of this argues against updating — just copy your files first. What should never go through it is a drive that is already misbehaving.
Halfway through a firmware update the laptop's system SSD stopped answering, and nothing would come off it afterwards. Technical mode gave an engineer a way in, and the translator tables were rebuilt until the controller could once again map the flash beneath it. A photographer's ten years of edits opened at the first try.
Possibly, though the window is hours here, not days. Blame TRIM: leave an SSD powered and it goes round clearing the blocks that used to hold your deleted file, on a schedule nobody asked it for. No spinning disk ever did anything of the sort. Normally, pulling the plug is the wrong instinct — on this one fault it is exactly right.
Rarely. Silence generally means the firmware or the controller has stopped, and the flash behind both is untouched. It is bench work to read those chips, and the greater part of what they held comes back.
Different rather than tougher. A hard disk goes at its moving parts. An SSD goes at its controller, or in the tables the controller keeps. Provided TRIM has not been round those blocks yet, the outlook is decent.
Those come in too, and they go through alongside the Mac and laptop work. Nothing changes about the task at the flash — what changes is that the chips stay where they are and get read there.
The look costs nothing. What comes back to you is a file list — what opened, what did not — plus one figure to finish the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. Most jobs carry no fee at all unless the data comes back. Leave the drive switched off until you have that list.