Devices · SSDs and NVMe drives
An SSD gives you no noise. The machine shuts down as usual, and in the morning the BIOS lists no drive at all. There are essentially three reasons: the controller fails, the firmware becomes corrupted, or the power goes during a write. We see the same three in an instrument PC from a lab on Pennyfoot Street, Nottingham, and in a home machine in Sherwood, and WD and Crucial badges reach us more than any others. Work happens at the flash level, sooner rather than later. One drive: £300 + VAT, once the free look is done.
Ask an engineer and the first look is free
0115 8220606
| What is happening | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| It gives its own name as SATAFIRM S11 | Only one cause: a Phison controller running from its ROM | Leave the vendor utility alone |
| Nothing appears in the BIOS | Controller or firmware failure almost always, usually with the flash left intact | That is chip-level work |
| Reported as 0GB, or at some plainly wrong size | The flash translation layer, which records where all the data 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 case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.
Each power-up costs a failing SSD some life. On this bench we start it in vendor service mode instead, which lets us talk directly to the flash and keeps worn-out firmware out of the conversation.
If the controller does not answer, each chip is addressed individually, and software rebuilds the translation table. On its own, a raw dump is worth nothing. Hand the table back and your folder structure comes with it.
Wear levelling is meant to spread a document across every die fitted, and it certainly does. The sequence is put back together piece by piece, the volume is reassembled, and each entry is checked against the list sent out with the job.
A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.
Before you take an update: firmware re-maps the physical location of your data, and if the power drops during the process there is no previous version underneath. Most updates complete without issue, so none of this argues against updating; simply back up your files first. What should never be updated is a drive that is already malfunctioning.
Halfway through a firmware update, the laptop's system SSD stopped answering, and nothing would come off it. Technical mode let an engineer reach the translator tables and rebuild them, so the controller could map the flash beneath it again. A photographer's ten years of edits opened at the first try.
Possibly, though the window is usually hours, not days. Blame TRIM: if left powered, an SSD keeps clearing the blocks that held deleted files, on a schedule nobody asked for. No spinning disk has ever done anything like this. Normally, pulling the plug is the wrong instinct; for this one fault, it is exactly right.
Rarely. Silence usually means the firmware or the controller has failed, and the flash behind both is untouched. Reading those chips is bench work, and most of what they hold comes back.
Different, not harder. A hard disk fails at its moving parts. An SSD fails at its controller, or in the tables the controller keeps. Provided TRIM has not cleared those blocks yet, the chances of recovery are good.
Soldered storage, as found in T2 and Apple silicon Macs and certain laptops, is not something we take on. If you are unsure whether yours is soldered, ring us first.
The look costs nothing. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.