Devices · SSD & NVMe drives
An SSD doesn't click or grind — one day it's simply not there. Behind that sits a dead controller, scrambled firmware, or power cut mid-write; on our bench Samsung's 870 EVO and WD's Blue SA510 head the queue. The work happens at the flash, and nothing rewards speed more, so get it in the post from Exeter today.
Talk it over with an engineer
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| What it says | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Drive identifies as SATAFIRM S11 | That name is the giveaway: a Phison controller stuck in ROM mode | Don't let vendor tools near the drive |
| The SSD is missing from the BIOS | Controller or firmware trouble — the NAND still holds your files | Chip-level work on the bench |
| Size shows 0GB or some nonsense figure | The flash translation layer (FTL) has broken | Stop rebooting it |
| SMART health suddenly plummets | Real wear — or firmware telling fibs | Check the vendor bulletin, image next |
| An SSD volume throwing error 0x800701E3 | A read failed at hardware level | Take an image — no repair tools |
| Boot device not found right after a firmware update | The update stalled halfway and left the drive dead | Leave it unpowered |
Your device is logged under its own case number the day it arrives. An engineer finds the fault, tells you plainly what stands a real chance of coming back, and writes you one fixed quote. Nothing is charged for that look, nothing obliges you, and paid work starts only when you say so.
Every restart drives a sick SSD further into its shell. We wake it in a controlled service mode, so the flash answers to us rather than to its own failing firmware.
Should the controller refuse to play, the NAND gets read directly and the translation layer is rebuilt in software — the lookup that turns raw chip dumps back into folders you can open.
Because wear-levelling scatters every file across the dies, the fragments are put back in order, the file system restored, and the whole lot checked off against a listing.
Before any fee falls due you see a full listing of everything recovered and approve it. Your files travel back on brand-new media, return postage on us, and the case stays open until you've confirmed everything opens on your own machine.
In Samsung's own words: the 990 Pro notice puts the scare down to 'issues with the SSD's firmware', and the February 2023 update stops the false wear-counting without turning the figures back. Give the advisory a read before you condemn a drive as worn out.
A firmware update went wrong and killed the laptop's system drive. We brought it up in technical mode, rebuilt the translator tables, and a photographer's ten years of edited catalogues came back untouched.
Maybe — but only if you power it off straight away. Thanks to TRIM, an SSD clears deleted data by itself in the background, something a hard drive never does. Every minute it stays on, more goes. For once, yanking the plug is the right call.
Rarely. A drive that won't show up has usually lost its controller or firmware, not the NAND where your files actually live. Reading the chips directly recovers most of them.
Not worse — just different. Hard drives fail mechanically; SSDs go wrong in their electronics and logic. The tools change, but where TRIM hasn't done its work the chances are strong.
Yes — soldered storage sits within our laptop and Mac work: the same chip-level methods, applied to the board itself.
Each power-up of a failing device takes more data with it. Open a case first — the look-over is free whichever way it goes.