The bench is open for new cases · Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm Need it fast? Ring 0800 6890668
EDR Exeter Data Recovery 0800 6890668 Start my case
EDR / Specialist / WD SSD & SA510 recovery

Specialist · WD SSD recovery

WD SSD recovery, Exeter. The SA510 says 0MB; the NAND says otherwise.

WD's Blue SA510 is prone to a behaviour that the forums are familiar with. It will drop out during use, come back up as 0MB (or maybe not at all), and the firmware updater cannot even find the drive to assist. The controller no longer answers, but the data on the NAND behind it still exists. The same bench used for WD Blue and Green SATA drives is also used for the Black NVMe and My Passport SSDs sent in from Exeter. Turn the power off now and do not turn it back on.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs Free diagnosis and a written quote Get a quote first, then post from anywhere in Devon

Talk it over with an engineer
0800 6890668

What the symptoms on a WD SSD are telling you.

Not there? Head for the triage →
What's wrongWhat it usually meansStep one
SA510 crashed while still in use, and the BIOS now detects no drive.The most well-known failure mode for this model of drive (the firmware fails to function properly and the controller presents no drive)Do not keep turning it on and off; pull its cord
You can see it, but you're seeing 0MB capacityThe capacity data comes from the controller's mapping table. The firmware has lost its hold on that.None of the utilities are going to fix this for you. Get a quote first. Then book it in.
WD’s updater program cannot locate your disk to update itFor any WD tool to “talk” to your disk, it needs to be functional. If your disk is hanging, the tools will never be able to “see” it.Close the updater program and turn the system off
My Passport SSD died because it got knocked or someone pulled on its leadThe USB side (port/bridge) usually dies instead of the flash itself.First get a quote, and then post your SSD along with its cable, and the password if you had one in place.
Files deleted off a working SSD.TRIM was designed to clear out freed blocks, often within minutes after deleting.Cut the power now; every minute counts.
Files getting corrupted (SMART unhappy); getting slower.Wear on NAND, or the controller itself dying: the slide only goes in one direction.Save what still opens to somewhere else as soon as possible. Get a price quote first before sending it.
Posting it to us: get a quote first, by phone or with the form, then please use a traceable (tracked) and insured postal delivery method to send your device to our intake lab in Bristol; the return is paid for by us. Alternatively you can drop your item off there yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. An engineer will talk you through how to pack your unit when you call to obtain the quote. More information about sending your items can be found on the contact page.

Know your WD — the four lines fail differently.

Blue SA510WD's mainstream SATA drive, either 2.5-inch or M.2 (and why this page was created): the firmware crashes, the drive just disappears in the middle of the session and comes back as 0MB, or never appears again, and no updater can find the drive. Usually the flash underneath remains intact: chip and controller work is how it is accessed.
Blue & Green SATAA staple for laptop upgrades. The Blue line is a bit stronger; the Green line eliminates DRAM to make it lower cost than the Blue line, leaving a failing drive with less of a safety net. Both reward very slow, patient imaging of data.
Black SN770 & SN850Fast NVMe drives pulled from gaming rigs and work laptops. When a drive is lost by the BIOS, the fault lies in either the controller or firmware, and none of the utilities are able to query a drive the machine cannot see. Direct flash access still can.
My Passport SSDPocket-sized USB-C drive. Drops and broken connectors damage the bridges/ports far more often than the flash on these. Odds are in your favour; the hardware encryption is real though, and if you had previously enabled a password for this drive, we'll require that for access.

The recovery, one stage at a time.

01

Booked in, assessed for nothing Free

Your device will be logged under its own case number on the day it comes into our lab. The engineer who works on your device identifies the problem with it, clearly states what we think has a good chance of coming back and provides you with one fixed quote. There are no charges for this assessment; there is no obligation for you to do anything; and paid work does not begin until you authorise us to start.

The look is freeA single quote, in writingNo obligation
02

Powered only when it counts

We'll keep an SSD off unless we are reading from it. It cleanses itself whenever it has some power applied to it, so we'll only turn it back on to read it in controlled ways, while we determine which level of failure occurred (the controller firmware, the NAND, or the port/bridge).

Port, controller or NAND?The fault named up front
03

Get past the dead controller

Locked firmware on these drives can be accessed at controller level from a bench environment, using specialist tools. Where the controller remains silent and will not communicate with the bench tools, each NAND memory chip can be read individually and the data put back into order to create a coherent picture of what was originally written onto the drive.

Donor parts matched upController-level access
04

From raw flash to your files

The NAND dump is scrambled as part of its initial design (interleave, XOR, wear-levelling), therefore the original mapping of the controller has to be reversed first; only then will the volume show up and all of your files/folders once again have their proper names.

Every readable cell imagedFiles back with their names
05

Watched back, verified, returned

You have access to a complete list of every item recovered from your device, which you approve prior to any fees being applied. The files will be returned via new media (brand new) with the return postage paid by us, and the case remains open for as long as it takes to confirm that all the files open properly on your own machine.

You approve the file listReturned on new mediaWe pay return postage

Opening checks at the bench

  • Dead firmware, healthy flash: when an SA510 hangs, the NAND generally still holds every file on the unit. The controller just isn’t reporting them back any more. Therefore, no files are shown with software, and a whole lot are found at the chip level.
  • TRIM is the honest limit: a working SSD will blank out (delete) deleted data on its own, generally in a few minutes. Once deleted files have been blanked out this way, they are truly gone. Anyone claiming otherwise is trying to sell you something.
  • A Green model is made with a price in mind: a controller without DRAM gives a failing drive very little room for error. This means imaging is going to be slow, and there will be a lot of read-retry work.
  • My Passport SSD encryption is real: hardware AES is located at the bridge level, so an original board will matter here, and you'll need to provide the password if one was set. Most knocks appear to only affect the USB port portion, usually leaving the flash storage intact.

Where honesty is paramount: a drive whose firmware or controller is dead will never be visible to the recovery programs you can download, because there is nothing for them to "open". This work all occurs at chip and controller level on a bench (or it doesn't occur). Anybody offering you a quick, easy fix with their software for a dead SA510 should make you very leery.

Fresh from the casebook.

EX · EDR-2026-2834VERIFIED ✓

The SA510 that went from fine to 0MB in one afternoon

The M.2 Blue SA510 was sitting in an office desktop when it quit mid-session. On attempting to reboot, the BIOS displayed that this unit had a 0MB capacity, and WD's updater program couldn’t even locate the unit to update. The owner did what needed to be done (the right thing) by simply disconnecting power from the unit. At the bench, we then took the controller into service mode and worked through the firmware hang issue to gently obtain a complete image of the entire drive, before asking it to do one single additional operation. All files were returned intact with all their respective file names, except for a few scattered files.

98% retrievedUpdater never run

Before it leaves your hands.

Do

  • Turn off the power and leave it that way
  • Retrieve the password for your Passport, if it ever had one.
  • Give us details about which machine it came from and exactly what you saw happen.
  • Find and cite the exact model number (SA510, SN770, SN850) on the label.

Steer clear

  • Running WD’s updater again just in case.
  • Letting Windows start initialising or formatting the drive.
  • Using an extended scan with downloaded recovery tools.
  • Replacing the board or doing the "oven trick" as per some video tutorial.

Straight answers from the bench.

My SA510 dropped off the BIOS mid-use — is the data gone?

Very seldom. It is one of the things that the SA510 is famous for: the firmware gets stuck, the controller will not display the drive, and the BIOS will show nothing (or a single drive at 0MB). Your files are sitting in the NAND chips behind this silence, untouched. The software running on your PC cannot access your files, as you have no visible drive to scan; however, with bench-level work at the controller level, they can be reached. Leave it unplugged for now, get a quote first, then book it in.

Should I run WD's Dashboard firmware updater on a failing drive?

No. An "update" means you're asking the drive to rewrite the same bad code already causing trouble. And on a failing SSD, if that write command causes a stall (which happens) and takes long enough for the controller to go beyond the state where it will answer (service mode), you've lost all of your data's mapping. So what was a recoverable error has now turned into something way tougher. Shut down the drive, get a quote first, then send it in exactly like it is.

My Passport SSD is hardware-encrypted — can you get my data?

With your password, yes, we will be able to. The encryption resides on the bridge hardware; therefore, when the faulty item has been repaired, or the flash imaged, the password will unlock everything for you again. If you do not have the password, then no, and we really mean it: the AES encryption is real, we can't crack it, and nobody honest will claim to be able to. Given that most Passport failures occur at either the bridge or the USB connector (not at the flash), your chances are normally good with a password.

I deleted files from an SSD that still works — any way back?

Only by being fast can you hope to recover anything, and even then there is no guarantee. A functioning SSD is running TRIM continuously, clearing out any free space created from deleting files for good. This often happens within a few minutes after deletion. Immediately turn off the power once you notice, and chances exist to recover some data; if you continue to use the drive, there will be nothing remaining. At diagnosis we will inform you directly whether data can be recovered or if all data is gone, and this will cost you absolutely nothing.

More like this in the casebook.

External & portable drives → Not detected → Clicking & beeping → What we take in →

Whatever the fault, leave the power off.

Every time a failing hardware component is powered back up, there is additional lost data. First open a case with us: the inspection (look over) is always at no cost, whichever way it goes.

0800 6890668

Get a free diagnosis Sending a device in