Unlike hard drives, solid state drives do not fail the same way. There is no warning click of an impending failure; instead the drive simply ceases to exist. We recover all types of SSD, including NVMe, M.2, mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs, from laptops, desktops and external enclosures for customers in the Staines area and throughout Surrey.
Free diagnostic on every SSD job. One fixed quote in writing before any work commences.
In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. For all electronic and mechanical work, including chip-level repairs, 50% is required upfront, with the balance only payable if we recover your data. For BitLocker, ransomware, CCTV/DVR and forensic jobs, full payment is made upfront once you accept the fixed quote. Full details regarding our costs can be found on the data recovery cost page.
Every SSD job starts by matching symptoms to the fault. These twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
When the processor of an SSD gives out, the whole drive drops off the system, yet the NAND chips sitting behind it usually still hold all the data.
A panicked drive falls into safe mode and announces itself under the wrong name. Phison's 'SATAFIRM S11' is the textbook case.
The drive responds but with a made-up size: that's the translator gone, not the data.
Indicates a dead controller, broken power circuitry or a boot ROM that has lost its way.
The SSD's own end-of-life safety net: reading allowed, writing refused. Very unhelpful for you, but an ideal recovery opportunity for us.
An SSD does not wind down gracefully: it's flawless right up until the second it has failed.
Cuts mid-write scramble the mapping tables; surges burn power components off the board.
Tired cells hand back different answers each read: files corrupt and SMART complains long before access dies.
Since TRIM quietly deletes the freed space on an SSD, every hour the SSD stays powered reduces what remains after you delete something.
Due to how slim they are, the blades often crack in courier bags and during upgrades; a board repair or a chip-off read will bring the data out.
Due to a firmware problem, older Samsung EVO drives may run slowly on cold data and sometimes drop the controller entirely; we image and refresh them on the bench.
After a loss of power, some Crucial MX and BX SSDs may reduce dramatically in size, or vanish entirely, when the controller loses its mapping.
In general terms, most modern SSDs spread your stored data across multiple NAND flash memory chips, governed by a controller running sophisticated firmware. If either the controller fails or its firmware becomes corrupted, your SSD may appear dead; however, every single byte of your data will remain intact within the individual NAND memory chips. Retrieving your lost data requires connecting to the drive at a very low level, such as through the manufacturer's service modes for the drive, or by reading the NAND memory directly and rebuilding the controller's translation map in software. This is specialist work, but it is typical for our lab.
We recover many kinds of SSD, including Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, SanDisk, WD, Intel and Apple, in all the most commonly used forms: NVMe and M.2 sticks from modern laptops, mSATA from ultrabook-type laptops, and 2.5-inch SATA drives, provided the drive can be removed and sent to us. We cannot recover storage soldered onto a motherboard; if you are unsure which type you have, call us first. TRIM issues and encryption issues are part of normal operating procedure for our staff, and we will tell you plainly what we believe is possible before you commit to a recovery.
Recovering an SSD involves working at firmware and chip level, and the bench was designed to perform exactly those tasks:
Establishes a service-mode connection with SSDs that no longer identify themselves; the firmware is repaired and translators rebuilt, allowing the SSD to be imaged safely.
Allows unstable SSDs and NVMe drives to be imaged using managed timeout settings and tuned retry passes, instead of brute-force reads.
Regardless of the form factor of the SSD (2230/2242 sticks, Apple's proprietary blades, mSATA), it connects natively to the bench.
If service mode does not revive the controller, the NAND chips are physically lifted off the board, individually read, then put back together in software.
Each raw dump of individual chips goes through several levels of analysis (XOR, ECC and interleave correction) until the controller's map of where everything belongs, and therefore your data, is restored.
All surge-damaged units (including M.2 sticks that have cracked) are repaired at component level before any imaging begins.
As long as the drive can be removed and posted to us, it doesn't matter what type it is, whether NVMe, M.2 SATA, mSATA or 2.5", nor does it matter if the drive's own firmware has locked it read-only. Samsung 840/860/870 EVOs may experience slow-downs in reading due to firmware problems, and sudden controller failure; Crucial and Micron drives have been known to drop to a tiny capacity after a loss of power; Kingston budget SSDs often lose their translator; and SanDisk and Western Digital units will frequently lock themselves into a read-only state at end of life. We cannot recover storage devices that are soldered directly onto a motherboard.
Before sending anything, get a quote from us either by telephone or using our free online diagnostic. Then post your hardware to us (tracked and insured), or drop it off at our Guildford laboratory in person.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV/DVR or server? You will need to remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive, as we are unable to remove the drive for you. We also cannot recover storage soldered onto a motherboard, such as in Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops. Only drives that can be removed from a machine and sent to us can be recovered. If you are unsure whether your device has a removable drive, please call us before sending. RAID, server and SAN drives need to be removed from their enclosure and labelled by bay. For a NAS, send the disks themselves if they are removable, otherwise the entire NAS device. An external single drive should come to us whole, along with its cable and power supply.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Please mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery, and we will call you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure as to how to proceed with sending the item in for recovery? Then simply call 0800 689 0668, or complete the free online diagnostic prior to dispatching the item to obtain your price quotation.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.