Solid state drives don't fail like hard drives — there's no warning click, just a drive that's there one day and gone the next. We recover NVMe, M.2, mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs from laptops, desktops and external enclosures for customers across Staines and the wider Surrey area.
Free diagnostic on every ssd job. One fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
No fix, no fee all jobs except electronic and mechanical failures, chip level work, DVR and Forensic jobs. Full pricing is on the data recovery cost page.
Every ssd job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault — these twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
When the SSD's processor gives out the whole drive drops off the system — yet the NAND chips sitting behind it usually still hold every byte.
A panicked drive falls into safe mode and announces itself under the wrong name — Phison's 'SATAFIRM S11' being the textbook case.
The drive responds, but with a made-up size — that's the translator gone, not the data.
Points to a dead controller, broken power circuitry or a boot ROM that's lost the plot.
The drive's own end-of-life safety net: reading allowed, writing refused. Awkward for you, ideal for recovery.
An SSD doesn't wind down gracefully — it's flawless right up until the second it's gone.
A cut mid-write scrambles the mapping tables; a surge burns the power components off the board.
Tired cells hand back different answers each read — files corrupt and SMART complains long before access dies.
Because TRIM quietly zeroes freed blocks, every hour an SSD stays powered shrinks what a deletion leaves behind.
The slim blades crack in courier bags and during upgrades; board repair or a chip-off read brings the data out.
Older Samsung EVO drives crawl on cold data through a firmware bug, then sometimes drop the controller entirely — imaged and refreshed on the bench.
Crucial MX and BX drives can shrink to a tiny capacity or vanish after a power event when the controller loses its mapping.
An SSD scatters your data across NAND memory chips governed by a controller running intricate firmware. When that controller or its firmware fails, the drive can drop off completely even though every byte is still sitting safely in the chips. Getting it back means engaging the drive at a low level — through the manufacturer's service modes, or by reading the NAND directly and rebuilding the controller's translation map in software. It's specialist work, and it's routine for our lab.
Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, SanDisk, WD, Intel and Apple SSDs in every common shape: NVMe and M.2 sticks from current laptops, mSATA from ultrabooks, and 2.5-inch SATA drives — provided the drive can be removed and sent to us. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard. TRIM and encryption complications are part of the day job, and we'll always tell you plainly what's achievable before you commit to anything.
Recovering an SSD means working at firmware and chip level, so that's what this bench is set up to do:
Opens a service-mode conversation with SSDs that no longer identify — firmware is repaired and translators rebuilt so the drive can be imaged safely.
Unstable SSDs and NVMe drives are imaged with managed timeouts and tuned retry passes rather than brute-force reads.
Whatever shape the SSD takes — 2230 or 2242 sticks, Apple's proprietary blades, mSATA — it attaches natively to the bench.
If service mode can't revive the controller, the NAND chips are lifted and read one by one, then stitched back together in software.
Raw chip dumps go through XOR, ECC and interleave analysis until the controller's mapping — and your data — re-emerges.
Surge casualties and cracked M.2 sticks are repaired at component level before imaging starts.
Provided the drive can be removed and posted to us, every format is workable — NVMe, M.2 SATA, mSATA and 2.5" alike, including drives whose own firmware has locked them read-only. Samsung 840/860/870 EVOs are prone to firmware read-slowdowns and sudden controller death; Crucial and Micron drives can drop to a tiny capacity after a power cut; Kingston budget SSDs often lose their translator; and SanDisk and WD units regularly fail read-only at end of life. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard.
Most customers post their media to us tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.