Solid state drives (SSDs) fail in a completely different way to traditional hard disk drives: instead of a warning click telling you something has gone wrong, an SSD simply vanishes overnight. We recover NVMe, M.2, mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs from desktops, laptops and external enclosures across Sheffield.
Free diagnostic on every SSD job. You get one fixed price in writing before we begin any of the work involved.
On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. For electronic, mechanical and chip-level work, we'll take half up front and the rest only if we're able to recover your data. Jobs involving BitLocker, ransomware, forensic or CCTV/DVR work are paid upfront once you accept the fixed quote. Complete pricing can be found on the data recovery cost page.
Each of our SSD jobs starts by matching the symptoms to the fault, and the ten types of failure shown below cover virtually everything that comes onto the bench.
When the processor fails on an SSD, the drive vanishes, but most of the time the data is still intact on the NAND chips behind it.
Drives drop into safe mode and identify themselves incorrectly (the Phison 'SATAFIRM S11' signature is the classic example).
Translator damage: the drive responds but reports a nonsense size.
Failed controllers, dead power circuits or a corrupted boot ROM.
End-of-life protection: the drive allows you to view the contents but prevents you from making changes. A good thing if you want to recover the data, but a bad thing for the drive.
SSDs rarely fade, and the life cycle of most follows this pattern: they function perfectly until the moment they do not.
Corrupted mapping tables due to interrupted writes, and power surges that burn power components on the board.
Worn-out memory cells start returning unstable data, causing files to become corrupted and SMART to issue warnings before access fails.
TRIM, a process which clears freed blocks in the background, limits the time available for deleted-file recovery, so it becomes a race against the clock.
Thin blades break in transit or when upgrading hardware. Repairing the board or taking individual chips off allows data recovery.
The basic concept of an SSD is to store your data across multiple NAND memory chips managed by a controller running complex firmware. Once the firmware or controller fails, the entire drive may vanish, although the data remains in the NAND chips. Recovery involves communicating with the drive at a technical level, either via manufacturer service modes or by reading the NAND chips directly and reconstructing the controller's mapping in software. It is specialist work, and it is what our lab does every day.
All types of commonly used SSDs made by Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, SanDisk, WD, Intel and Apple, in every common format: NVMe and M.2 sticks from modern laptops, mSATA from ultrabooks and 2.5-inch SATA drives, as long as the drive can be removed and sent to us. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard. We understand the complications TRIM and encryption cause and will always tell you honestly what's achievable before you make any commitment.
SSD recovery is firmware and chip work, and the bench reflects this:
Access to SSDs via manufacturer service modes for firmware repair, translator reconstruction and safe imaging of drives which no longer identify properly.
Controlled imaging of unstable SSDs and NVMe drives with timeout management and read-retry strategies.
Native attachments for every SSD format, including 2230/2242 sticks and Apple's proprietary blade designs.
Direct NAND chip reads, reassembled in software, when a controller is beyond service-mode help.
Reconstruction of the controller's mapping from raw NAND chip dumps using XOR, ECC and interleave analysis.
Board-level repair of surge-damaged SSDs and cracked M.2 sticks.
Coverage includes all NVMe, M.2 SATA, mSATA and 2.5" drives, as long as the drive can be removed and sent to us, including drives locked read-only by their own firmware. We do not recover storage soldered to a motherboard.
Our customers get a quote first, before sending their media to us, either by telephone on 0800 689 0668 or by completing our free online diagnostic. Once a customer has their quote, they post their media to us, tracked and insured.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the hard drive or SSD from your machine and send us just the drive; we do not offer an internal drive-removal service. If you have a server or RAID system, please send us every disk, each clearly labelled with its bay. We cannot recover data from storage that is soldered directly onto the motherboard (for example Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops), so we need removable drives to be sent to us. If you are unsure which kind you have, ring us first.
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Mark your package for the attention of Leeds Data Recovery and we will contact you as soon as we have diagnosed your media.
Unsure about what to send? Call us first on 0800 689 0668 or complete our free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote and, in most cases, you only pay if we recover your data. Start now or call the freephone.