Current state of SSD recovery?

[mraikes]

Sorry for the simplistic question, but since it seems the OP's specific question regarding a hybrid drive was addressed, what about a full-on SSD drive?

With mechanical drives there's often a window of opportunity for us mere mortal techs to recover data for our customers using DD Rescue etc. Is there a similar window for SSDs? Or once an SSD fails is it simply beyond our traditional methods?

I've yet to have someone bring a failing/failed SSD to me, so I don't really know what to expect.

 

[lcoughey]

I've encountered a very small few SSDs with bad sectors. Most have issues with firmware, controllers, NAND, circuitry, etc.

 

[labtech]

I've encountered a very small few SSDs with bad sectors. Most have issues with firmware, controllers, NAND, circuitry, etc.

Pretty much same here. So, in all those scenarios, a failed SSD will not mount/be recognized by any machine/system to image with something like ddrescue. Need human intervention and advanced software/hardware tools to be able to implement solutions.

 

[labtech]

I know but the data thats on the SSD is a copy of the data from the platter isnt it? I mean recovery wise if you manage to recover all the data from the platters you won't be missing out on data if you can't access the ssd portion right? Thats how I always assumed it worked.

Right

 

[fincoder]

He mentioned he sees the drive in Windows as two separate partitions C: and D: and he can choose where to put his stuff. He stated all his data is on D: (the platters) while the OS is on C:

This would simply be ordinary partitioning that is sometimes done to seperate OS/apps from data. The partitions have nothing to do with the hybrid nature of the drive as the SSD cache portion isn't visible to the computer at all. As other posts have pointed out above the SSD cache is only used internally and automatically by the drive itself.

 

[mraikes]

I've encountered a very small few SSDs with bad sectors. Most have issues with firmware, controllers, NAND, circuitry, etc.

So basically, as the market drifts increasingly toward SSDs, data recovery will pretty much become a thing of the past for us little guys?

Or are there reasonably priced tools out there that will allow us to address the more common/basic problems an SSD might have, as we do now with mechanical drives?

 

[labtech]

So basically, as the market drifts increasingly toward SSDs, data recovery will pretty much become a thing of the past for us little guys?

Or are there reasonably priced tools out there that will allow us to address the more common/basic problems an SSD might have, as we do now with mechanical drives?

No reasonably priced tools available and doubt there will be any time soon. Furthermore, what is "reasonably"?

 

[Mike McCall]

Sorry for the simplistic question, but since it seems the OP's specific question regarding a hybrid drive was addressed, what about a full-on SSD drive?

With mechanical drives there's often a window of opportunity for us mere mortal techs to recover data for our customers using DD Rescue etc. Is there a similar window for SSDs? Or once an SSD fails is it simply beyond our traditional methods?

I've yet to have someone bring a failing/failed SSD to me, so I don't really know what to expect.

Thank you for more clearly stating my question. Apparently I failed to do that (not a first BTW).

Pretty much same here. So, in all those scenarios, a failed SSD will not mount/be recognized by any machine/system to image with something like ddrescue. Need human intervention and advanced software/hardware tools to be able to implement solutions.

So, when a client comes in with an SSD his system no longer sees there is no "window", just send it out or destroy it? It seems that way from what I'm reading. So, perhaps a bit of caution, planning, guidance, etc. is in order when counseling clients on converting to SSD's. A proper backup & recovery plan becomes even more important. Both business & residential clients need to be aware of the pro's & con's and offered a suitable option for backup & recovery.

So basically, as the market drifts increasingly toward SSDs, data recovery will pretty much become a thing of the past for us little guys?

Or are there reasonably priced tools out there that will allow us to address the more common/basic problems an SSD might have, as we do now with mechanical drives?

For the "little guy" it may change, but I don't know it will disappear. There's a ton of spinners out there and converting everyone to SSD will take time. I also think that spinners will continue to have their application, if for no other reason than their potential recoverability. Either way, I see this as an opportunity to educate our clients (business & residential) on the trade-offs, and offer solutions to support their choices.

 

[fincoder]

So, perhaps a bit of caution, planning, guidance, etc. is in order when counseling clients on converting to SSD's. A proper backup & recovery plan becomes even more important.

I don't see it that way personally. All storage drives fail sooner or later, so the backup advice is the same.

Also, even though it's less likely that data can be recovered from a faulty SSD, the SSD might turn out to be less likely to fail. So the overall risk of losing data might be lower, nobody can tell hence the backup advice should be the same.

 

[Mike McCall]

I don't see it that way personally. All storage drives fail sooner or later, so the backup advice is the same.

Also, even though it's less likely that data can be recovered from a faulty SSD, the SSD might turn out to be less likely to fail. So the overall risk of losing data might be lower, nobody can tell hence the backup advice should be the same.

I think too many assumptions being made lately about my comments in this thread. Of course I push backups. Any responsible tech will. However, people are still people and will tell themselves all sorts of things so they don't actually do it. Some (many perhaps) may tell themselves that the fee they pay to recover data from a failing drive (to a local tech) saves them money over a monthly fee to actually back their data up over the same period of time. Some are just too lazy, and others are just too cheap. It's the same excuses we've all heard Ad nauseam. With SSD's being essentially unrecoverable by local techs, that perceived "safety net" is removed. Sure, there will be those who won't believe us, or just won't do it no matter what. But unrecoverable SSD's may be just the incentive others need to to finally get with the program.

 

[fincoder]

unrecoverable SSD's may be just the incentive others need to to finally get with the program.

Fair enough.

 

[Markverhyden]

The SSD part is just a cache really. It's not in any sort of RAID or span configuration at all. All data is stored on the platters. The SSD part just keeps a cached second copy of blocks of sectors that are frequently accessed for faster access w/o having to read the platters for those. Over time it switches in/out which blocks it considers the frequent ones based on usage. It also houses a write cache for faster writes, which can later be written to the platters during idle time. The whole process is completely handled by the drive and the OS is oblivious to it.

The tricky part with recovery really comes down to when the SSD malfunctions and the drive is trying to read from there instead of just letting you access the data on the platters. It's still a learning process for handling these cases even for those in pro data recovery. For some drives we already have solutions to disable the NAND completely, while others are still works in progress.

I understand what you are saying but it's not that simple. The machine OEM's do have latitude based on the drive firmware from the drive OEM's. And we do not have access to that stuff. In the Apple ecosystem this is not the case with Apple Fusion drives. Back when they came out with the Fusion drive they were specific that the OS resided on the SSD. I have no idea if there is a "copy" on the spindle but I doubt it.

At any rate there are instructions on how to do a DIY fusion drive in OS X using diskutil. Now I have no Apple's with an Apple Fusion drive to look at, but if you can do this in the OS then I would expect the space is OS addressable post configuration.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-how-to-create-and-disable-a-fusion-drive/

http://superuser.com/questions/6694...ve-style-solution-there-for-linux-and-windows

 

[DataMedics]

I understand what you are saying but it's not that simple. The machine OEM's do have latitude based on the drive firmware from the drive OEM's. And we do not have access to that stuff. In the Apple ecosystem this is not the case with Apple Fusion drives. Back when they came out with the Fusion drive they were specific that the OS resided on the SSD. I have no idea if there is a "copy" on the spindle but I doubt it.

At any rate there are instructions on how to do a DIY fusion drive in OS X using diskutil. Now I have no Apple's with an Apple Fusion drive to look at, but if you can do this in the OS then I would expect the space is OS addressable post configuration.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-how-to-create-and-disable-a-fusion-drive/

http://superuser.com/questions/6694...ve-style-solution-there-for-linux-and-windows

Apple fusion drives are not SSHDs at all, and my post was about SSHDs not Apple Fusion. Fusion drives are actually two totally separate devices, an SSD usually M.2 or PCIe, and a SATA connected standard HDD that are essentially put into a span of logical volumes. The OP was talking about a Seagate 500Gb SSHD with 8Gb onboard SSD, not an Apple Fusion software RAID.

When it comes to recovering fusion drives, usually the HDD is the one that fails. So it's just a matter of extracting the data from it onto a good drive of the same LBA size then connecting both the SSD and clone to an Apple and mounting it. The OS will recognize the fusion set automatically from the metadata. If the SSD fails, then it's a bit more complicated as it's the one that stores the file catalog. If the SSD can't be recovered, then the best you'll get is a RAW recovery by file type.

 

[Markverhyden]

Yeah, for some reason I was under the impression that Apple's drive was the same SSHD. Which it's not.

 

[brandonkick]

I think too many assumptions being made lately about my comments in this thread. Of course I push backups. Any responsible tech will. However, people are still people and will tell themselves all sorts of things so they don't actually do it. Some (many perhaps) may tell themselves that the fee they pay to recover data from a failing drive (to a local tech) saves them money over a monthly fee to actually back their data up over the same period of time. Some are just too lazy, and others are just too cheap. It's the same excuses we've all heard Ad nauseam. With SSD's being essentially unrecoverable by local techs, that perceived "safety net" is removed. Sure, there will be those who won't believe us, or just won't do it no matter what. But unrecoverable SSD's may be just the incentive others need to to finally get with the program.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.... I don't think it will convince many people because
a lot of them just don't understand. If they didn't care about the already real risk of permanent
data loss even with a traditional hard drive, I doubt they will care much now when SSD's are
increasing that chance of permanent data loss (upon failure). Sadly, as well all know, a lot of
people just aren't concerned until it's to the point of being too late.

 

[HCHTech]

I don't think it will convince many people because
a lot of them just don't understand.

Yep. I have a standard speech whenever SSDs come up. The most important "Con" in the Pros and Cons argument for SSDs is the lower likelihood of data retrieval in the event of failure. You need a more robust backup system - which, as luck would have it, I can happily supply. Some agree, some don't - but at least I had the conversation.