Recovery from Sandforce 2281VB4 SSD reading as 0mb

[Krynn72]

I know Sandforce has a deserved bad rep when it comes to failures and recovery after the fact, but I'm curious if any progress has been made on the recovery front since last I heard a couple years ago.

I have a PNY SSD7SC480GCL4 from a user that experienced a "No boot device" error one day. When plugged into another machine it reads as a 0mb large drive and obviously thus has no partitions.

We've swapped the SSD out and reloaded Windows and sent him on his way, saying we could not recover the data. It's a company owned drive and neither him nor the company are willing to pay anything for recovery.

So I have some free time on my hands and looking for a learning experience. I've got a microscope, hot air rework and soldering equipment, multimeter and DC power supply. Is there anything at all worth trying to do on this to see if I can revive it long enough to recover anything?

 

[lcoughey]

Send it to my lab...we might be able to recover it.

 

[Markverhyden]

So it shows up in BIOS? If so first thing I'd try, for grins, is seeing if I can make a image using something like dd.

 

[Krynn72]

Send it to my lab...we might be able to recover it.

The learning experience there would be "lcoughey recovers data for money" which I already know

I'll try a ddrescue clone and see if that can get anywhere.

 

[lcoughey]

Seeing that 99.9% of data recovery labs say Sandforce are impossible to recover from in this state and the rest tend to charge $2000-$5000, if they can recover, I suspect you aren't going to recover much with software.

I recently discovered that there are some "impossible" cases that I can recover, but for a price, yes. I charge a whopping $900 CAD, if I can recover.

 

[CLC]

I'll charge $50 and send you back a paper weight!

 

[Krynn72]

Seeing that 99.9% of data recovery labs say Sandforce are impossible to recover from in this state and the rest tend to charge $2000-$5000, if they can recover, I suspect you aren't going to recover much with software.

I recently discovered that there are some "impossible" cases that I can recover, but for a price, yes. I charge a whopping $900 CAD, if I can recover.

Without giving away the secret too much, is it always down the the sandforce chip? Never really something else like bad resistors/caps or something else? I know that in other cases (not data recovery) you can temporarily "revive" a BGA chip just by heating it, but I suspect if that was the case it wouldn't be so notoriously hard to recover from.

 

[lcoughey]

In some very rare cases, I've heard of cases where reflowing the NAND chips help, but I haven't been so fortunate to see any of those hit my lab. On a few occasions, I'll get one with just bad sectors, but most cases are because of controller related issues.

Thus far, I've sent test cases to Seagate Data Recovery, DriveSavers and Kroll Ontrack, all who claim that they can recover data from SandForce, but none of which were able to get a single sector from the drive. I've got another test case out right now with another lab who not only claims that they can recover them, but they also say that they recover 98% of them. With a retail cost of around $4000 USD, I find it difficult to believe their claims when they also say that 80% of their clients accept the quote.

 

[HCHTech]

I know that in other cases (not data recovery) you can temporarily "revive" a BGA chip just by heating it,

It's the SSD equivalent of the "freezer trick"! Great, now we'll start seeing youtube videos of "successful" recoveries. "First, be sure to use the OUTSIDE slot of your toaster and use the "Bagel" setting..."

 

[Larry Sabo]

LOL @HCHTech!

 

[Krynn72]

It's the SSD equivalent of the "freezer trick"! Great, now we'll start seeing youtube videos of "successful" recoveries. "First, be sure to use the OUTSIDE slot of your toaster and use the "Bagel" setting..."

Reflows have been around just as long as the freezer trick I think. Just google "Rehot cpu" lol.

 

[lcoughey]

But, most people who try reflows, til now, usually have some electronics and soldering knowledge. For those putting drives in the freezers, they have absolutely no clue how a hard drive works and how freezing a drive could cause negative impact on the data stored on the platters.