this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Help resurrecting a dead SSD (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca to c/techsupport@lemmy.world
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Two days ago, my SSD stopped showing up on my computer (it doesn't show up in file explorer, disk mgt., device mgt., bios). There was little warning of drive failure; i was downloading a new game to it that morning (had to restart a failed download twice, but the third time succeeded). It's been humming along without issue for a couple of years now. There are some personal projects, photos, maybe game saves i'd like to retrieve if possible. Any ideas or tips would be helpful?

So far i've tried:

  • restarting
  • scanning with device mgr, disk mgr, in the bios
  • power cycling the drive with the sata unplugged
  • switching the sata cable to another port (no show)
  • switching out the drive for a blank drive(no show as well)

next steps are to try cloning the drive with a 2 bay docking station

spec info:

  • drive: 1 TB western digital SA510, working as the secondary drive.
  • OS: Windows 10

Edit: thanks for the advice. It looks like this is out of my range of abilities to recover so I'm looking to a professional service now. Let me know of a good data recovery service in the greater Vancouver area of you know of one.

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nearly impossible to do over text to rule out other issues, but if SSDs are dead, they're usually dead-dead. HDDs used to have a bunch of tricks to sort of get them back to limping along in order to pull quick data recovery tricks off, but not with SSDs.

The most likely cause if it's not being detected is a popped power or storage controller, meaning the actual things that connect the storage to your disk controller cannot work. If you want to pay the cost, there are some data recovery services that will fix these issues for you, but it's not a guaranteed service, and it's not cheap. I think the more likely scenario is they can temporarily get it working again while they offload your data. Here's an example from Ontrack that explains their process (I'm not saying use them, but it's got some I do there).

Wouldn't hurt to call or email a few places and see what they'd charge.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

Ya, I'm approaching that point of maybe paying for it, but want to exhaust the options I can do.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The fact that you tried a different drive and a different port has me wondering if it's just the cable itself.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I just tried a new Sata cable and no luck 😞 I've tried 4 out of 6 Sata ports on the mobo. I know one is working cause the c drive still boots.

[–] teft@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can you put the drive on that known good sata port and boot from a live usb? that will let you know for sure that it isn't ports or cables.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i just tried swapping the power and sata cables between the good and bad drives and was able to boot up from the good drive, but no bad drive. so the cables are good

[–] teft@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Now that you've established that the cables are good you can boot from a live usb plugged into one of the usb ports and with the questionable drive plugged into the known good port and cable. If the drive still doesn't show up in whatever partition editor the live distro has then you're probably boned.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ya, it's definitely out of my ability. I'm going to start getting quotes for data recovery services around me.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's not that hard. If you are comfortable enough to muck about inside your computer with SATA cables and ports, I would bet money you can handle this.

I'm gonna be short here because I don't have the time to go into more detail; maybe someome else can go into more detail if you need it.

Find a USB drive you don't mind formatting (losing all data on the drive), at least 8gb.

Download Ventoy. Extract it, run the .exe and select your USB drive. It will erase everything and install Ventoy onto that drive.

Download a live boot Linux distro. Fedora or Ubuntu are both perfectly fine for this, and simple. You should be downloading an .iso file. Place that file onto the Ventoy USB.

Shut down your PC. Unplug the good SSD. Plug the bad SSD into the mobo using the cable and port you know are good.

Ensuring that the Ventoy USB is still plugged into your PC, turn it on. Get into BIOS. Change your boot order so that the Ventoy USB is first.

Should boot into Ventoy. Select the .iso you put on there. It will handle booting up from that file. If there's any more options, just choose the default. Booting might take much longer than you're used to since it's from a USB stick.

You should now be using that OS, booted live from your USB drive. Does the SSD appear in the file browser? Alternatively you can follow that OS' installation prompt (probably came up automatically when it reached the desktop) until the choose an installation step, does the SSD show up? Do NOT actually install the OS onto that drive, that will erase data.

[–] dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What is the point of this? Is accessing a drive different in Linux somehow?

[–] swab148@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The point is to confirm if the drive is dead, or if it's some sort of software issue.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think it's beyond a software fix at this point. I haven't had a flicker of life from the drive after switching power/sata cables, a usb drive enclosure and a hdd docking station (i've confirmed the external devices work with a different drive). I'm all for booting to linux, but the bios doesn't report that anything is connected when going through the sata ports.

[–] swab148@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Most likely, but it doesn't hurt to check.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

it doesn't show up in file explorer, disk mgt., device mgt., bios

I'm sorry to say this, but the fact that it doesn't appear in BIOS/UEFI is a very bad sign.

Have you already checked this in multiple different SATA ports? It's the most important part. If the drive doesn't identify itself to the motherboard you won't be able to do anything to it with software.

Do you have an external enclosure/SATA adapter for USB? The next thing I would check is to connect it that way after the computer has fully booted and see if it shows up at all. Also try plugging it into a different computer if possible.

I also want to recommend smartmontools for monitoring your drive health going forward. This allows you to interact with the SMART functionality built into the drive.

[–] ShaggyBlarney@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ya, i'm coming to the conclusion that it's beyond me and needs professional help. Tried the external enclosure and got nothing as well.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, sorry, it sounds like something in the interface or read/write control on the SSD has died. It could be something as simple as a capacitor, or it could be a controller chip. The data is probably still present in the actual storage, but I'm not sure how you would get to it without doing a lot of testing and then desoldering/resoldering components.

I do know a potentially better place to ask for advice if you want to dig into it more - the forum at grc.com:

https://forums.grc.com/

Steve Gibson produces SpinRite, which is a hard drive test & repair application (probably the best out there) and there's a lot of drive-related discussion on the forum and several other members with expertise. Someone there might have a better idea of what kind of recovery options are possible.

[–] ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 month ago

Sorry mate, I’ve never had an SSD disappear off the bus and not have it be a total loss

[–] Pfeffy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Gilware in Wisconsin will look at it for free or cheap. That's where I send hard drives that I can't recover on my own. If they can recover the data on it, it will cost you at least $1,000.