hello guys

I was navingating on internet when suddenly my computer showed a blue screen and turned off.
it was the SSD. the computer doesn't recognize it anymore
luckily i have another faulty SSD from 9 months ago (this one is just slow, but it works nice).

so yeah, two faulty SSDs in 12 months.
i was wondering if theres any chance i recover any of the stuff from this past 9 months
and how to choose a SSD properly for my next buy

 

What brand and are they always connected to your computer?

 

yes, they are internally connected to Samsung notebook through SATA
Crucial 1TB (slow one, using right now)
Goldenfir 1TB (dead one)

 

Have you checked if it shows up in the disk manager? Sometimes the partition gets corrupted, but the disk is still working, you just need to create a new one and start fresh. Sucks, though! My first SATA SSD is still alive in another computer. It is a 240gb Sandisk from 2016. I gave it away to my brother once I replaced it with several NVMEs.

Edit: just to answer the actual question, there's a possibility of recovering the files, but I would leave it to a professional business specialized in that field. Most often disks will fail in their first year, so I think you just got very unlucky. I also think that SSDs and notebooks don't mesh really well, SSDs heat up a lot compared to HDDs (usually twice as much depending on both models), and since they're in an enclosed system, that heat creeps up a lot more than in a desktop. I recommend keeping everything important in a separate disk that is removable.

 

Well, both doing that, and doing regular backups as well.
Most important is the stuff into which one has invested time (or money).
Less important but still a very good idea:
Backing up the OS disk for saving time of setting everything up again.

 

I'm yet to try with an external case, but it wouldn't show in the BIOS after it died and the windows didn't start.

right now, this feels like a very good idea. thanks!

yes! good take, double take!
maybe i'll buy a new backup HD with that purporse too.
the lighter stuff and projects into a flashdrive, the os and heavier stuff into a HD

the thing about backing up regurlarly, is such a boring process. i'm not used to it yet

 

I don't trust SSD drives at all, I always make backup copies on a regular HDD, because such a disk warns in advance that something is wrong, just see S.M.A.R.T.
The only brands I trust are: Samsung, Intel, and Lexar, I haven't had any problems with them so far.

 

SSD on SATA, wow! SATA is a bottleneck for an SSD.

You probably did the worst thing you can do. Buying the cheapest of cheap! Goldenfir is the cheapest SSD on the market. Most of them are "China fakes". There are a lot of complainments about this brand. So there is a big chance you can't recover any data from it.
Remember: If you can buy it on AliExpress, Temu and WISH, you very probably get screwed over size or quality of the SSD.

 

As mentioned earlier, you first need to check with disk manager (you go to control panel/computer management/disk management) if your drive is there. If it appears but asks for format (initialization) don't do anything as the drive is still alive. And by all means don't do anything with the drive. If you mean to recover data from it, do not -i repeat- do not disconnect it and stick it to an external enclosure as this can be the end of the drive and your data.
R-Tools R-Studio will be able to extract the data from your drive. I 've had great luck with it many times. You will need to install it on your system and use an external drive for the recovery software to save the data from the faulty drive. Beware files might have lost their naming scheme, so you may probably have to sort 'em manually afterwards. Prepare for a long procedure!
Cheers.
PS: Watch the video on their website an you 'll know what to do https://www.r-studio.com/

 

Last edited: Jul 31, 2024

I usually buy two of the same drive. One goes in as the system drive, the second goes in a removable enclosure. The system drive gets cloned to the removable drive every so often so if the system drive fails, just replace it with the clone and you're back at work.
Project files are always on a removable drive, especially after completion or when I move to a different project/idea.

 

Sorry to hear from your problems with the SSD.

By the way I never have had a broken SSD for ~8 to 10 years and it's the first time I hear about a broken SSD firsthand.

I hated HDD for all the problems I had with them so I use SSD only in my computers since about eight years.
For business and private use in Windows PCs and Laptop. Since 2 years even for NAS use 3 NAS with 8 bays each in summa 24 SSD working 24/7.
I never bought anything other than Samsung SSD and even with PCs including SSD drives I always exchanged them with Samsung SSD.
Why: In the beginning I tested some budget drives with no luck. Dead on delivery or broken after some hours.
So I decided to buy only drives from the market leader at that time. That's it. I have no data about the question what drives are the best quallity. It was just a decision I made and never looked back.

 

most of the "brand name" drives publish a MTBF sort of number called Total Terabytes Written.

There are mainly three factors that help determine SSD reliability: the age of the SSD, total terabytes written over time (TBW) and drive writes per day (DWPD

so look at the TBW, when buying also consider you need to have double the capacity you need, so 1tb if you need 512gb of storage. This is to allow rewriting of bad memory cels to new cels as cels degrade from rewriting.

https://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/hardware/ssd-lifespan-how-long-will-your-ssd-work/

explains how to evaluate SSD and what the terms mean. I've had 2 SSD fail in about 4 or 5 years of using them. I still use HDD where I can as they fail more gracefully. For instance this computer I type this on has an HDD, it boots a little slower, but I go get coffee and don't curse the speed..

every computer that has an ssd, I image the disk, after everything is installed, so I have a backup stored on an HDD. Its kind of ridiculous, that SSD sales cause more HDD sales for backups, but here we are.....

as far as recovery goes, they're are some utilities out there that say they can. I've owned a copy of Hard Disk regenerator for about 12 years, and have used it many times to recover HDD, its been updated to work on SSD. I haven't tried the new version, its basically the same price to update my software as buy it new... around 99$

https://www.dposoft.net/

I ususally mount the SSD in an external USB case, and attach it to another computer and if its recognized (good sign), I copy all the data I can get by hand to a folder on the host computer. You'll usually not be able to get a full copy, and windows won't be able to be backed up and restored, but you can get any drivers you need, off the old ssd and any personal data, mp3s, projects etc. Don't write anything to the drive you are trying to copy data off of it will just cause more problems. Also make sure Indexing is turned off on the external drive. BTW indexing should always be off on all SSD, it is rewriting data to the ssd and using up write cycles using up the lifespan of the SSD.

this search might help

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=utility+to+get+data+off+bad+ssd&ia=web

good luck....

 

in IT management, you would usually create an initial image of the drive, once it was populated with 0/s and applications. Then you weekly or whatever period you are comfortable, do a backup of just the changes (these backups are usually much smaller and therefore faster). Sometimes its just easier to image the whole thing if you have the HDD space, on a regular basis and delete the oldest backup.

The thing about SSD is you need 2x the capacity you will use, to allow management of the drive and rewriting failing memory cells to new areas, once the drive is full there is nowhere to rewrite the data and eventually enough bad memory cells will accrue in a critical area like the boot sector and your dead in the water.

 

Other than troubleshooting your SSDs, are you using the manufacturers SSD management software? For Crucial, it would be:
Crucial Storage Executive

Gives info on status of disk & ability to update firmware for the device(s).

 

I've used SSD on ide over sata adapter, so yeah, sometimes you don't get to choose the inteface on the computer. I've also got a dell or hp laptop that has sata and nvme, so I have 2 ssd's inside that one.

most of the memory chips are made by a few companies and the controller chips as well. I've used Samsung and WD as well as less stellar brands, so far other than thinning my wallet better I haven't seen a ryhme or reason to the long term performance.

It is good to have good heat transfer wherever the drive is used, so proper ventilation and heat sinks where space provides. most importantly they have a finite write life, so don't but application data that gets rewritten frequently on it. Great for storing samples, not so good for editing samples. etc..

I usually buy from Amazon, find a good price, look up the reviews on other sites, and then try to find out the mfg's warranty and how many write cycles it can take. and make my purchase based on that..

 

yea this happened to me years ago with fairly new 500GB Samsung 860 EVO - zero chance for data recovery, but succeeded claim for warranty and was given another one, no problems since then,

best you can do is to make sure Windows doesn't fuck it up - all that bullshit like telemetry, encryption, updates, antivirus, indexing etc.. actually do stress the SSD for little to no benefit of the user,
and if you have any valuable data, then you should have a proper backup strategy because any SSD/HDD can die anytime

 

Crystal disk info is agnostic regarding brand and will give you lots of data to evaluate your ssd & hdd performance and life.

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/7301-crystaldiskinfo.html

 

Thank you everyone. A lot of really useful info here!

Gonna buy a new one SSD from a major brand, and a HDD to back it up.
then i'll try the softwares mentioned for data mgmt, and data recovery (saw the video for R-studio, looks easy enough)

Yeah! i have crystal disk info! funnily enough the day before the Goldenfir SSD broke up, i checked its health and it was showing 100%, all stats max health!! I guess, as people mentioned above, i doesn't work well warning in advance if something is wrong for ssds, just HDs

 

Try Disk Drill, I was able to recover an entire disk I accidentally formatted. It will likely not be organized in the same manner was it was originally stored.

Check Cystal Disk Info if you can too diagnose what could have happened in order to prevent from happening again.

 

thats good to know... I wonder did the temperature ever go up on the drive? guess it would be something you'd have to be able to create a log to see the temerature distribution over days/weeks to forecast problems ahead...

I wish someone had a project where we could send failed ssds for evaluation of the failures so we could know what to watch for, and how to make them more robust..A raided (mirrored) ssd in a single package form factor would be a great idea, at least you would have redundant data protection when it failed. as long as only a single drive failed at a time, which statstically would be unlikely (2 simultaneous failure not likely)