Samsung manufactures many of the best-selling SSDs today: the 870 EVO found in countless PCs, the 980 and 990 NVMe drives used in many modern laptops, and the T7 and T9 portables. What happens when one of these drives fails is very different from what happens when a hard drive fails. As a general rule, recovery is faster when the fault is logical, but if the controller fails, things get much tougher. Below is what to expect when recovering a Samsung SSD specifically.
Samsung’s SATA and NVMe SSDs are designed to run quickly and reliably, but, as with all SSDs, recovery is less certain than from a failed hard drive: TRIM, the controller and built-in encryption all narrow the odds. What is recoverable depends on the type of failure that occurred.
Samsung’s SSD lines are worth telling apart, and they can be broken into distinct groups. SATA SSDs include the 870 EVO and QVO series, although the QVO uses lower-cost, higher-capacity flash memory, which wears faster. NVMe SSDs such as the 980, 990 PRO and their siblings are much faster and slot directly onto the motherboard. And then there are the portable USB SSDs, the T7 and T9. They are well-regarded drives, but no SSD is immune to failure, and because of how SSDs work internally, recovering one is a truly different job from recovering a traditional spinning hard disk, regardless of the brand name on it.
There are three reasons SSD recovery is less predictable than hard-drive recovery, and they apply to Samsung as much as anyone. First, TRIM physically erases deleted data in the background within minutes, which often makes recovering individually deleted files from an operational SSD impossible. Second, the drive’s controller has its own complex, proprietary mapping of data across the flash chips, so if the controller fails, reading the raw flash is like piecing together a scrambled jigsaw without the map. Third, many SSDs encrypt by default, so even having access to the flash does nothing for you unless you have the proper credentials. This is why we try to give you honest expectations; the fuller picture is in our guide on whether a failed SSD can be recovered.
The classic failure associated with Samsung SSDs, and with many other manufacturers as well, is the drive that abruptly stops being detected, or that the BIOS sees but reports at the wrong capacity. More often than not this is due to a controller or firmware issue on the drive, not because the flash memory itself has worn out. The good news is that the data on the flash is often still intact; the only thing broken is the drive’s ability to present it to you. These failures are frequently recoverable by working at the controller level to read the flash directly and reconstruct the data (specialist work that needs to happen quickly). A common mistake is to keep rebooting until the drive magically shows up again; instead, the first step should be to set it aside and get it diagnosed. This is exactly what happens with failed SSDs that aren’t detected.
The portable T7 and T9 models add a complication: both are often password-protected and encrypted. Like any other encrypted external drive, you need to send them whole. Don’t open them. If your Samsung SSD is still working but you’re concerned, you can run Samsung’s own Magician software, which gives details about the health and wear of the drive. This is a useful early-warning check, which we cover in how to check SSD health. If one has failed, recovering the data involves reading it from the flash memory and reconstructing it using the controller logic. An individual Samsung SSD or NVMe drive starts from £300 +VAT, with a complimentary diagnostic and a fixed quote first, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Often, yes, but it depends on what kind of issue occurred with the drive. A logical error on a working drive is very recoverable. The common case, a Samsung SSD that simply disappears without notice, is usually due to the controller or the firmware failing, while the flash itself is often intact and recovery is done at controller level. Physical flash damage is the hardest. The cost to recover a single SSD is from £300 plus VAT, after a complimentary diagnostic.
Not necessarily. When a Samsung SSD suddenly goes missing or displays an incorrect capacity, this is typically because of a controller or firmware failure, while the actual data stored on the flash memory may well remain intact but simply cannot be presented by the drive. It is frequently recoverable by reading the flash directly and reassembling the data. So stop power-cycling the drive and arrange a diagnosis rather than retrying it.
Because of how SSDs operate. TRIM erases deleted data within minutes, the controller maps data across the flash chips using proprietary methods and leaves the raw chips scrambled if it fails, and many SSDs encrypt data by default. None of these apply to a traditional spinning hard drive. Together they make SSD recovery less predictable and more specialised, although numerous types of failure remain recoverable.
Yes, you will need to send us the entire unit. As these units (the T7 and T9) typically have password protection and encryption enabled, like any encrypted external drive they should not be opened, and the drive must be recovered in its original hardware. This way your data will also be handled properly. Portable SSD recovery pricing starts from £300 plus VAT.
To check whether your SSD is failing, use Samsung Magician (the official free software), which reports drive health, wear level and remaining lifespan. Rising reallocated sectors or a dropping health percentage are warning signs to back up and plan a replacement. Checking health is preventative: once you’ve already lost the drive, you need recovery, but checking can warn you in time to avoid that.
Do not keep power-cycling your Samsung SSD if it has dropped out or died. Send it in and we’ll give you an honest assessment of how much of the data we can recover, with no cost for the diagnostic and a fixed quote before proceeding.