The flash itself was fine — the controller had frozen and nothing could get to it, until a vendor-mode reset opened the door.
An Asus ZenBook came in after its NVMe SSD simply vanished from the BIOS between one evening and the next morning, taking a set of live project files with it. Nothing had been dropped or spilled; the drive had been working perfectly the night before. That pattern — here yesterday, gone today — usually means the controller, not the flash.
On our equipment the SSD wouldn’t present itself normally, which fitted a controller lock-up rather than worn or damaged memory. The distinction is the whole game here: a frozen controller is a recoverable fault, because the data sitting in the flash is untouched and only needs a path opened back to it.
With the PC3000 we dropped the SSD into the manufacturer’s technical mode, cleared the stuck state and read out the controller’s internal structures. The translator — the map that ties the logical drive to the physical flash — had gone inconsistent, and that was why the drive could no longer show itself; once we rebuilt it, the logical drive sprang back and the file system fell into place. From there the drive imaged to a copy in the usual way.
We rebuilt the file system from the image, confirmed the full set of project files opened as they should, and wrote it all out to fresh media.
The SSD imaged cleanly and everything went back four working days later, nothing lost. This kind of failure arrives with almost no warning, which is exactly why live work is worth syncing or backing up somewhere separate — a drive that’s healthy at bedtime can be invisible by breakfast.
PC3000 — controller reset in technical mode, translator rebuilt, then imaged on our bench. A copy is made first and the original is never altered.
Send your device in for a free diagnostic, with a few words about what went wrong — an engineer will look it over and put your exact quote in writing before anything is started.
The route to your data starts with the device reaching us. Box it up securely, tuck your contact details inside, and post it across — after the free diagnostic, we’ll put your exact price in writing before a thing is done.
Sending it by post? Go with a tracked, insured service. Prefer to bring it? Pop in Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just pack the device as described above beforehand.
After a little more detail up front? Complete the form describing your issue and an engineer will assess it and send back a tailored quote.
We’ll come back to you soon. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
Often not. An SSD that drops out of the BIOS is frequently a controller lock-up rather than dead flash, and the data underneath is usually intact. On the PC3000 we clear the fault in the drive’s technical mode and rebuild the internal tables so it presents again.
From £300 plus VAT, most jobs no fix, no fee, with a fixed written quote before any work.
No — repeatedly power-cycling a locked-up SSD can turn a clean controller fault into a harder one. Set it aside and have the controller and its tables read out properly.
Begin with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it over first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.