The flash was fine; a sudden outage had left the controller stuck and the drive invisible. Reaching it directly brought it back.
A business Lenovo desktop went down when the mains cut out unexpectedly, and once power returned its SATA SSD had disappeared from the BIOS entirely. Solid-state drives are notably intolerant of losing power in the middle of a write: when it happens, the controller — the small processor that runs the drive — can lock itself into a fault state that hides the whole unit, even while the flash it manages still holds every byte. As far as the PC was concerned, the drive was no longer there.
Our equipment couldn’t get the drive to present itself in the normal way, which lined up with a controller knocked out by the outage rather than flash that had worn out. The difference decides everything: this is a recoverable state, because the data itself is intact and it’s only the controller’s bookkeeping that needs putting straight.
We went in through the PC3000, reaching the controller in its service mode to bring it out of the fault state, then examined the mapping tables it uses to keep track of where each block of data physically sits in the flash. The interrupted write had left those tables inconsistent, and repairing them was what let the controller respond again; with that done the drive presented normally and we took an image to a copy. This kind of power-loss lock-up is a routine SSD fault, but clearing it is precise work that can only be done down at the controller, never through the ordinary drive connection.
From the image we rebuilt the file system, confirmed the business’s files opened correctly, and wrote the recovered data out to fresh media.
The file system came up exactly as it had been, and the company had all of its data back four working days on. The moral is a simple one: fast and dependable as SSDs are, an abrupt power cut is one of the few things they genuinely dislike — and a small uninterruptible power supply on an important machine is cheap cover against precisely this.
PC3000 — controller recovered in service mode, mapping tables repaired, then imaged on our bench. A copy is taken first and the original is never altered.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Getting your data back begins with getting the device to us. Pack it up safely, pop your contact details inside, and send it over — once we’ve run the free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work starts.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
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Usually, yes. Losing power mid-write can lock an SSD’s controller into a fault state that hides the drive even though the flash is intact. On the PC3000 we bring the controller back and repair its mapping tables so the drive presents again; the data underneath is typically fine.
From £300 plus VAT, most jobs no fix, no fee, with a fixed quote before any work starts.
Very likely. An uninterruptible power supply keeps a machine running through a cut for long enough to shut down cleanly, which avoids the interrupted writes that cause this kind of SSD lock-up. On an important PC it’s inexpensive insurance.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.