Data recovery on a Vertex 120GB

[ddrueding]

Had an original Vertex 120GB go bad. Hard to blame the drive, though, the laptop it was in had a failed fan and the drive was so hot the label blistered.

However. This drive contained important data without a backup, and I have been tasked with doing just about anything to recover it.

At the moment, the drive is detected by the BIOS, but as something other than a Vertex. It looks like the controller is defaulting to it's own name (barefoot-something).

Any suggestions? Crack the case and look for blown bits? Attempt a reflash? I have a spare 120GB drive here if I need parts.

 

[Bozo]

maybe Spinrite will see it??

 

[ddrueding]

In device manager it appears as "Marvell 91xx Config ATA Device", not a drive at all.

 

[Mercutio]

I suspect at this point that you're boned, but maybe you can get some advice from OCZ.

And I almost kept a straight face when I typed that.

 

[Will Rickards]

I'm not sure how these drives die. I mean is it a power issue? Reflashing might work.
How heat would affect the components I don't know. Would it kill the RAM they use for cache? Or where the firmware is stored?

 

[BingBangBop]

You could swap the actual flash chips on the bad SSD with the flash chips on the good drive (making sure that the chips stay in the same order), assuming your soldering skills are very good. When done, see if the data can be seen on the the replacement drive.

 

[ddrueding]

In the BIOS it is listed as "YATAPDONG BAREFOOT"

Googling this shows threads in the OCZ forum where techs actually responded. Not good news, though.

 

[Stereodude]

I suspect at this point that you're boned, but maybe you can get some advice from OCZ.

And I almost kept a straight face when I typed that.

I almost kept a straight face while reading it.

Actually no I didn't... ;-)

 

[ddrueding]

Funny enough, I actually did get some good info from the OCZ Forum guys. Seems they even approved an RMA via PM on their forum?

 

[CougTek]

Replacing your drive won't get you your data back, so that's the least of your concerns if that data has any kind of value. I very much doubt Spinrite will be of any help either. There's nothing spinning in an SSD.

Good luck trying to swap the chips with a soldering iron. From what you suggested, this is an earlier-generation Vertex 2 and those use 35nm traces. The newer ones, probably like your replacement drive, are made with 25nm traces. Swapping the chips from two different generations won't work since the cell organisation isn't the same. IIRC, the 25nm-based drives uses half-as-many chips as the older ones.

Like Merc wrote : you're boned, or screwed, or f**ked. As you please.

 

[Mercutio]

OCZ: It takes us six business days to send out the email soliciting information so we can start the RMA process if you do it through our official web site, but don't worry, because you can just contact us on a forum!

Nice.

 

[LunarMist]

I thought that inability to recover data was a selling point of SSDs.

 

[time]

Most SSDs are encrypted (Intel G25M is a notable exception), so there is absolutely not a whiff of a chance of recovery - the key would be long gone if the drive has forgotten even its brand.

It would be interesting to see if you could flash it, but I seem to recall those early firmwares erased the data anyway ...

For a laugh, why don't you get an estimate from OnTrack? It would at least PYA; people rapidly lose interest when you say something like that's gonna cost them 10 grand or so.