What are supported and unsupported SSDs ?
One of the main failure modes for solid state drives is corruption or nand failure within the key areas of the nand chips themselves. Common symptoms over time would have included random system crashes, blue screens, slowness or warnings to run disk scans at start up. If this happens the drive is left in a state where the controller is unable to start the firmware and shuts down preventing data access.
Controller support in our tools allows certain aspects of the controller to be emulated by the software and then modified recovery versions of firmware loaded to the drive. These versions do not contain the same safety checks as those on the drives when they are sold meaning some errors can be ignored and bypassed to give us access where it would otherwise have been prevented.
W have 3 classifications of support for drives :
Full Support : The drive and controller pair are specifically supported.
Partial Support : The controller is supported but when it has been used in a different brand or model of drive.
Unsupported :. If your SSD has been classed as unsupported this means there are no controller solutions available in the current commercial recovery tools.
Can unsupported drives be recovered?
Having no controller support limits recovery and reduces the chance of success, but it does not excluded it completely. We recover unsupported drives regularly. There are many other failure modes for an SSD other than firmware failures. There could be physical damage, electrical damage, controller failure, PCB damage, component failure, drive slowness , heat damage, general slow response or logical problems.
We are a true “No Data, No Fee” recovery service. Our evaluation is free and provides you with the best way to determine if your drive is supported and can be recovered. Once we have determined the drive fault for you for just the cost of post the drive to us you can make an informed decision about your recovery.