Help?! SSD Failed - Reputable Recovery Companies?

[FatalSaviour]

I'm the proud owner of what would appear to be a completely dead Corsair F240 SSD...
I've taken it out of the laptop which is now complaining about no boot device, and tried it in a caddy, as well as a desktop PC, and nothing is being detected, which is making me fear the worst.
Now, being prepared for this sort of thing, I use Syncback Pro to make a daily incremental backup of my files, and can verify that this has been working. However, the backup folder (on a NAS) is now showing as completely empty - I have no idea how this has happened, and will try to trawl through the logs later.
Unfortunately, there is some rather important data on the SSD, so any other potential recovery methods that I might try, or recommendations for specialist companies would be *greatly* appreciated.
I'm aware that the latter option at least won't come cheap, but does anyone have a guide price of what I might be looking at?

Thanks very much all!

[GoNz0]

i would look at free software for the nas to recover the previous backup tbh.

[Phage]

I had a similar question. See the thread.
http://forums.hexus.net/help-technic...n-startup.html

[FatalSaviour]

Thanks for the replies guys.
The NAS in question is an N5200 - I'll post a separate thread in there about advice for recovering data from a folder there. At the moment, I can't honestly see why this folder from all others should be blank (easiest answer would be so say I deleted it from the Network drive), but as it should be backing up daily, it would have had to have been yesterday, when I hardly used it...
:-(

[GoNz0]

google the thecus forum, with it being linux its a pain to do but better than paying for the SSD to be done.

[Agent]

:
I've taken it out of the laptop which is now complaining about no boot device, and tried it in a caddy, as well as a desktop PC, and nothing is being detected, which is making me fear the worst.

This is a textbook Corsair death. Have a Google around and you'll see this is a huge issue - loads of people on their own forums and all over the web have had this happen to them too.
In short - you're screwed. Due to the way Sandforce compresses the data on the drive, even if you managed to solder and dump the contents of each NAND, it would be unreadable.

Sorry

[nibbler]

Is it also an issue with OCZ vertex 2s Agent?

[Sputnik]

Is it also an issue with OCZ vertex 2s Agent?

I think we are safe! I almost got a Corsair unit until someone alerted me about this problem with them and I went to have a look on the Corsair forums.

[nibbler]

Well there are obviously still failures but I think it's way lower, judging by reports ont he web. I also hate corsair in general tbh.

[FatalSaviour]

This is a textbook Corsair death. Have a Google around and you'll see this is a huge issue - loads of people on their own forums and all over the web have had this happen to them too.
In short - you're screwed. Due to the way Sandforce compresses the data on the drive, even if you managed to solder and dump the contents of each NAND, it would be unreadable.

Sorry

Hi Agent, thanks (I think! :-) ) for your reply.
Having spoken to a data recovery technician this morning, who obviously suggested proceeding along the lines of a dump and reconstruction, I was under the impression that this should potentially be a viable solution.

I'm not sure whether my googling skills just aren't up to scratch today, but I haven't had much luck finding reports of data recovery involving SSDs full stop, let alone related to the Sandforce controllers specifically.

The company that I spoke to (I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to post names) said that although they do usually operate a no-recovery-no-fee policy, the large size of the SSD meant that they would have to charge a non-refundable deposity (around the £500 mark was mentioned).

I think that they're a fairly reputable outfit (and are advertised on http://www.datarecoverycompanies.co.uk ), and although I'd like to also obtain quotes from companies such as Ontrack, the fact it's the weekend doesn't help matters either!

[GoNz0]

wow.. you think there reputable if they are going to take you for £500 none refundable up front..

i have some magic beans m8, interested ?

looks like you will have to take the thecus drives out and run a linux cd with them mounted on your pc to recover the data.

[FatalSaviour]

Sorry, perhaps that should say that 'I think that they're *meant to be*'
Apologies, everything is rather hectic today! :-(

[GoNz0]

as agent said, the drives a brick with none recoverable data, anyone with a data recovery company will tell you they can do something without guarentee, more fool you to pay £500 up front

[Sputnik]

I don't think I'd pay £500 to recover the data on my drive, Even though it is important to me - It is not worth that much.

A non refundable attempt sounds great - I can just imagine it now "that's £500 sir " puts hard drive on a shelf somewhere, 1 week later "sorry sir, We cannot retrieve the data. Would you like your drive back?"

[GoNz0]

change shelf for bin as it would cost another £200 to return the drive, that and the warranty is void because they would pop the seal to pretend they looked at it.

[oldskooladdict]

Probably sod all use but I'll mention it anyway - TestDisk... I recovered a knackered external hdd using this program. It's free and small so it's worth a go I'd say, basically see if it can see the drive or not.

As I say, judging by the posts above I'm not sure how useful that would be. Perhaps it would be more useful to run that against the NAS to see if there's a backup that SyncbackPro has deleted which could be restored? - That certainly sounds a more realistic option right now...

I presume if there's lots of posts on the Corsair forums then other people have gone through the same process and can probably say if it's pointless or not to try and recover the SSD (sounds like it is :/ )