SSD Data Recovery for a Failed or Dead SSD
When an SSD suddenly drops off your computer and shows up blank, unallocated, or not at all, that usually doesn't mean your files are gone. The flash chips don't wipe themselves when a drive dies. What breaks is the path the controller uses to reach them. Our New York lab works at the board and chip level to fix that path and get back to your photos, work, and files.
Free diagnostics · No recovery, no fee · Nationwide mail in
Symptoms you might be seeing
If any of this sounds familiar, power the device down and leave it off.
Drive isn't recognized by the BIOS/UEFI, Disk Management, or Disk Utility at all
Shows up with the wrong capacity, a generic or garbled model name, or 0 bytes
Detects on and off, appearing for a moment and then dropping out
Reports SMART errors, asks to be formatted, or shows up as RAW or unallocated
Was working fine, then died after a power surge, a sleep cycle, or a firmware update
What NOT to do right now
Do NOT keep power cycling or replugging the drive. Each retry can corrupt the controller's translation tables further
Do NOT run chkdsk, fsck, format, or 'initialize disk' if you're prompted. These trigger writes that can destroy recoverable data
Do NOT install or run consumer recovery software on a drive that isn't detecting reliably, since it puts more stress on a dying controller
Do NOT apply a manufacturer firmware update or 'secure erase' to try to revive it. Either one can permanently wipe the mapping
Do NOT open the SSD or try to reflow or heat the chips yourself. Flash and controller solder joints don't tolerate it
Why it happens
What is actually going on inside the device.
An SSD is a lot more than its flash. A controller chip handles encryption, wear leveling, and the translation tables that map your files to physical NAND cells, and small parts on the board (power management ICs, capacitors, voltage regulators) keep the whole thing running. When a drive goes dead or undetected, the NAND itself is usually fine.
The failure is upstream: a blown power management IC after a surge, a corrupted firmware or translation module, a controller that has dropped into a read only or panic safe mode, or a cracked solder joint. Because your data sits behind the controller's encryption and mapping, you can't just move the chips to another drive and read them. The logical structure has to be reconstructed, and that is the part generic services can't handle.
How ChipWorx recovers it
Lab work, done in house, on the failing hardware itself.
We start with a free diagnostic to find where the path broke. Most of the work happens on the existing board. Our technicians microsolder, replacing a failed PMIC, regulator, or capacitor and repairing cracked joints to bring the controller back to life.
When the firmware or translation tables are corrupt, we work at the controller and firmware level, using vendor specific commands and technical (factory) modes to rebuild the mapping. Only in the most extreme cases, where the controller is genuinely dead, do we fall back to transplanting the NAND onto donor hardware or reading the flash directly, then reassembling the data through the original encryption and ECC scheme to reconstruct your files. After the diagnostic we'll walk you through what we found and give you a quote and timeframe before any work starts.
Under our no recovery, no fee policy, you don't pay our recovery fee if we can't get your data back.
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers about cost, turnaround, and mail in.
My SSD isn't detected at all. Is my data gone?
Usually not. A drive that won't detect almost always has a controller, firmware, or board power problem, not erased flash. The NAND chips typically still hold your data and the controller just can't present it. Our diagnostic tells us which it is, at no cost to you.
Can you recover an encrypted SSD if the controller died?
Often, yes. Modern SSDs encrypt data at the controller, so we reconstruct it through the drive's original encryption and ECC scheme while we repair the board or, as a last resort, transplant the NAND. If your data is also protected by your own BitLocker or FileVault password or key, we'll need that to produce a readable result.
How do I get my dead SSD to you?
You mail it in, and we send a prepaid shipping label nationwide. Once it arrives we run the free diagnostic, then contact you with what we found and a quote and timeframe before any work begins. No recovery, no fee.
Your data is worth a look. Let’s recover it.
Free diagnostics, no recovery no fee. Mail it in from anywhere in the US.
Recovery outcomes vary with the type and severity of the damage, and we cannot guarantee successful recovery in every case. Work on an already failing device carries some risk of further damage. You always get an honest assessment and a quote before any work begins.
Other recoveries we handle: