[clug] recovering data from dead SSD

[Steven Hanley]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2022 at 02:52:24PM +1000, Bob Edwards via linux wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Anyone every tried/had success in recovering data from a "dead"
> SSD (SATA attached)? Any clues as to whether it might be worth
> hooking it up to a JTAG reader and seeing what can be seen?
> 
> Not desperate, but curious and would be useful to be able to
> do this.
> 
> (in this case, by "dead", I mean that it doesn't even appear to
> the system (eg. in lsusb, dmesg etc.) on a USB-connected SATA
> dock, on which other drives do work just fine).

I looked into this a bit last year, if it is the controlling electronics
that died it may be possible (though fiddly) to swap for another of the
same model and it may be able to see the data stored.

When the device simply will not show up any activity when plugged in it is
likely the electronics have died.

I saw one fail where it could even have been a failed connection inside the
drive as jiggling it initilaly had it appear again a few times. Probably
need to open it up and look very closely at all connections to see if
anything stands out as failed in that sort of case.

So long as not much was deleted (TRIM command) or much activity (moving data
blocks around for failed/failing blocks) recently I guess there is a chance to
retrieve data. 

I suspect forensics types have more complex methods to get the data from the
physical chips somehow.

Steve

-- 
Steven Hanley sjh at svana.org http://svana.org/sjh/diary
come here, stand in front of the light, stand still
so i can see your silhouette, i hope, you have got all night
'cause i'm not done looking, no, i'm not done looking yet
   Overlap - Out Of Range - Ani