Verify SSD data restoration process. Ensure tools are compatible and steps are correct.
Verify SSD data restoration process. Ensure tools are compatible and steps are correct.
Background So my brother has an SSD he got on Amazon by SPCC that seems to have died. The way it died is odd, and the behavior of the device is troubling at best. He was simply printing a document when the PC bluescreened. When he would reboot, a print job would immediately send again before he even logged into Windows. Then it stopped booting intermittently, complaining about missing system files at times, sometimes booting and bluescreening later on. I replaced this disk with a barely-used 256GB Samsung, and because his machine was ancient (first gen i7) we upgraded him to a 10th-gen platform. Weird Behavior After setting up Windows we began attaching his old drives one by one. His games drive works fine, but the SPCC was the previous boot disk and thus houses his documents and such. When attached we could see the disk in diskpart/diskmgmt but couldn't mount it. I used a SATA to USB enclosure and I can browse the filesystem without issue, heck I can even copy a file or 2, but any more than that and the transfer locks up the file browser until the drive is unplugged (this happens in both Windows 10 and Linux Mint). This behavior is consistent across multiply PCs . The Path Forward Given the nature of when the problems began, I'm unsure whether or not this is a hardware issue tho it certainly seems that way. I've managed to get a handful of documents off of it, but I don't want to keep re-plugging the drive because the exact nature of the issue is unknown. My first thought at this point is that the issues with it locking up only appear when I attempt file operations, so it seems possible (however unlikely) that the issue is with the filesystem. If so, I should be able to capture a raw disk image using dd and I can attempt to work off of a digital copy. If that fails however, it would almost certainly confirm a hardware issue. Most of what we want from this drive is picture and such, most of which should be on his old HDD anyways, but it would still be nice to get the data off of it. That being said: would it be insane to attempt to reflow the board with some foil and a heatgun/hairdryer if this ends up being the case? We've seen this method work on GPUs and the like over the years, so it seems like it could be worth the shot. Any other ideas or insight into this issue would be appreciated. I've seen older SSDs gradually develop issues and replaced them as a result countless times, but this drive was new 2 years ago and has never shown issues up to this point. He doesn't use the PC every day and usually keeps it turned off if not in use.
CHKDSK is feasible and definitely worth trying. I plan to use it when I’m back home. However, if the attempt or image capture doesn’t work, it’s likely a hardware problem. The reflow method seems safe to try, though it’s disappointing to have to go that way. I’m mostly confident there are no other options if it’s hardware-related, but I’m open to being wrong.
I tried running CHKDSK at home last night. The tool froze after several minutes during Stage 1 (checking the filesystem), then it kept behaving oddly until the drive was unplugged. This is worrying because even drives that needed fixing usually resolved in under 30 seconds. I’m pretty sure there’s a problem with the disk itself, since the SATA-USB adapter works fine with other drives. I plan to try a reflow soon and will note the outcome here if I don’t get anything else.