Before assuming the drive is dead, spend five minutes ruling out the machine. M.2 slots work loose, SATA cables fail, and firmware hides drives — all of which look identical to a failed SSD from where you are sitting. When those are exhausted, here is what the symptom actually means.
$ mdr diagnose /dev/nvme0 → Device: Samsung 970 EVO · 1 TB · NVMe → Status: NOT DETECTED — controller failure → Client: confidential · Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester $ mdr engineer-working → NAND read: chip-off · raw flash dumped → Reconstruction: wear-levelling + ECC resolved → Imaging: 0.91 TB / 1.00 TB (91%) $ mdr verify → ✓ documents — 71,440 files → ✓ photos — 44,900 files → ✓ data reconstructed — recovered
M.2 slots, SATA cables and motherboard firmware all fail, and each looks exactly like a dead drive from where you are sitting. Five minutes in a different computer separates a drive fault from a machine fault.
In order of how likely they are and how little they cost to rule out.
A cheap USB-to-NVMe or USB-to-SATA adapter costs a few pounds and tells you immediately whether the drive or the computer is at fault. Worth owning regardless.
M.2 drives sit under a single screw and work loose more often than you would expect, particularly in laptops that travel. Take it out, check the contacts, put it back firmly.
A drive absent from Windows but visible in the BIOS is a driver or file-system problem, not a hardware failure. That distinction changes everything about what happens next.
A drive appearing as 0 MB, 2 GB or some absurd figure is not undetected — it is detected and reporting nonsense, which points at the controller or firmware and is often recoverable.
If it is invisible in the BIOS on two machines, further attempts add nothing. Repeated power cycling gives an unstable controller more opportunities to write something unhelpful.
They present identically and the diagnostic separates them.
What a lab adds once the free checks are exhausted.
Manufacturers build a diagnostic mode into their controllers that bypasses the normal interface. Reaching a drive that way allows the service area to be read directly — including the translation tables that map logical addresses to physical flash locations. Without those tables the NAND is undifferentiated data; with them, the drive can be imaged read-only even though no computer will mount it.
Where the controller cannot be revived at all, the flash can sometimes be read directly, which means de-interleaving across planes, correcting ECC and unscrambling to that controller’s specific arrangement before anything readable appears. That work is manufacturer-specific, which is why we ask for make and model at the outset rather than when the drive arrives.
And a genuine attempt to save you the money first.
SSD and NVMe recovery is from £300 +VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with controller-level work carrying a 50% deposit and the balance on success.
Before that, work through the checks above — they cost nothing and they resolve a meaningful share of enquiries. If the drive turns out to be visible in another machine, or in the BIOS, you may not need us at all, and that is a better outcome than a recovery invoice.
Get the device to us with a short note on what happened. The diagnostic that follows costs nothing, and the figure that follows it is fixed in writing before any work begins.
Nothing can begin until the device is on the bench, which makes this the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, put your details in with it, and send it over. What follows is a free diagnostic and a written figure, in that order.
Posting it? Use something tracked and insured — whatever is on the drive is worth considerably more than the postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, and it still wants packing as above for the journey.
Tell us what the device is, what it is doing, and anything already tried — an engineer will come back with a realistic view of the odds and a price band, before you commit to posting anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
What people ask us most about SSDs the computer won’t detect or recognise.
Another machine, or a cheap USB adapter. That single test separates a drive fault from a motherboard, cable or slot fault in five minutes. Then reseat it, and check the BIOS as well as Windows.
Considerably. If the BIOS sees it, the drive is alive and communicating, and the problem is a driver, a partition or a file system. Those are logical faults and usually far easier than a drive that is invisible everywhere.
That it is detected but reporting nonsense, which points at controller or firmware trouble rather than dead flash. It is one of the more recoverable SSD faults, and it usually means the mapping tables are damaged.
Thermal damage, common on NVMe drives in thin laptops and sealed external enclosures. Intermittent behaviour like that generally precedes permanent failure, so treat it as a warning and get the data off now.
Only while the board works. Once it has failed — particularly where encryption is tied to it — there is often no route at all. Send us the model and we will tell you before you post anything.
From £300 plus VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with controller-level work taking a 50% deposit and the balance on success. Work through the free checks first — they resolve a fair number of these.
Controller, firmware and chip-level recovery, all in-house, a free written diagnostic to open, and no fix no fee on most jobs. Begin your recovery today.