It will take you about 5 minutes to confirm that your machine has not failed. The M.2 slot can become disconnected. SATA cables can fail. Firmware can also hide a drive — and all of these look identical to a failed SSD from your position. Once you've run through all of these options, then we'll talk about what the actual symptoms mean.
All three of these (the M.2 slot, SATA cable and motherboard firmware) can fail, and each looks just as much like a bad drive from your position. 5 minutes on a separate PC will tell you if you're dealing with a faulty drive or a faulty machine.
In order of likelihood and cost.
A low-cost (a few pounds) USB-to-NVMe or USB-to-SATA adapter will let you know right away whether your drive is faulty or your PC is faulty. This should probably be something you own anyway.
The M.2 drive is secured by one screw and is prone to becoming loose and disconnecting when using a laptop that travels. Remove the screw and verify the connections are clean and then secure them again with the screw.
A drive that shows up in the BIOS but does not show up in Windows is likely due to either drivers or the file system being corrupted, not a hardware failure. If you determine that the issue lies with the file system or drivers you will need to take different actions rather than troubleshooting for hardware issues.
A drive showing up as 0MB, 2GB, etc., means the drive was detected but reported incorrect data. The most common causes include a faulty controller and/or bad firmware. Most times the data is recoverable.
If the drive doesn't show up in the BIOS on both computers, all additional troubleshooting steps add little to your efforts. Multiple cycles of powering off/on give an already unstable controller additional opportunities to save potentially damaging information to itself.
They appear the same. The diagnostic can separate them from each other.
The lab adds more once you've run out of free checks.
Manufacturers write a diagnostic mode into their controllers that bypasses the normal interface. The diagnostic mode enables a direct connection to the service area so that it can be read, along with the translation tables used by the controller to translate logical addresses to physical flash locations. When you have these tables, you can image the drive read-only even though no computer will mount it, while without them the NAND flash is just a collection of raw bits.
If the controller itself is unable to come back online at all, the flash memory can sometimes be accessed directly. This provides the ability to de-interleave across planes, correct ECC errors and unscramble into its original layout. Because each manufacturer has their own unique way of laying out their flash memory and creating ECC error correction algorithms, this requires the ability to perform manufacturer-specific work. For that reason, we always ask about make and model when we first receive your enquiry and not when your unit arrives.
And our honest attempt to help you avoid spending your cash before we begin.
Recovery from an SSD or NVMe drive will start from £300 +VAT, after we have conducted a free 48-hour diagnostic. In cases where the required level of controller-based recovery is needed, there will be a 50% deposit due upon agreement for the recovery. The balance will only become payable if successful.
Complete the preceding no-cost diagnostic tests before contacting us. A significant portion of enquiries can be resolved without further action, should it turn out that the SSD is simply visible in another machine (or in the BIOS). This would obviously be preferable to receiving a recovery invoice.
Please send us your device along with a brief description of what happened. This diagnostic process has no cost and the price for the next phase of service will be fixed in writing prior to commencing work.
This is the only step that requires input from you and nothing else can happen until the device is on our bench. Package your item properly and include all the information we require about you and your item(s), then ship them to us. Then comes a no-cost diagnostic, followed by a written quote.
Posting it? Use a tracked and insured service. The value of what is on the drive far exceeds the cost of postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays from 9am to 5:30pm, and it still needs packing as described above for the journey.
Tell us about the item in question, tell us how it has been behaving lately, and let us know if there is anything you have done as far as troubleshooting goes so that our engineers may provide a realistic estimate of success and a probable cost range prior to sending your items off.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
What do most people want to know about when their computer doesn't appear to "see" their SSD?
Another computer or a cheap USB adapter. A single test will tell you if your SSD is working properly or if there is something wrong with your motherboard, cables or slot within 5 minutes. Then simply take it out and put it back in again. Check both the BIOS and Windows for its presence.
Significantly. If the BIOS recognises it, then the SSD is alive and talking to the BIOS. Now we have narrowed the possible causes down to a logical error caused by a bad driver, partition or file system. Either way these problems are much easier to resolve than the first scenario where the SSD is totally invisible.
This would indicate that the SSD is recognised but is sending some kind of nonsensical information. This suggests a problem with the controller or firmware rather than dead flash. While this type of problem is one of the better types of SSD failures and may be recoverable, it most often indicates that the mapping tables are corrupted.
Thermal damage, especially in NVMe devices in thin laptop models and enclosed external units. As a rule of thumb, intermittent behaviour such as this tends to occur before a device fails completely. Therefore, since this is an indication of potential impending failure, immediately make a backup of all of your important files and/or contact us to see how we can help you recover your lost data.
Yes. But only as long as the board still operates. After that, especially when the data is encrypted to the SSD – usually, it cannot be recovered. Please send us the name of the model and we will let you know whether it can be done before you post anything.
After a free 48-hour diagnostic check, SSD recovery starts from £300 plus VAT. For controller-level work, a 50% deposit is paid upfront and then the balance is invoiced once successful. Run the free diagnostics first – they have resolved many cases like yours.
In house controller, firmware and chip-level recovery. A free, written diagnostic report to begin with, and no charge for most recoveries if the job fails. Start recovering your SSD now.