Devices · SSD & NVMe
Solid-state drives don't click or grind — they simply vanish. A controller dies, firmware corrupts, or a power cut catches the drive mid-write. The recovery happens at chip level, and speed matters more here than anywhere else. Brighton cases are logged the day they arrive, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, at £300 + VAT.
Talk it through with an engineer
01273 964902
| The message | What it means | First thing we do |
|---|---|---|
| Drive identifies as SATAFIRM S11 | A crashed Phison controller booting into ROM mode — the model name is the confession | Do not run vendor tools |
| SSD missing from BIOS entirely | Controller or firmware death; the NAND holding your data usually survives | Chip-level lab work |
| Drive shows 0GB / wrong capacity | The internal map (FTL) has corrupted | Stop power-cycling it |
| SMART health suddenly plummeting | Real wear — or a firmware reporting bug | Check model advisories, image now |
| Error 0x800701E3 on an SSD volume | Hardware-level failure mid-read | No repair tools — image |
| Boot device not found after an update | A firmware update has stalled or bricked the drive | Leave it powered off |
Your device is logged with its own case reference the moment it arrives. An engineer assesses the fault, confirms what's actually recoverable, and you get a fixed price in writing — no diagnosis fee, no obligation, and no paid work until you say go.
Repeated power-ons push a failing SSD further into panic. We put it into a safe technological mode and talk to the flash on our terms.
When the controller is dead, the NAND is read directly and the drive's internal translation layer rebuilt in software — the map that turns raw chips back into your files.
Wear-levelling scatters data across every chip; we reassemble it, rebuild the file system and verify against a full listing before handover.
Before you pay the recovery fee you approve a full listing of what came back. Your data returns on new media with free return postage, and the case only closes once you've confirmed everything opens on your side.
Manufacturer's own words: Samsung's 990 Pro advisory confirmed the health-drop anomalies 'were found to be caused by issues with the SSD's firmware' and that the February 2023 update stops — but does not reverse — the reported wear. Always check the advisory before condemning a drive.
A laptop firmware update went wrong and the system drive did not come back. The drive was brought up in technical mode, its translation tables rebuilt, and ten years of a photographer's edited catalogues recovered intact.
Maybe, if you power off now. Unlike hard drives, SSDs actively erase deleted data in the background through TRIM. Every powered minute erases more. This is the one case where literally pulling the plug is the right move.
Rarely. Undetected usually means the controller or firmware, and the NAND chips that actually hold your data are typically fine. Chip-level reads get most of these back.
Different, not hopeless. Mechanical drives fail physically; SSDs fail logically and electronically. The tooling is different, the success rates on non-TRIM cases are comparable.
Board-mounted storage is covered under our Mac and laptop services — same chip-level techniques, applied on the machine's own board.
Every restart of a damaged device costs data. Open a case first — the diagnosis is free either way.