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Data Recovery for flash SSDs

Chronicling the SSD Data Recovery Market - since before it began.
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Recalibrating Consumer Assumptions about SSD Data Recovery

Editor:- December 7, 2009 - this is an update on the theme of Data Recovery for flash SSDs.

The ability to recover data (or not) from a damaged flash SSD could become an important way of segmenting SSD products. In this context (as always) an SSD is defined as a device which has internal wear-leveling - as opposed to simpler flash drives which don't. The loss of data which maps logical to physical addresses inside the SSD controller presents a tough challenge for recovery.

SSD Data Recoverability segments can be broadly defined as
  • easily recoverable. This includes devices which have internal support to facilitate data recovery - designed into the controller architecture. Although such products are in the design stage - they are not yet widely available. This type of SSD could be as economic to recover as a current notebook hard drive.
  • recoverable at high cost. This is the case for nearly all flash SSDs currently shipping. (See comments from a data recovery expert below.)
  • non recoverable (unlucky). This is one step beyond the category above. Most flash SSDs with internal encryption would not be economic to recover - if the internal translation tables were corrupted. This includes many new notebook SSDs - and will come as an unwelcome surprise to their owners should they be unlucky enough to need data recovery services.
  • non recoverable (intrinsic). These are SSDs which have been specifically designed to thwart any prospects for data recovery. In these SSDs - data destruction circuits are part of the product design - and you pay more for this feature.
I've been talking to data recovery experts about SSD recovery for many years - but it's only recently that the market has reached the size where this is starting to become part of their daily experience.

Andy Butler, founder of ABC Data Recovery today told me - "I have 3 technicians who all trained on NAND readers. On average we do about 30 per week but can handle more. It gets more time consuming - therefore costly - as you move into larger SSDs. A 64GB PCIe SSD unit could take a technician over a week of nonstop work.

" It's more complex than a RAID recovery, but consumers assume their data is safe and a recovery will be cheap because it's not a mechanical repair. As the recovery tools / technology develops we should be able to speed the process up, but for the time being any SSD over 8GB are charged on a case by case basis. Anyone with an encrypted SSD should be warned to backup, if the controller gets damaged, it's most likely we would only recover encrypted data."
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Data Recovery for flash SSDs? - don't count on it

Editor:- September 24, 2007 - if the flash SSD market reaches the levels of penetration predicted by many analysts - then in a handful of years nearly half of all new notebook PCs will use flash SSDs instead of hard disk drives.

What happens when those SSDs inevitably fail - and there's no backup?

Most consumers don't do regular backups - and most small businesses don't either.

When hard drives fail, get submerged in water or get damaged in fires - the solution of last resort - is to call a data recovery company.

These superheroes can often recover a lot of data - even if the pcbs and chips in the disk drive have been damaged. Superheroes don't come cheap. The cost for a difficult recovery can run into thousands of dollars (for a single disk) but for many satisfied customers that's a much better result than being left with no business or months of lost time rewriting reports, novels etc.

Although flash SSDs are new to the consumer market - they've been around for many years in markets which absolutely needed their levels of ruggedness (and could bear the high cost). So you may be thinking that there's a well established industry already out there ready to process your flash SSD - if you are unlucky enough to need a data recovery service today.

You would be wrong.

The reason is that the biggest traditional customers of flash SSDs have been the military or industrial users who didn't want enemies / competitors stealing their secrets.

Erstwhile flash SSD manufacturers like Adtron, BiTMICRO and STEC specialised in having on-board disk sanitization of various forms to make sure that that the data is never recovered by the wrong people.

So there isn't an established data recovery market track record for flash SSDs in those applications which have been around the longest.

The nearest that the market has to offer - is experience with recovering data from simple flash memory storage (like USB keyring style devices or camera memory cards). Unlike SSDs - those devices aren't designed for intensive write applications - and there is nothing very complicated between the interface controller and the flash chips themselves. So if the controller gets zapped by static - or crunched by your car driving over it - the data is relatively easy for experts to recover from the flash chips.

That isn't the case with most flash SSDs - which use complicated controller technology to extend the reliability and speed of storage. The architecture inside a high performance SSD is more complicated than that in most RAID systems. The algorithms which map addresses to physical media locations vary from manufacturer to manufacturer - and in many cases - like the formula for making Coke or Pepsi - the details are closely guarded commercial secrets.

Look at the server market and data recovery (at the single SSD level) is not a burning issue for datacenter applications - because most often the SSDs operate in some kind of RAID protected array - and are also backed up (internally or externally) to other disks.

One thing missing in the consumer notebook SSD market is a clear signal by oems - that data in their devices can be easily recovered - if there is no backup - or the backup failed. Maybe the next generation of products will address that issue. It would be another way of segmenting the consumer flash SSD market - and a market need and opportunity which hasn't been understood by SSD product marketers at the close of 2008.

Although flash SSDs are inherently much more reliable than hard drives - that's no consolation for the customers who will be the pioneers in SSD data recovery.
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Megabyte always used the correct
MLC / SLC flash glue when restoring
failed solid state drives. SLC was a
shiny surface gloss. MLC was murky
but penetrated deeper.
...Later:- years after I started talking to traditional data recovery companies about this subject - the first glimmerings of a new market emerged.

I'll be delighted if my original predictions about this subject prove to have been wrong.


In February 2009 - SalvationDATA announced it has developed a new new technology for flash SSD data recovery.

The company says its methodology will work with all commercial devices (excluding military and industrial SSDs which have inbuilt secure erase).


In November 2009 - Link_A_Media Devices secured $18 million series C funding.

Its error correction technology could improve yields and data reliability in HDDs and SSDs.
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