Solid-state drives are simple on the outside and anything but on the inside. What decides whether an SSD is recoverable isn’t the brand on the label — it’s the controller chip and firmware underneath, and there are dozens in circulation across SATA (2.5”, mSATA, M.2) and PCIe/NVMe (M.2, U.2, HHHL) drives. Some controllers we can work with directly, some need chip-off recovery, and some are locked or hardware-encrypted in ways that make recovery genuinely impossible — and we’ll tell you which yours is, honestly, at assessment.
Two honest truths worth knowing before you spend any money, with us or anyone else. First: SSD recovery rates are genuinely lower than for spinning drives — anyone promising otherwise is selling, not assessing. When an SSD’s controller or firmware fails, recovery is often still possible with the right equipment; when the drive is hardware-encrypted and locked, sometimes nothing can be done, and we’d rather tell you that at the free assessment than after taking your money. Second: if your SSD is healthy and you’ve simply deleted files, act fast and power it down — SSDs housekeep themselves (a feature called TRIM) and genuinely erase deleted data in the background, often within hours. On an SSD, “deleted” usually means gone in a way it never did on an old hard drive.
Dragon Data Recovery works on failed SSDs at our own laboratory with the specialist hardware the job needs — recent work includes a four-blade NVMe RAID card from a Mac music studio — and a straight answer about whether yours is worth pursuing.
Listed below are some common signs of SSD trouble. These drives often fail suddenly and completely — working one minute, ‘no drive detected’ the next. If your symptom isn’t listed, describe it on our enquiry form and we’ll tell you what you’re dealing with.
Is your Solid-State-Drive demonstrating any of these faults?
- Has the Solid-State-Drive become inaccessible?
- Is the Solid-State-Drive getting unusually hot?
- Is the Solid-State-Drive noticeably slower in handling your files?
- Are your files disappearing?
- Has the Solid-State-Drive been physically damaged or suffered damage from liquid ingress?
- Has the Solid-State-Drive been affected by a power surge or lightning strike?
- Do you get error messages related to storage problems, for example, ‘no drive detected’?
- Is the Solid-State-Drive not visible in a computers BIOS?
If your SSD is doing any of the above, power it down and leave it off — then start your enquiry here and we’ll reply with an honest read on recoverability, the likely pricing tier, and clear next steps, with no obligation.
Typical Solid-State-Drive Related Data Recoveries
- A-DATA
- Corsair
- Crucial
- G.Skill
- Intel
- Kingston
- Micron
- OCZ
- Plextor
- RunCore
- Samsung
- SanDisk
- Seagate
Drive Interface types we recover from
- mSATA interface
- M.2 interface
- PCIe interface
- HHHL interface
- M.2 (NVMe) interface
- U.2 (NVMe) interface
- SATA interface
Common Solid-State-Drive Issues
Solid-state drives, no matter the type or brand, can fail due to physical damage or by reaching their end-of-life write cycles. There is an overabundance of things that can go wrong across the many SSD variants — from failed electronics to corrupt file systems — and these are just some of them:
- SSD failure
- Read/write failure
- Printed circuit board (PCB) failure
- Corrupt file system (NTFS, APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT, FAT16, FAT32)
- SMART errors, warnings and failures
- Deleted or missing data / files
- Firmware or manufacturing faults
- Disk detected but not opening
- Disk not mounting
- Physical damage
- Flashing folder icon containing a question mark
If you want to avoid further data loss at this stage, we recommend:
- Please stop attempting to access your defective SSD device
- Please do not dismantle your device in any way
- Don’t leave the drive powered up — a healthy SSD’s own housekeeping erases deleted data in the background, and a failing one can deteriorate further
- Don’t update or reflash the drive’s firmware in the hope of fixing it
- Start your enquiry here for a no-obligation assessment
What does SSD data recovery cost?
Logical recoveries — corrupted or inaccessible data on an SSD with no hardware fault — start from £350 including VAT. Failed controllers, firmware faults and chip-level work are quoted individually after diagnosis, because SSD jobs vary more than any other device we see. Every case gets a proper assessment first (typically 3–7 days), then a fixed written quote for your approval before any chargeable work begins — no upfront payment, and most completed recoveries are back with their owners within 6–10 days of approval. Drop off at our Moreton laboratory by appointment, courier collection, or Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed. If we can’t recover meaningful data, there’s no recovery fee — and if recovery genuinely isn’t possible on your drive, we’ll tell you at assessment, free, rather than charge you to find out.
About Our Data Recovery Laboratory
Dragon Data Recovery is a genuine recovery laboratory — not a shopfront that forwards drives on. Every recovery happens at our own lab on the Wirral, on professional equipment: Ace Laboratory PC-3000 systems, DeepSpar Disk Imagers and a class 100 clean room facility for mechanical work.
You deal directly with the engineers handling your case, you approve a fixed written quote before any chargeable work begins, and if we can’t recover meaningful data, there’s no fee to pay.
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