Intel X25-M G1 failed - any chance for data recovery?

[Plester]

My wife's X25-M G1 OS drive (win 7 pro 64bit) just failed, it hard locked in windows requiring a hard shut down and it never booted again. The bios sees the drive and when it is put in an external usb enclosure, and connected to my laptop, after a minute or so windows explorer will see the drive but trying to explore the disk just crashes windows explorer. Win 7 Disk manager chases its tail trying to connect to virtual disk service when the drive is attached, and intel's ssd toolbox does the same. Looking pretty hopeless, but since it still shows up in the bios and my machine sees it (sort of), I am holding out hope. Any suggestions would be much appreciated - needless to say, as I was the last one to touch her machine before this she looks like she wants to kill me...

 

[DaveSimmons]

> needless to say, as I was the last one to touch her machine before this she looks like she wants to kill me...

Does this mean you never set her up with a 1 TB external HD and backup software?

All drives fail eventually. If you plan for it, no $1,000+ data recovery service is needed.

 

[Plester]

She is in the IT business and has solved countless backup conundrums for her clients, but 'the cobler's son' syndrome has struck and I am not about to start pointing fingers. "You should have a better backup routine.." ain't the smart thing to say right now.

 

[memory]

My wife's X25-M G1 OS drive (win 7 pro 64bit) just failed, it hard locked in windows requiring a hard shut down and it never booted again. The bios sees the drive and when it is put in an external usb enclosure, and connected to my laptop, after a minute or so windows explorer will see the drive but trying to explore the disk just crashes windows explorer. Win 7 Disk manager chases its tail trying to connect to virtual disk service when the drive is attached, and intel's ssd toolbox does the same. Looking pretty hopeless, but since it still shows up in the bios and my machine sees it (sort of), I am holding out hope. Any suggestions would be much appreciated - needless to say, as I was the last one to touch her machine before this she looks like she wants to kill me...

Instead of trying to explore the disk, just try scanning the drive with a program called File Scavenger. It does not cost anything to scan with it but does cost to recover. It does not have to be recognized by Windows for the program to be able to scan the drive. Now I am not sure if it works with SSD's as I did not see anything about that on their website.

 

[Plester]

Just tried File Scavenger, but what has become consistent is any attempt at disk I/O, whether its me exploring it or File Scavanger or Disk Manager, results in the host OS becoming unresponsive.

 

[memory]

It probably will not make a difference but can you try a usb to sata adapter cable? Something like this, adapter cable.

 

[Plester]

Already tried it via USB and esata.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Just tried File Scavenger, but what has become consistent is any attempt at disk I/O, whether its me exploring it or File Scavanger or Disk Manager, results in the host OS becoming unresponsive.

I've had this happen to an 80GB Intel G1 as well. Was this preceded by the system stuttering / freezing for brief periods when reading certain files / programs / portions of the disk?

 

[razel]

If any I/O access to it is an endless no response, even with the Intel Toolbox through SATA or even USB, then it's pretty hopeless with any consumer software tools. If you're feeling brave, the last thing I would try is the Intel firmware update tool just for the hell of it. When you have it installed try to hunt around in it's directory to see for any readme's or curious exes you can run. Otherwise, it's warranty time.

As mentioned above if it is only happening to certain areas, you can try testdisk or photorec. I had a USB drive where the 1st sectors were unreadable, but the rest was ok. Testdisk was able to continue past that area and I was able to read my data.

 

[Plester]

I've had this happen to an 80GB Intel G1 as well. Was this preceded by the system stuttering / freezing for brief periods when reading certain files / programs / portions of the disk?

It was lagging/slow to respond immediately preceding the lockup.

Deep down inside I know the drive is fubar'd. The price of early adoption...

Turns out the Missus made recent backups of both Quickbooks and Quicken so no blood there, but the last outlook backup is almost 2 months old. Let's call it forced email feng shui. Eventually she will chuckle at the whole thing but right now I am keeping my head down. Luckily I had a full win 7 install on a disk that I swapped out of another machine recently which thankfully has similar hardware so I got her back up and running in about 20 minutes, just installing quickbooks now.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

If you haven't already tried, you might try turning off any disk options, that are normally selected to improve Disk access. E.G. turn SMART off, Run the sata as IDE (instead of AHCI), Run SATA port in compatible mode (versus enhanced), run it at SATA1.5 speed. Just depends on the BIOS options you have for the ports. You might get lucky and have a particular function (Like SMART) not working on the drive that prevents any other functions from working.

Probably hosed though..

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Yeah, i just noticed my windows media player just stopped working this morning and i can't access my Creative console; looks like I am headed for a SSD drive failure real soon. It's a shame because the peace and quiet and speed from them is pure bliss....

I guess I am fortunate enough to take this as a sign and do some backing up.

Good Luck

 

[capeconsultant]

Yes, the quiet alone is worth the price. Yep.

 

[vshah]

so thankful for my whs and daily backups

 

[taltamir]

i don't see how your wife, an IT whose job involves data protection, could POSSIBLY hold you accountable for SSD hardware failure that occurred since you last touched the machine. It is physically impossible for you do to anything that would cause that other then disassembling the machine and physically handling the drive.

The last resort of applying the firmware update might solve your issue, or it might worsen it, but after you tried everything else you might as well do that too.

as always, keep backups.

 

[razel]

i don't see how your wife, an IT whose job involves data protection, could POSSIBLY hold you accountable for SSD hardware failure that occurred since you last touched the machine.

They're always that way. Plester is just a good man to just deal with it, fix it and make her happy again. That's why he's married. :thumbsup:

 

[fleshconsumed]

If drive is fubar'ed firmware update might kill it completely if it stalls midway. Just saying. Don't intel drives have 5 year warranty? RMA it, you might even get G2 drive instead, and set up daily backups once you receive it.

 

[RebateMonger]

This makes a couple of SSD failures that I've noticed on these Froums. I thought SSDs were supposed to fail in "Read-only" mode. It would have been nice.....

 

[finbarqs]

I think he's more worried about retrieving the data from the drive, more so than just getting a replacement.

 

[FishAk]

i don't see how your wife, ... could POSSIBLY hold you accountable... It is physically impossible

HaHaHaHa!!!

Obviously, my friend, you have never been married.

It has nothing to do with logical, possible, believable, tenable, plausible, or any other kind of *le. Except maybe biologicle- but you better not bring that up.

I am keeping my head down.

OP- Your doing all you can... Continue.



Edit: fix Biologicle (sic)

 

[vshah]

This makes a couple of SSD failures that I've noticed on these Froums. I thought SSDs were supposed to fail in "Read-only" mode. It would have been nice.....

the nand itself fails in "read only" mode. if the failure is in the controller however, you're SOL.

 

[taltamir]

I thought SSDs were supposed to fail in "Read-only" mode. It would have been nice.....

in theory, if an SSD runs out of WRITES it will become a read only device. However, OTHER kinds of failure exist, an electric surge, physical damage, blown capacitor, etc etc.

Also, we haven't really had a chance to observe an SSD running out of writes to verify it fails gracefully by becoming read only.

 

[Voo]

This makes a couple of SSD failures that I've noticed on these Froums. I thought SSDs were supposed to fail in "Read-only" mode. It would have been nice.....

The flash is supposed to fail in "Read-only" mode (and is in this case most certainly still perfectly fine), the same does not hold for the controller.

And I'd take any bet that fw/controller problems account for the largest number of SSD failures by far.. well I hope that will change within the next few generations of controllers.

 

[Russwinters]

Controller problems are F'd.


It is so hard to recover SSD with failed controller, it is very expensive.


Luckily, I feel that this *may* not be a controller issue.


I would:

Make a duplicate of the drive (you will need something beyond windows software to do this because of the instability)


Once you have made a copy, try using the copy instead, sometimes this is enough.

if not, you will then WIPE the MBR on the copy, then try, this should work. IF it doesn't then you will 100% need professional help.


Assuming it works (and it should) once you are in windows you will see the drive (the one that you copied all the sectors to) but it will report that there is no partition on the drive (because of the MBR being wiped)


next, use either R-Studio, or GetDataBack, or some software with a "scan". to search for your partitions again, these software dont need an MBR to find all of your partitions, etc so it will work just fine, all of your file names will be there and everything (you only wiped the MBR, remember)


Recovery complete!



If this seems too complicated for you, I would recommend professional assistance. Something like this won't cost over $300 from a company that is not trying to rob you.

If the Controller on the SSD end up being the issue, that is a different story though.



I work for a professional DR company as a technician; you can PM me if you are interested, but I am happy to help walk you through as much of the DIY as possible to see if you can do it without sending it in.

 

[allthatisman]

Just curious, are there any signs one should be aware of when it comes to SSD failure? Both controller and NAND scenarios? I keep everything valuable on a 1.5tb WD Green, and am using a 128gb WD Silicon Edge Blue SSD, which thus far has been perfect. Just curious if there are certain traits that failing SSDs have, and what to look for.