Damage of SSD and the Possible Ways of Recovering

ssd repair

SSDs do not have strictly mechanical elements, no moving parts, which do not mean, however, that such drives are not exposed to hardware damage, which will be described in the article below. Damage in SSD drives can be divided into three main categories. For the ssd repair you need to know the best. The options and supports are perfect right there.

Damage to the memory microcontroller

The fault consists of the incorrect operation or lack of any actions of the microcontroller responsible for controlling the write or read and recording events to or from the device. This is a very serious failure, because it is not possible to repair a damaged controller due to its extremely small size, not quite publicly known physical architecture masks and the exact design of the microcontroller are covered by patent and copyright laws, and sometimes also logical architecture, as in the case of microcontrollers created specifically for specific disks there is no official documentation regarding the available processor instructions, memory map or even an outline of physical architecture.

Even if the disk uses a well-known microcontroller, its diagnosis and repair exceeds the competence of any service except for the manufacturer itself or perhaps specialized laboratories of government agencies although this is doubtful. To show the scale of the difficulty, it can be mentioned that one of the first microprocessors in the world, which appeared in the late 70s, came to full civil reverse-engineering only 30 years later mask dropping, full diagrams with the position and definition of each transistor.

Only well-equipped and unlimited budget research espionage agencies were able to perform a full microprocessor analysis just a few years after its premiere. In the event of a microcontroller failure, it is possible to try to replace it using an efficient system with the so-called donor’s disk, but, analogically to classic hard drives, there is no guarantee that the firmware in both disks will be identical. In practice, however, the microcontroller is not replaced and immediately goes to the chip-off extraction directly from memory chips. Although this procedure is quite complicated, it is often very successful. Controller emulators are also available to allow the controller to be plugged in and allow for less invasive operation than when using the chip-off method.

Flash memory corruption

Flash memory corruption is the most common fault in SSDs. Interestingly, such a failure is not always associated with strictly physical defects, such as flooding or high temperature, and sometimes simply with physical or chemical pseudo-random phenomena. One of such situations unfortunately quite common is the phenomenon called pairing information bits directly from the physical layer of the carrier. It is related to the physical way of saving information in a flash cell and the fact that a memory cell that has not been used for a long time simply loses electrons, which the firmware can. Interpret as changing bit 1 to 0, thus leading to corruption data. Each flash memory has such tendencies, however, the problem has been unnoticeable for many years e.g. for users of Flashcards.

Related Post