A SATA SSD vanished from the BIOS after a power blip - revived through the controller and imaged.
A business Lenovo desktop lost power unexpectedly, and afterwards its SATA SSD no longer appeared in the BIOS. Solid-state drives are particularly vulnerable to a sudden loss of power while they are part-way through writing, and when it happens the controller — the chip that manages the drive — can latch into a fault state that hides the drive completely, even though the flash memory holding the data is intact. To the computer the drive has simply vanished.
On our equipment the drive failed to present normally, consistent with a controller fault triggered by the power loss rather than worn-out flash. The distinction is important: this is a recoverable condition, because the data underneath is untouched and the controller's internal tables simply need to be put back into a consistent state.
Using the PC3000 we accessed the SSD's controller in its technical mode, cleared the fault condition and checked the integrity of its internal translation tables — the structures that map the logical drive onto the physical flash — repairing the inconsistencies the abrupt power loss had left behind. With the controller responding again the logical drive reappeared, and we imaged it against a copy. Power-loss faults on SSDs are common, and clearing them is delicate work that has to be done at the controller level, not through the normal interface.
From the image we rebuilt the file system, confirmed the business's data opened correctly, and wrote everything to fresh media.
The file system mounted as it had been and all of the business's data was returned four working days later. The takeaway is that solid-state drives, for all their speed and reliability, do not like sudden power cuts — an uninterruptible power supply on an important machine is cheap insurance against exactly this kind of failure.
PC3000 — imaging and recovery carried out in-house. Every job is imaged before any recovery work begins, and the original media is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Recovering your data starts with getting the device to us. Pack it safely, add your contact details, and send it over — after we run a free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work begins.
Posting it in? We recommend a tracked, insured service. Prefer to drop it off? You’re welcome Monday–Friday, 9am–5:30pm — please still package the device as above.
If you need more information on our data recovery service, fill out the form with more detail about your issue and an engineer will review it and give you a custom quote.
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Yes — from failed drives recovered in the clean-air environment to logical faults such as a corrupt partition table rebuilt from an image. We never write to the original drive.
From £300 plus VAT, no fix, no fee on most jobs, with a fixed quote before any work.
Do not format it, and stop using the PC. The data is usually intact; formatting or continued use is what risks losing it.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.