As soon as I saw your intro, I knew there was a Phison chip in there 🤬

I can confirm that Phison chip is in "Panic Mode", that's where the Satafirm comes in. The chip WORKS, but it's firmware is essentially bricked. I've successfully recovered 2 PNY CS900 drives with bricked firmware, but indeed the forced firmware flash was destructive to the data.

Fairly common issue with the A400 drives. The controller firmware gets corupted and make the drive unreadable. There are tools out their to reflash the firmware but this is destructive to the data! Essentially the data is gone short of sending it to a data recovery expert.

Dude if he can fix this. He would revive a long forgotten trade of fixing SSDs. Because normally the nand flash or the controller goes.

I bet it will get closer to fully read if you put the board in the freezer. Keeping to cold may solve the issue long enough to get the data.

Hello Vince.  In some ways these SSDs can be a bit depressing in how little physically seems to go wrong, leaving you with the undesirable task of either chip-off recovery + reorganisation or fighting with that controller.

I've done a lot of work using ddrescue under linux and coupling it with a USB power switch that is controlled from the command line; so in situations like this you can craft a customised behaviour script that will let you do things like read 100MB, power cycle, read another 100MB etc, to save having to do the manual work you were experiencing.

I suppose the "proper professional" solution here really is to have the chips removed, read off the data, and reassemble/decode it,  usually things like PC3000 have all the decoding maps predefined for a lot of the controllers.

sometimes if theres a shinny suface it can give the impression is hot on the the  thermal camera iv found great stuff vince we always get enjoyment when your on brilliant

I, too, was about to mention testdisk but I see it has already been mentioned a few times.

I'd be tempted to just re-flow the PHISON controller chip. Not to remove the chip, just adding flux around the edges and get it hot enough to reflow the solder under the chip while trying to protect the NAND flash from getting too hot.

Great video. It also reminded me I need to do a back up...

The  ssd has had massive error and is now reporting it's controller name. The controller locked the ssd in an error state. before this happened the ssd would be named kingston + model number. I've experienced this too a few years ago when working at a pc store with a bad kingston ssd

When my SSD failed I found an online article that gave me something that worked. Essentially this said to go through several cycles of just having the SSD powered with no data going to it for 10-15 minutes, then switching the power off. Just sitting at the BIOS screen was enough to do this.This gave something that then be accessed from Windows as usual, including reformatting. The previous data could mostly be copied out into new files using the free program "Recuva" from the people who do "Ccleaner". Apparently, this way of resetting was forced on all SSD manufacturers.

Hey Vince. I've recovered a bunch of these, and it's usually the Phison controller stuck in something like safe mode or firmware update mode. Can usually recover them using the right (ie. Expensive) firmware tools without any further board repairs etc. (edited to add: Just checked my notes. In that fail mode they just return junk data or blank sectors, so the unplugging thing is probably a waste of time. Also that discolouration on the Phison controller might just be from a thermal pad inside the metal ssd shell. )

Sometime the boot block gets corrupted, just try formatting it and then use a data recovery software to access the deleted files, they should still be pretty much intact, but some maybe damaged

Hey Vince, I've been watching your channel for couple of years now and just watched them for fun. But then I learned a lot more about electronics through your videos and just now fixed my nephews switch controller where I had to replace one analog stick. Big big thanks to you! Keep up the great content, really appreciate you! Take care.

I got about 40 of these drives in a box next to my desk. I already sent back another 40 or so drives to Kingston. All failing. They all seem to fail in the same way. The computer slows way down and when you run a block test, some blocks come back taking them more than 500ms to read if they read at all. The ones that failed all the way, show the same problem you are having.

I think if he doesnt want to send it away and accepts risk - I would be tempted to get flux around and under that controller IC and reflow it with hot air.  Nothing to lose really!  The fact it keeps disconnecting makes me wonder if something is intermittant somewhere.

Your thumbnail looks very Jagex-y. I'm diggin' it, Vince.

Actually that would be a nice feature, to be able to bypass the built in hardware controller with a software emulated virtual one, so if the data chip is still fine, no problem.

One other thing you can try when you have a chip that is running warm is to use your compressed air upside down to freeze it or (freezer spray if you have it) and try to keep it cool I know it wasn’t running that hot but If it’s drawing enough current that can cause your pc to power off the usb supply disconnecting the drive. Then when you unplug it and plug it back in it re supplies the power.
Or a 2 into one usb cable so it gets power from 2 ports
But nice try anyhoo

@My Mate VINCE, Next time when you get to the device recovery phase where you are pulling the data off you may want to find some way to cool the chips down while under load.  Not a guarantee but may aid in pulling the data off, by keeping the chips up long enough.