Toshiba controller on SSD

Avoid SSDs for important files, says data recovery firm

In Blog, SSD News by Administrator

Recall for 2012 MacBook Air due to high failure rate in SSD

Recall for 2012 MacBook Air due to high failure rate in SSD.
On the processor:
Toshiba / tc58nc5hj8gsb-01 / Sandforce / MAP1900300 / 1219001

Difficulties associated with SSD data recovery.

There seems to be some incredulity in the comments section in this piece on the PC Pro. The full article can be found here:

Avoid SSDs for important files, says data recovery firm | News | PC Pro.

It appears that quite a few readers think that the staff member from Ontrack Data Recovery is telling a few porkies pies in the hope that people will carry on using hard disk drives which will lead to increased business. The consensus from the commentators is that despite Ontrack’s suggestion, that SSDs do not fail.

SSDs definitely do fail

WRONG is all I can say to that. They do fail, and more frequently than you think. This week CDR has had a MacBook Air in with a failed 128GB Toshiba SSD. In fact, it is quite a common failure. So much so that Apple has made a product recall of the 2012 MacBook Air. Model numbers THNSNS128GMFP / TS064E and TS128E. For more information please see the “SSD Review” website.

I for one would definitely agree with statements made by a member of staff at Ontrack. Recovering data from a solid state disk is much more difficult than dealing with hard disk drive failures. Each SSD can be very different as a result of the combination of processor and NAND chips used on the printed circuit board.

Then there is the learning curve of being able to successfully manipulate the data recovery equipment associated with SSD recovery; it’s not nearly as straight forward as using DeepSpar Disk Imager as we do for many hard disk drive (HDD) recoveries.

Problems for SSD data recovery

There is also the small matter of regular barriers for successful SSD recovery including encryption based in the processors (See our previous Sandforce blog posts ad nauseum) and changes to the data due to TRIM commands. All in all, it provides for some difficult, time consuming and therefore expensive work.

Commentators were right in suggesting that backing up data would be a good idea. But as we have learned over the years, plenty of people try, but it doesn’t always go to plan….