A solid-state drive has a number of advantages over traditional hard drives in terms of power consumption, access time, and speed. However, as with any data storage device, SSD is susceptible to failures. The failures include damage to hardware and system software malfunctions. One of the most severe damage is the rapid increase in voltage.
Power Surge on SSD
Overvoltage can occur if the power supply to the drive is not functioning correctly. Regardless SSDs having power loss protection, they are susceptible to voltage fluctuations. During power surges, the entire drive fails completely.
It burns out the NAND chips of a solid-state drive, making the recovery process impossible. An unexpected power problem occurs when a computer or embedded system experiences an energy outage or power surge. One of our clients had issues with the power supply in their house, which led to MacBook’s SSD damage.
MacBook Air SSD Failure
We recently received a solid-state drive of a MacBook damaged by a sudden voltage increase in power supply. It belonged to a photographer that took photos of a newly married couple, and the failure happened when he was editing them. Unfortunately, access to all the images was lost.
After contacting our customer service team, the photographer left the drive at one of our drop-off points. When our engineers ran technical inspections, they saw that the system could not detect the SSD drive. It was an indicator of a mechanical problem or controller damage.
With this in mind, we had to open the drive and investigate the NAND chips with the controller of the SSD.
What Did Evaluation Show
The evaluation showed us that the controller was not operating as it was supposed to. The controller in the solid-state drive is responsible for reading and writing data. In this case, the controller failed to carry out its assignments.
The power surge caused the controller to fail. Because of it, power circuits or microcircuit elements were burnt out. Sometimes the microprocessor burns out, but our client did not have this scenario. Accurate diagnostics helped determine the breakdown, assess its complexity and cost of elimination.
Our engineers were able to determine the most effective way of recovering the SSD’s damaged controller. They decided that replacing it with the same one was beneficial.
Secure Data Recovery Process
Our data recovery specialists unsoldered a controller from the identical solid-state drive and inserted it into the failed one. File system corruption occurred because the operating system could not update the entries that existed before the power loss. Since the storage device does not know which file system is being used, it is impossible to prevent it from corruption.
The process was complicated, as the controller damage recovery requires years of experience and high skills. It needs attention to detail and preparedness for any unpredictable change in the process. Our engineers have the relevant qualifications to complete the process successfully.
The client mentioned that the photos taken within the past week were the priority, as the rest was already backed up on cloud storage. Our team was able to recover 99% of all the required images. All the vital photos were delivered to the customer on a new external drive.
Results of Our Data Recovery
Within a week, the case was closed successfully. The customer was delighted by the work and left a positive review on Google.
Many of our customers leave their feedback regarding the services after the case is closed.
This way, they want to share their experience with other potential clients and help us develop and be the best.
We have also received excellent reviews on Trustpilot, which you can read by clicking here. If we did not pay so much attention to this, improving the PITS Global Data Recovery Services would be impossible without understanding customers’ needs.
Our engineers successfully dealt with the power surge failure on MacBook SSD, and if you face any similar data loss scenario, you may contact our dedicated customer service at (888) 611-0737 to request our help.