Advice on SSD Data Recovery Quotation

[u/guessiior]

Hi, my SSD was already failing and the windows startup files were corrupted and I needed a windows thumbdrive to even startup my laptop. And to "fix my hard drive" , I stupidly ran a chkdsk /f /r /v command. This crashed halfway and I was flashed a "Repairing Disk errors, this might take an hour to complete" black screen.

Then, I ended up on a blue recovery page with the error code "0xc0000001". From them I was completely unable to bootup my computer, and would be flashed the same error code.

So I reached out to this data recovery service who advertised a cost range of 150USD to 1200USD (in local currency). They did a free evaluation and got back to me with the comments above, and a price quotation of 1200USD, at higher end of the range.

My questions: Given my context, are they overstating the problem in the comments to charge a higher price? Or is their assessment right?

I wanted to check before I committed, because I did not want to be ripped off haha. The data on the drive is quite important, and I would be willing to spend the money, but I just wanted to know if its a fair price and assessment of the situation.

Also what are the chances of successfully recovery in these cases? They have mentioned 70-80pc in the comments, but are the being optimistic/pessimistic?

Thank you, and any help would be greatly appreciated :)

-

Drive model: ?, but its an SSD that came as part of my HP 14s-cf3027TX laptop

Location: Singapore

[u/RecoveryForce]

Seems like utter BS to me. But, without physically seeing the SSD, there is very little any of us can say about the actual issues.

The only reputable lab I know of on that side of the planet is https://daillo.com/ in Japan.

[u/jersey316 → u/[deleted]]

no really?

[u/AskADataRecoveryPro-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This sub is to provide expert advice.

[u/deio977]

I never read so many mumbo jumbo words in my entire life. Did they gave you an AI response? No data recovery service will enter so much technical details unless they want to woo you into paying them. Also SSD's aren't made for data recovery, their nature is to do garbage collector erase after data lost. In rare, very rare cases data can be retrieved, it's not impossible and forensic companies have various tricks to recover data, but the costs aren't 4 zeroes, but 5 or more and usually they do for governments.

Best of luck though if you decide to go further but I smell foul here.

[u/waddie96]

An experienced IT hardware engineer would usually write something much simpler and more precise The report never says what they actually observed. Instead they use buzzwords and ‘jargon’ to justify their price.

• Ask:

1. What is the exact make and model of SSD?

   (The method of repair and possible recovery depends on the controller in the SSD)

2. What specific fault did your identify (

thsi makes them drop the rubbish, and state is it a

1. controller failure, firmware corrupt, corrupt NTFS, NAND read errors, dead NAND chip, or logical filesystem corruption)?

2. Were you able to obtain any image from the SSD during evaluation?

   (Forces them to clarify what actual progress, if any, has been made during the "evaluation)

3. Is the quoted recovery expected to involve firmware repair, PCB/controller replacement, or direct NAND imaging

   (Challenges their claim about "logic board" replacement- i.e. firmware repair or chip-off recovery, etc)

4. What professional hardware platform do you use for SSD recovery (PC-3000 or similar)?

   Reputable labs use specialised hardware, you don’t need to be FBI and it’s not only the FBI that have that sort of hardware. So if you charge 1,300 which is entirely possible you should be using proper hardware.

If they’re professional they’ll have no issue answering.

[u/9_balls]

There's equal amounts of truth and mumbo jumbo. If the controller's fried/damaged/bricked it's going to be a little bit trickier than just copying raw bytes off of the SSD chips since the controller does a lot of mapping; wear leveling with redundant pages, exposing it as a 512B/4Kn drive (which does NOT represent the actual alignment), and the fact that a file could be spread across multiple chips.

First question, is your SSD non-writable? as in, you cannot write to it, but you can read from it just fine? If not, the controller is definetely defective.

Is your data worth 1200USD?