Solid State Drive (SSD) Data Recovery

Desert Data Recovery is a certified data recovery professional that specializes in Solid State Drive (SSD) Data Recovery.

The History Behind Flash Memory:

As technology advances, so does the make up of hard drives, however it may surprise you to know that the technology behind Solid Sate Drives (SSDs) has been around for some time. SSDs are basically a larger version of the Flash Drive (thumb drives).

Flash Drives first hit the market in the 1990s, but they were only really meant for transferring small amounts of data between computers in the days before the adoption of home networking services. As technology advanced, manufacturers developed ways to store more data on the limited space available in a small flash drive by putting more memory chips on the tiny circuit board and thus increasing the storage capacity. Today, even 1TB Flash Dives are readily available.

Solid State Drives:

Flash memory doesn’t rely on a spinning disc and moving mechanical parts like a traditional hard drive, so memory access is a lot faster and the combination of this speed, together with the increased storage capacity, has made SSDs a popular choice. They are faster, lighter and smaller than mechanical hard drives and are therefore becoming a lot more popular, especially in Laptop drives. However, contrary to popular belief, SSDs can still fail!

Solid State Drive Data Recovery:

Data recovery from an SSD is very different from a standard hard drive. All SSD’s have multiple NAND memory chips and the organization of the data on these chips is determined by the controller chip. As the technology behind SSDs is still evolving, each manufacturer is currently working to get their proprietary technology to be the industry standard…remember VHS and Betamax!! Consequently each manufacturer’s controller chip works in a different way.
At Desert Data Recovery, we are fully equipped with the most up to date SSD recovery hardware and software. As with traditional hard drives, the recovery process differs depending on the type of failure and as part of the free evaluation, our engineers will diagnose the issue and let you know the cost of recovery.

How the Technology Works:

On traditional hard drives, data is saved as a Reed Soloman wave form (not 1’s and 0’s as most people think), but on Solid State Drives data is saved using positive and negative electrons, making them much more efficient. However what is not commonly known about all flash memory is that it has a limited life (called write endurance). When the cell within the flash memory gets charged, it actually damages the cell and over time these cells become unusable. SSD’s therefore use ‘wear leveling’ programming that moves data around on the drive to keep the degradation evenly spread. The bad news is that ultimately, your SSD will literally wear out.

Deleting Files:

Unlike standard hard drives that don’t actually delete files, they just mark the space as being available, most SSDs really do delete your files permanently. However due to the make up of flash memory, the Controller chip cannot just delete individual files, it has to delete a whole chunk of memory. So the Garbage Routine is constantly keeping track of what is what was deleted and moving files around to make sure that good data is not deleted from that portion of memory.

Summary:

SSDs are light, small and fast, however they do have drawbacks and the technology will see a lot of changes over the next few years.