https://blog.jgc.org/2023/08/retrieving-1tb-of-data-from-faulty.html John Graham-Cumming's blog 2023-08-17 Retrieving 1TB of data from a faulty Seagate Firecuda 530 drive with the help woodworking tools So, a while ago I built a gaming PC with the following specification: Case Dan A4 v4.1 Motherboard Z690I Strix Gaming Processor i5-12400F CPU Cooler Noctua NH-L9i-17xx Chromax Black Noctua NA-FD1 Memory Corsair CMK32GX5M2B5200C40 GPU GeForce RTX 3070 Eagle Storage 2 x Seagate Firecuda 530 1TB Case fans 2 x Noctua A9x14 HS-PWM chromax.Black.swap PSU Corsair SF750 And one day after months of use it froze mid-game and went into a BIOS loop and wouldn't boot. I quickly realized that only one of the Seagate Firecuda 530 SSDs was detected. After some unscrewing and experimenting with the two drives in the two slots I found that one of them was dead. And then I left the PC alone for a few days and turned it on again. It booted into Windows and immediately crashed. [firecuda-2] That made me wonder if the failure was temperature related; when cool it seemed to work. So, I left the Firecuda in the freezer at -18C for 30 minutes. Inserting it into an NVMe M.2 USB case I was able to see the drive on my Mac. Success! [firecuda-1] Well, for a few minutes. It seemed that as the drive heated up it failed again. Which lead me to believe that there was a faulty connection somewhere on the board. Very careful plugging and unplugging of the board helped me find the right spot to squeeze one of the chips to make the SSD work: no low temperatures needed. Now, I couldn't possibly sit and hold the SSD squeezing the chip while I copied off the data so I came up with another solution. A metal G clamp and strips of a Silicon Valley Bank credit card under the SSD to support the PCB. Here's the contraption with just the right amount of turns on the G clamp to get the SSD to work. [firecuda-3] But, of course, the SSD gets quite hot during operation so I used one of the heatsinks from the PC and another made from part of carpentry square and some thermal adhesive tape to keep things cool. [firecuda-4] During the copy operation I kept an eye on the temperatures with the thermal camera in my CAT S60 phone. Toasty. [firecuda-5] With that combination I was able to copy the /Users directory off the drive for safekeeping. After that I decided to push my luck an image the entire drive into a single 1TB file using dd. I'm tempted to try to permanently fix the SSD using my SMD hot air blower. But maybe I should just replace it at this point. PS I couldn't resist using the SMD hot air blower on the chip with the red arrow on it below, and now the SSD works without having woodworking tools applied to it! It even boots in the PC. [firecuda-6] at August 17, 2023 Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest 2 comments: [bla] [dr_] MadDogBV said... Gee whiz, how did you determine so quickly that it was a temperature issue? Was it just something that you were trying to rule out in a diagnostic process (i.e. ruling out the simplest possible causes first as opposed to more complicated causes)? Apologies for my newbie-ish comment, someone linked to this article in a Discord I use. 7:31 PM [icon_delet] [blo] John Graham-Cumming said... Experience with electronics, I suppose. Stuff expands and contracts making connections come and go. 7:58 PM [icon_delet] Post a Comment Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Labels * pseudo-randomness * hardware * babbage * anti-spam * gnu make * security * codes and ciphers * the geek atlas * retro * mathematics * behind the screens * minitel * popfile * privacy * radio Popular Posts * [firecuda-2] Retrieving 1TB of data from a faulty Seagate Firecuda 530 drive with the help woodworking tools So, a while ago I built a gaming PC with the following specification: Case Dan A4 v4.1 Motherboard Z690I Strix Gaming Pro... * [Untitled] Revisiting the "Cansole", my silly Pong game, because my TV doesn't have the right connectors Back in 2011 I put together an implementation of Pong that uses an Arduino Pro, a couple of resistors, a couple of potentiometers, and two s... * [IMG_0945] Write your passwords down Here's my advice on password security based on the collected opinions of others: 1. 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