PC-3000 Portable III. Recovering Data from Logically Damaged Plextor PX-512M8SeY with a New PCIe x16 SSD Adapter

Hello Friends!

As you know, the PC-3000 Portable III supports the PCIe SSDs along with the SATA-based devices. Also, thanks to the new adapters and software updates, we constantly add new drives to the supported list. In September 2020, we have released the new PCIe x16 SSD Adapter for custom and native NVMe SSDs with PCIe x1-x16 interface.

It is extremely useful for drives that have a full-size PCIe bus as the only option of plugging in an SSD (e.g. Intel DC P4618 or Samsung PM1733). You may come upon such drives in server platforms and data centers because they are very stable and powerful. However, bad sectors can still appear due to prolonged use. In this case, the new PCIe x16 SSD Adapter paired with the PC-3000 Portable III System helps to bypass bad sectors and get the data from SSDs.

In our case, we have a Plextor PX-512M8SeY drive with the native PCIe x4 GEN3 interface. This drive is quite powerful and contains a large radiator that covers the Controller and NAND chips. The main issue with this drive is the Bad Sectors on the surface and the damaged File System. Below are the steps that you can follow to recover data from such drive:

Here is our new adapter for the PCIe x1-x16 drives:

Let’s connect our SSD to the PC-3000 Portable III ports via the PCIe x16 SSD Adapter:

Then you need to run the PC-3000 Portable III software. It will automatically choose the PCIe x16 drive as a target:

Once you start the Universal utility, you can read all the details about the drive ID:

Then, create a new task in the Data Extractor software:

If we try to open the File Structure, the partition will be detected as missed. That means that the drive probably has an issue with the MBR and UEFI Partitions:

So, first, we need to make a Sector-by-Sector copy:

We see that there are some Bad Sectors on the surface. To reread them and make the map better, we can change the DE settings and reread options:

If we still have Bad Sectors, we can try to fix them by lowering temperature or heating. Sometimes, it might help to improve the results.

After we image the drive, we can try to work with its copy to find the missed partitions and data:

Even if some bad sectors are still present, you will be able to recover partitions and save the folder structure. The new PCIe x16 SSD Adapter can be a great asset in solving the logical issues with the custom and native PCIe x1-x16 drives.

The adapter is already in stock and available for purchase. For more details, please get in touch with your personal Sales Representative or contact us at sales@acelab.eu.com.

If you have any questions regarding your data recovery cases, you’re welcome to address them to the Technical Support department.