Hello everyone! Today we are glad to present you the final part in a series of articles on data recovery from formatted drives.
But first, let’s go back to the list of controllers whose utilities currently support working with formatted data:
- Supported Silicon Motion controllers, including both SATA and NVMe modifications;
- Supported Phison controllers, including both SATA the NVMe modifications;
- Supported Maxio SATA controllers;
Find the list of supported controllers below:
https://blog.acelab.eu.com/pc-3000-ssd-list-of-supported-ssd-drives-regularly-updated.html
Data recovery laboratories are increasingly receiving external SSDs based on the Silicon Motion SM2320G controller with the same data-loss scenario: the user accidentally formatted the drive or recreated a partition and then discovered that important data had become inaccessible. In such cases, conventional logical recovery tools either fail to find any files at all or can only display fragments and headers of the deleted information.
At first glance, these devices differ little from ordinary USB storage devices. However, the SM2320G is a highly integrated SSD controller that combines a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 interface and a NAND Flash Controller within a single chip. In essence, a compact external SSD contains a full SSD architecture with all of its characteristic mechanisms: FTL (Flash Translation Layer), dynamic wear leveling, garbage collection, ECC error correction, and TRIM support.
These features largely determine the specifics of data recovery after formatting. Unlike traditional USB flash drives, where deleted data often remains physically stored until overwritten, SSDs based on the SM2320G may begin cleanup and data reallocation processes almost immediately. As a result, recovery success depends not only on the type of formatting performed but also on the state of the translation tables, TRIM activity, the time elapsed since the incident, and the controller’s internal operating logic.
This article examines the process and characteristics of data recovery from a Transcend ESD310C USB SSD after a quick-format procedure.
The operation of TRIM on modern SSDs has been described in previous articles about recovering data from formatted drives. However, it is worth mentioning that TRIM is a command issued by the operating system that informs the SSD which data has been deleted and marks the corresponding blocks as “candidates for erasure.” This allows the drive to prepare those blocks for future writes. As a result, SSDs maintain higher performance over time, while memory cells experience less wear.
Let’s move to the practical recovery procedure.
Connect the formatted SSD to the PC-3000 Portable PRO via a USB port.
1. Verify the Formatting Status
Open the Universal USB Utility and create a task in Data Extractor to verify that the drive has been formatted and that data is inaccessible even through raw recovery scanning.
In the screenshot, we can see the result of TRIM execution. A new clean partition has been created, and no data is available in the raw scan results.
2. Launch the Specialized SM2320G Utility
To continue working with this drive, switch to the specialized utility designed specifically for the SM2320G controller.
3. Load the Loader and Build the Translator
The following steps are fairly typical for any SSD with translator corruption. We need to load the appropriate loader and rebuild the translator.
The drive is based on modern SanDisk BiCS5 TLC NAND chips, which are fully supported by the utility. As a result, the log displays a message confirming that the translator has been successfully rebuilt.
4. Create a Data Extractor Task
Next, switch to Data Extractor and create a task based on the active utility.
5. Create a Physical-Access Drive
Using the current partition, create a disk with physical access enabled.
This operation provides access to all non-empty sectors on the drive. At this stage, raw recovery already allows access to all files that are still physically present on the SSD.
6. Create a Virtual Drive with translation and versions
Since our goal is to fully restore the previous version of the file system along with all its contents, we need to create a virtual disk based on the physical-access drive. This virtual drive should include translation data and all available metadata versions.
7. Select Previous Metadata Versions
At this stage, the latest version of the file system is still visible. To access the translator state that existed before formatting, open the context menu for the exFAT partition and launch the “Selection Versions for Metadata” process.
In the recent software updates of PC-3000, you will see an additional window with the following options. What exactly should we use, and in what situations?
- “The most relevant version” should be used in case the drive was just formatted and we need the recent relevant version of the file structure;
- If the drive contains deleted data, we always use the “With non-zero file size” option. It doesn’t matter whether the quick formatting was performed or not.
The procedure of selecting versions of metadata automatically identifies and applies the appropriate versions from before the formatting event.
8. Restore the Previous File System Version
Depending on the drive capacity and the number of available versions, the process may take more or less time.
Thanks to the automatic selection algorithm, the last valid version of the file system before formatting can be reconstructed, including all user data.
If file integrity verification is required, enable the “Headers Control” option for the exFAT partition.
If files marked with a red indicator are detected, it may be possible to manually select alternative versions for a specific file through the EDIT menu of the virtual disk.
In case the file is marked as “RED”, sectors are filled with zeroes, and it doesn’t contain any alternative versions, it might be a sign of complete erasure. So, the recovery of such files becomes impossible.
Thank you for your interest in this topic. We hope that after reading this series of articles, recovering deleted data from SSD drives will become clear and straightforward 🙂
Loading...
very cool