PC-3000 SSD. OCZ (Barefoot 3) family

In this article, you will find a detailed description of data recovery from OCZ VECTOR drives based on Barefoot 3  IDX500Mxx controller.

Supported drives:

• OCZ ARC  100
• OCZ Vector
• OCZ Vector 150
• OCZ Vector 180
• OCZ Vertex 450
• OCZ Vertex 460
• OCZ Vertex 460A
• OCZ Vector 480
• AMD Radeon R7

The most common problem in all Barefoot 3 based drives is a problem with firmware structures and, as a result,  the BSY state for all the commands sent to a drive. When we power ON the drive, it goes into the READY state, but as soon as we select any Utility (for example, the Universal Utility for drive testing), it will fall in BSY.

This situation might happen when the main microprogram is damaged and SSD trying to upload it into RAM during initialization.

That’s why for solving this problem, firstly we need to block access to memory chips where the FW is replaced. For doing that, SSD drive must be switched in Safe Mode. OCZ drives based on Barefoot 3 controllers have special shorting pins on PCB. Necessary to open drive cover, and find this pins. Usually they are situated on the opposite side from SATA port, and looks like a 3 pins in small white rectangle:

Before we will start the shorting process, we need to launch OCZ Active Utility, and choose our drive OCZ Vector from the list of supported drives:

When the compatible drive family will be selected, PC-3000 will automatically switch off the power supply. Starting from this moment, you must find the target pins, and short them:

When the process will be done, Utility will turn-on the power supply, and the drive will be activated in technological mode:

NOTE: in SafeMode, all drives will be detected as 128GB model! Not matter what is the real capacity of your drive – it might be 64, 128, 240, 480GB and so on – in any case, you will see only 128GB in passport template – it’s a feature of the drive which is stays in Safe (like in Indilinx Barefoot 1 technological mode).

But before we will be able to save all data, we must build the translator. For doing this, follow by: Tests -> Service Information -> Translator -> Translator Building;

After that, Utility will automatically start the translator structures searching. If everything goes well, finally you will see the list of founded translators:

Choose the first one and press Build translator.

After that, we just need to switch our window in Data Extractor, and choose our drive in Active Utility source:

That’s all! If you made all steps correctly, the folder structure will be available for you.

Please, don’t forget that all information about founded translators is saved in drive’s RAM. In case if you will switch the power on drive, and RAM will be erased, you will loose the access to user data, and you will need to make all steps from the beginning (or use already build translator file which is saved in your SSD profile).