> because the SSD lifetime is unknown and unreplaceable.
I just discovered this concern last weekend when a less than 3 year old Samsung SSD 840 died. Since this is not mechanical I don't know why they don't include extra pins (e.g. address, data) to read the memory in raw from the SSD chips if the failure is in the controller or firmware.
Place whatever value on this you like but I also had a Samsung 840 500GB SSD fail just last week that was almost exactly three years old. It came with a three year warranty so I guess that's the only upside.
It's maddening that not only can I not get back whatever data wasn't backed up (thankfully not much) but I have no way of wiping it before returning it under warranty.
The people who handle the returns for Samsung say returned drives will be "formatted". Given it's uunresponsive, this seems unlikely
It puzzles me why drive manufacturers don't offer data recovery for their own products as a value add service. Nobody could get the data off this drive as cheaply as Samsung themselves.
You (read: everyone) should be using FDE. Every OS worth running supports it, and it provides a real layer of protection in the event of any device failure.
Broken or failed screen, input device, storage controller, yada, -- doesn't matter. FDE means your data is that much more safer than without (and makes it safer provided you use a strong key).
> It puzzles me why drive manufacturers don't offer data recovery for their own products as a value add service. Nobody could get the data off this drive as cheaply as Samsung themselves.
Obviously we have our minds completely synchronized. At this point I don't care about the warranty but about the safety of the information in the disk. I contacted datarecovery.com and they gave me a rough range between $ 300 and 2k to recover the SSD. I don't think the price is crazy but I imagine that is a simple task to achieve if you have the right equipment.
I just discovered this concern last weekend when a less than 3 year old Samsung SSD 840 died. Since this is not mechanical I don't know why they don't include extra pins (e.g. address, data) to read the memory in raw from the SSD chips if the failure is in the controller or firmware.