01/10/2025
𝐓𝐡𝐞 "𝐂𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭" 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝!
This SSD arrived in the lab in a non-functional state. It had been in a BUSY state forever. Thanks to Portable + SSD, we were able to put it in safe mode and load a compatible loader. We created the translator, but taking a long time. When we tried to extract the user data, problems began... The SSD was very hot, and reading from the drive was very slow and full of errors. We tried high temperatures, but only using cold spray seemed to improve the reading. Since we couldn't use the spray for hours, we first tried using two Peltier elements on the SSD. The drive temperature reached 10°C, the reading speed was better, but, once again, 50% of the sectors had ECC errors. So, we decided to improve the cold by using a large freezer unit, assembled to bring the circuitry down to -5°C. Much better! But reading the drive would have taken days and days... and there were still a lot of errors. So we thought of an unusual solution... we bought 15kg of dry ice. Dry ice has a temperature of -78°C. We set up a small Styrofoam box and buried the SSD in the ice. The temperature dropped to -40°C. We replaced the ice regularly, and the reading stabilized and the errors disappeared. Finally, we were able to map all the used sectors of the folders requested by the customer and achieve a 99% complete recovery rate.
So, the coolest solution... really!
