SSD Stopped Working, Now it says "Disk is not readable" Please help.

[alizxm]

This is the first time I'm writing at any forums online in my life! So you can tell how desperate I am to get this issue fixed. I am somewhat in at the outset of a lawsuit and my SDD drive just stopped working. Here's a summary of what happened and what I did:
I have a macbook pro mid 2012 and I've upgraded the hard drive to EVO samsung SSD 2-3 yrs ago and everything was working fine until this past week week. So I opened my laptop from sleep mode and it asked me for password, I typed the password multiple times and even though I was typing the right password it wasn't logging in to the OS and it was acting as if I'm typing the wrong password. So I restarted the computer hoping it'll fix the issue. When I restarted the computer the white screen came up but the apple logo never came up, after a while a folder with a question mark came up.
From there, I tried doing recovery mode but the hard drive had no option to be verified or repaired on recovery mode. Strange thing was that in recovery mode the sdd was recognized (I could see the name of the drive there) but there was no info about it like how much of it is filled how much is available, it was just that it's 500GB that's it. It said AFP MAster Boot Drive I believe. Anyhow, I thought the drive is faulty so I bought new SSD and installed the new SSD and noticed the hard drive still not working. So I changed the cable. So now I have a new SSD and a new cable installed and the computer is now working. HOWEVEr, I need to get data off my old SSD drive that I took out from the computer. I tried connecting it to the computer with a USB adapter as external hard drive BUT I keep gettinig this error that "DISK IS NOT READABLE", I'm not sure how a MAC ssd is not readable by the mac. But I need help to get DATA out from this old drive. I have tried all the recovery softwares that have trial version and believe me or not they've found "NONE" of my data, literally "NONE", not even one of the PDFs or photos I've had was found. (And i haven't even formatted the drive yet.)
I need any guidance how to get files out of this drive. Also, do you not find it suspecious and weird that BOTH MY SSD and my MACBOOK HARD DRIVE CABLE went corrupt at the same time? Because Neither the new cable works with the old drive, nor the new SSD works with the old cable. I've had to change both the cable and the SSD so it works !

Sorry for the long post, your help is very much appreciated.

 

[MacDawg]

Sounds like there was something that fried the cable and SSD at the same time, or the cable went bad somehow corrupting the SSD

I'm assuming you had no backup strategy?
No Time Machine, no Carbon Copy Clone, no Dropbox for docs?

 

[organicCPU]

If you depend on the files, take the drive to some professional recovery service. If there is some way to get some data back, they will manage it.
Was the drive encrypted, e.g. by FileVault?

 

[NoBoMac]

Also, do you not find it suspecious and weird that BOTH MY SSD and my MACBOOK HARD DRIVE CABLE went corrupt at the same time?

Not suspicious. Can see where the SSD failed, and then the cable was damaged when replacing the dead SSD.

 

[alizxm]

Sounds like there was something that fried the cable and SSD at the same time, or the cable went bad somehow corrupting the SSD

I'm assuming you had no backup strategy?
No Time Machine, no Carbon Copy Clone, no Dropbox for docs?

no update backup.

 

[Fishrrman]

"no update backup."

You're not going to like this post.

For all practical purposes, I'd consider the data on your original SSD to be... GONE. POOF! Vanished...

It's difficult enough to get data from a failing platter-based hard drive.
With an SSD, it can become all-but impossible.
When a platter based drive begins to fail, it may give one sufficient warning to act to get stuff off of it. But an SSD can just... "go dark" on you -- lost forever.

I know of a trick that can get data from a failing HDD, but it doesn't work with SSD's.
Perhaps your only hope might be to send it to a professional data recovery firm.
But even they may not be able to get anything from it.
And if they do, it's probably going to cost you a few thousand dollars.

This is what the concept of "backing up" is all about.
But you didn't do that.
And now you're up the creek... without a paddle.
There may be nothing to do at this point but to... start over.

Go forth from this day and learn -- a sadder, but now wiser man.

 

[organicCPU]

It's difficult enough to get data from a failing platter-based hard drive.
With an SSD, it can become all-but impossible.

On the other hand, there are enough experts claiming that it's almost impossible to secure delete files on a SSD and that the only way to make files on a SSD unrecoverable is to completely destroy the SSD physically.

Probably it won't be possible to make a block-level copy of that certain SSD with tools like ddrescue, analysing the SSD with smartctl nor repairing its partitions with TestDisk. Though, I'd give that a try.

If the SSD is physically damaged or not, we just don't know. There might be ways to put a defective SSD back to live, but there is no standard solution for that. https://superuser.com/questions/506410/how-can-i-recover-dead-ssd-drives

@alizxm Again, let that try a professional recovery service, if you depend on the data and make backups in the future. The price tag for a valid recovery service should be a few hundred on success, but less likely thousands. Chances are much better if your drive haven't been encrypted.

 

[chscag]

It's difficult enough to get data from a failing platter-based hard drive.
With an SSD, it can become all-but impossible.

Have to agree. With TRIM turned on for modern SSDs, recovery is almost impossible which is why backups are a must when using Flash Storage of any kind. You can check with "This Drive Recovery Company" to see what they say. They claim to be able to recover data from a SSD. Let us know.