ACE Data Group Recovering Data From SandForce Controller-Based SSDs

ACE Data Recovery, a division of ACE Data Group, LLC, announced they have redesigned their ZCopy Ultra data extraction hardware and developed custom software to improve their SandForce-based SSD data recovery success rate.

With an increased number of solid state drive and therefore SSD failures, an innovative data recovery solution was required. ACE Data Recovery’s technology is available to address the data recovery needs of SSD consumers helping them to get their valuable data back.

Some SSDs today are based on SandForce SF-2000 series controllers. SandForce storage devices are known for their reliability and performance that differentiate SandForce-based SSDs from other flash controller products. For this reason, SandForce controllers are used by a large number of manufacturers of SSD drives including Intel, Toshiba, Kingston, OCZ, SanDisk, ADATA, PNY, Patriot, and Corsair. SandForce processors use DuraClass technology, a set of flash management features that work together to deliver higher SSD endurance, performance, reliability and power efficiency. This technology automatically stores data in a secure AES-256 and 128 hardware encrypted format that double encrypts the data. It reduces the size of data and decreases the number of write/erase cycles extending the rated endurance of flash memory. One feature is RAISE technology that delivers RAID-like data protection in a single drive environment without the write overhead associated with RAID parity.

SandForce offers well designed products, but even the technology cannot entirely prevent data loss situations and guarantee users continuous access to their data. A relatively large number of requests for data recovery from failed SSDs based on SandForce CPUs forced ACE Data Recovery to conduct a research and find out the top causes of SSD failures.

Many consumers of SSDs have posted on the Internet their complaints about BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). The intent of the latest firmware updates was to eliminate the issues with SandForce-based SSDs, but in reality only reduced the chance of failures. Writing of uncompressible data such as zip archives, images, audio/video files or encrypted data creates more write operations. According to Data Recovery’s research findings, a high volume of write operations can cause an excessive payload of SandForce CPU and, therefore, BSOD. In about 10% of all BSOD cases, this leads to a fatal firmware failure that turns a controller into a panic mode making data inaccessible.

Another issue is related to SandForce products being customized to their partners’ needs. Vendors such as AData, Silicon Image, and Toshiba use SandForce controllers with the RAISE option being turned off to increase a capacity and write speed. However, turning RAISE off eliminates data redundancy, reduces SSD endurance and increases its failure rate.

Besides that, different manufacturers use different NAND flash memory chips to achieve their goals. Some of them, such as OCZ, tend to select higher speed and density over reliability. This is why the quality of their final products can become more unpredictable and a failure rate might be higher for some models of SSDs. However, since OCZ has recently been acquired by Toshiba, the quality of the storage devices manufactured under this brand is expected to improve.

“The good news is that data from failed SSDs can be retrieved. As a result of our partnership with SandForce and the tremendous efforts of our R&D engineering team, ACE Data Recovery has recently advanced its proprietary hardware and software for data extraction from SSDs with SandForce controllers and has dramatically increased its success rate,” said Yevgeniy Tolkunov, CTO, ACE Data Group. “I’m confident that we have the best data recovery solution for SandForce SSDs in the industry. In fact, we’ve already retrieved data from solid state drives considered unrecoverable by our competitors.“

SandForce technologies including AES encryption, RAISE, and advanced wear leveling have changed the complexity level of data extraction from failed SSD drives making it more difficult. ACE Data Recovery accepts the challenge and will continue to find ways to recover data from solid state drives as well from other storage devices.