DeepSpar Data Recovery in Ottawa, Canada: PCIe SSD Add-On for Disk Imager

PCIe SSDs are gaining popularity due to their performance characteristics.

A hardware data recovery tool called PCIe SSD Add-on for Disk Imager from DeepSpar Data Recovery Inc. is starting to ship out, making it possible to retrieve lost data from damaged NVMe PCIe SSDs which are inaccessible in any regular computer.

Traditional data recovery tools are designed to recover data from SATA/IDE storage devices, which rely on an external HBA to control them. In contrast, NVMe SSDs have the HBA built-in for improved data access latency.

Andrei Shirobokov, founder and CTO, DeepSpar, states that “this is a critica difference and practically not a single line of code or hardware design solution used in traditional tools can be utilized for NVMe SSDs. NVMe SSD data recovery tools must instead provide all-new control features to facilitate data recovery from damaged devices.“

One control feature provided by the firm’s tool is the ability to manually limit the number of PCIe lanes being used by the SSD. This helps restore access to data if particular PCIe lanes have a fault. For example if there is an electronic problem on lane three, then it can be avoided by only using lane one for all communication. In the same manner, manually limiting the PCIe link speed to the lowest setting can help increase the signal to noise ratio and achieve stable communication with the SSD.

Another control feature is the ability to send various PCIe-level and protocol-level resets upon read timeout or read error. This allows the tool to do a soft reboot of the SSD and continue recovering data in case the SSD becomes unresponsive as a result of attempting to read damaged flash cells. In the same manner, in case resets are insufficient, the tool can do a hard repower of the SSD to continue the recovery process.