Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

[keeney123]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Keeney,

As I suspected, here is the response from SanDisk:

Dear Kenneth,
 
Thank you for contacting SanDisk® Global Customer Care. If the SSD is not detected in
BIOS, we can only replace the SSD. The information you are looking for is confidential.
Also we do not have access to that information.
 
For more information or further assistance, you can contact us at 1-866-726-3475 from
11am - 10pm EST (Monday - Friday) or reply to this email. We would be glad to assist
you.
 
Best regards,
Daniel B.
SanDisk® Global Customer Care

I feel there is no point in contacting them anymore. Almost all companies are like this and then ones who aren't, we can find their schematics online. Regardless of what argument I give them, and no matter how valid it is, if I want access to their schematics, the only way I will receive them is if they hire me directly as an engineer. Even then, I might not have access to these specific schematics.

Notice how in this e-mail, they don't even offer a service to try and repair the hard drive. They only offer to replace the hard drive. It wouldn't be for free, it'd cost money. Contacting the company is always a dead avenue (unless you find schematics online). A quick google search usually tells you if contacting the company will do any good or not.

Thanks for the suggestion but I think most of this stuff isn't supposed to be repaired and when it is, the companies outsource to another country. The companies might not even have the schematics, they might have outsourced to have the device made. The support people don't generally have access to schematics and even if they wanted to help, they simply cannot. Asus helped a guy and later, that guy would have had legal action taken against him for doing so, if they could figure out who he was. All he did was give a person part of a schematic, a small section. So, even if they do help, there's a chance they can get in a lot of trouble!

Yea this guy has no say so in the company. You most likely could replace him with a robot. You most likely know more than this guy about his product. You need to contact this guy to get some real information on SanDisk http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~sastry/

So if you decide to contact this guy. You need to know a general idea of what you are going to say. You most likely will have to go through his executive assistant. Just be up front with who you are, what your hopes are in contacting him and offer to you write him a email if that is what he wants. Make sure he knows you are in the business of repairing his and other companies products and you represent other technicians doing similar business all over the world. You would be open to his suggestions on being able to represent his company by repairing his equipment in your business in the Corning Ny area. Also, tell them of your and other technical companies frustration in aquiring schematics for repairing his equipment.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Yea this guy has no say so in the company. You most likely could replace him with a robot. You most likely know more than this guy about his product.

Yeah, and that's the way it is with almost all the big companies. But even if I get ahold of someone who has access to the actual schematics, they won't turn them over. They say they're confidential or they're proprietary or the intellectual property of the company and they cannot be shared.

Check out repair.org. I've written to my senator and congressmen. I signed the petition. If we could get more people to do that, maybe we could make a change.

[petehall347]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

i will generally phone a company and ask to be put through to the technical team . most times works .
if no joy i look up the ceo and give them a call .
i have no idea how ssd drives work .. i can only assume files are stored on a chip and are accessed through a circuit board .if this is the case i cant see a problem with them sending you a new circuit board so you can retrieve the files .

[diif]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

There is a controller that distributes the blocks of data over the flash chips.
Data recovery from a SSD is possible but its very expensive due to the time to remove the flash chips and manually assemble the data.
If the controller has failed then how do you know where the data is ?
It's also very probable the data is encrypted, so there is zero chance of recovery even if a replacement board was provided.
Why would/should an SSD company spend their time/money when the customer should have backed their data up ?
The hardware/software for flash recovery is also fairly expensive.

First rule of IT...backup your important data.

[petehall347]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

There is a controller that distributes the blocks of data over the flash chips.
Data recovery from a SSD is possible but its very expensive due to the time to remove the flash chips and manually assemble the data.
If the controller has failed then how do you know where the data is ?
It's also very probable the data is encrypted, so there is zero chance of recovery even if a replacement board was provided.
Why would/should an SSD company spend their time/money when the customer should have backed their data up ?
The hardware/software for flash recovery is also fairly expensive.

First rule of IT...backup your important data.

i will remember that if and when i swap from from spinning disks .. i do back ups anyway when i remember . well its only when i remember where my music is as its stored on the back up drive that is usb ..think its time for a back up party ...

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

i will generally phone a company and ask to be put through to the technical team . most times works .
if no joy i look up the ceo and give them a call .
i have no idea how ssd drives work .. i can only assume files are stored on a chip and are accessed through a circuit board .if this is the case i cant see a problem with them sending you a new circuit board so you can retrieve the files .

And you actually get schematics using this method?

There are chips that store the data and the circuit board powers those chips and does a few other things. Anyway, it's looking more and more like it's the chip that's bad, probably the firmware. I've checked just about every component I could check with a DMM. I didn't pull any. But nothing really sticks out.

The one article someone posted makes me think there were power issues that might have killed the drive. I asked the original owner, he said he properly powered off the PC but says they're having electrical issues. Two receptacles died and a ceiling fan. Maybe it's connected somehow?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

I'm glad I came here and asked about this. I wanted an M.2 when I got around to building me new system (a ways down the road). I'll be careful though, I never knew about the power failure killing SSD drives. Thanks guys! I've learned a lot about these since I first created the forum and I appreciate all the help. I think I'm going to assume it's a bad flash chip. I've ran out of ideas now.

[dman535]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Its a common practice to use and SSD drive to handle the system O/S and use a traditional drive for all your data. This was you have the benefit of the SSD but if there is a problem you don't run the risk of loosing any data.
Obviously this is a little tougher to pull off on a laptop.

I'm glad I came here and asked about this. I wanted an M.2 when I got around to building me new system (a ways down the road). I'll be careful though, I never knew about the power failure killing SSD drives. Thanks guys! I've learned a lot about these since I first created the forum and I appreciate all the help. I think I'm going to assume it's a bad flash chip. I've ran out of ideas now.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

dman535,

Yes, you're correct. It is common practice to use the SSD drive for the operating system and store your data on another type of drive. Some people will also put their more commonly used programs (ie, certain games) on a SSD drive I guess. I believe some companies make hybrid drives where you can put the OS on a SSD type part of the drive and the other data on the rest. Some of these hard drives don't give you a choice and just put your most used or most IO intensive files on the SSD I guess.

With SATA and IDE drives, it's common practice to partition the drive in such away where the operating system is on one partition and the data is on the other. For my Linux system, I have the /home directory on one partition, I have / on another partition. I have /boot on another partition, etc.

[alindumitru46]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

@Spork Schivago, did you manage to do something with the ssd?

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Yes. I ended up putting it on a shelf in the den. Deader than a door knob, why do you ask?

[alindumitru46]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Sorry for later answer, I managed to post here:
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.p...30547&start=60
As a result of some delicate health problems, I have been forbidden to work for a while in this field, so all of the open actions here are in stand by, waiting to completely recover me.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Sorry for later answer, I managed to post here:
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.p...30547&start=60
As a result of some delicate health problems, I have been forbidden to work for a while in this field, so all of the open actions here are in stand by, waiting to completely recover me.

I feel your pain with the delicate health problems. My liver is killing me and now I got Pityriasis Rosea, which is going to last 4-5 months they say. Docs are sending people to the house on Monday, and they'll be coming daily. Their goal is to keep me out of the hospital as long as possible. If I don't respond any time soon, I apologize in advance.

[alindumitru46]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Super, super bad. I wish you a quick recovery, it's the most important thing in this life.
I did an intervention of tonsillectomy and I was forbidden to physical effort or to inhale
various substances like those that are eliminated in soldering.
So I just study .
Let's hear good news.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Need help fixing a Sandisk X300 SSD drive.

Theres another post on hddguru about these X300`s . https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=36442

Speedy recovery.