ACE Data Recovery Develops Breakthrough SSD Technology to Recover Data from SandForce-based SSDs - Press Release
ACE Data Recovery Develops Breakthrough SSD Technology to Recover Data from SandForce-based SSDs
Dallas, TX - February 06, 2015 - ACE Data Recovery, a division of the ACE Data Group, LLC, announced today they have redesigned their ZCopy Ultra data extraction hardware and developed new custom software to significantly 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 new technology is now available to address the data recovery needs of SSD consumers helping them to get their valuable data back.
The most popular 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 highly secure AES-256 and 128 hardware encrypted format that double encrypts the data. It also reduces the size of data and decreases the number of write/erase cycles extending the rated endurance of flash memory. One more 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 best 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 ACE 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.
In fact, we’ve already retrieved data from SSDs, based on SandForce CPU, considered unrecoverable by our competitors.
SandForce smart 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. As the leader in the data recovery industry, ACE Data Recovery accepts the challenge and will continue to find new ways to recover data from solid state drives as well from other storage devices.
About ACE Data Recovery
ACE Data Recovery is one of the top providers of data recovery services to customers all over the world. Since 1981 ACE Data Recovery has worked with all types of media including HDD, SSD, RAID, SAN, NAS, flash drives, and tapes. Company Headquarters are in Dallas, TX, with additional labs in Falls Church, VA, Houston, TX, and Chicago, IL. They have Service Centers in 25 major metropolitan areas across the United States. For a full list of their Service Center locations or for additional information visit their website at: https://www.datarecovery.net or call them at 877-304-7189. Spanish speaking customers can call a dedicated toll free number 844-863-9573.