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My SSD died and all its data seems to be inaccessible and my Windows computer won't boot anymore.

After going to a local computer store I was told that they could fix it by wiping all the data. I can wipe the drive myself and save 200$. But the only way to recover the information inside would be sending the SSD to a laboratory which they estimated would set be back around 500$.

What truly matters to me is the data but I can't afford that lab price now.

Would it be possible for me to backup the corrupted data to an external drive to be able to send that external drive to a lab once I can afford it? That way I could at least use again my computer in the meantime.

Right now I can boot up the computer by using a ubuntu bootable usb as a temporary measure.

After doing some research I tried

fdisk
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress

To copy the corrupted data to the external drive, but it did not work. Is there anything I can do or I should start accepting that all the data has been lost?

As an extra info: I cannot install anything apt get on the computer right now due to WiFi stuff, I could do it I think if I made a more permanent installation of linux and started messing around with the connectivity settings.

Also I remember that about half the SSD was empty, could I force a partition in that half to install linux or keep that half usable?

Thanks!

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    dd conv=noerror,sync corrupts data. Try ddrescue instead. And no, a professional recovery service would want the SSD itself, preferably untouched. Not much you can do with an image of it, unless the corruption is superficial only (like a bad partition table). Commented Feb 13 at 9:54
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    Yes try ddrescue and check this post too serverfault.com/a/1129040 Commented Feb 13 at 9:57
  • Depending on the type of damage, a professional recovery service might access the memory chips directly or try and repair an SSD or HDD by replacing electrical or mechanical parts. If you want to be able to use such a service later, buy a new SSD and store the faulty one unchanged. Note that after some longer time additional data loss might occur. Commented Feb 13 at 10:01
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    Hate to be That Guy, but whenever I see a post like this, I get the urge to check the dates of my latest full back-up. I see 08-Feb-2025 now (for both TimeShift and my personal partitions), and I am still slightly twitchy. Maybe a firesafe in the (detached) garage? Commented Feb 13 at 10:14
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    Could you buy a new SSD/HDD and swap out the corrupted one. Install an OS (you mentioned Ubuntu) to get you going. Store the corrupted SSD until you can afford recovery. Commented Feb 13 at 16:26

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