T7 Shield SSD suddenly died & not responding...

NimNim1 · 2 weeks ago

Hi!

I had my T7 Shield plugged into my M1 MacBook Pro and was using Logic Pro. There was nothing wrong and everything was working fine with my T7 until a notification popped up saying the drive had been ejected, even though I had not moved the drive or my laptop.

The SSD just suddenly died on me. Now, when I plug it in, there is no blue light at all, the drive is not recognised and I can hear a constant high-pitched whine.

Does anybody know what this problem is?

Thank you

#SSD #Memory & Storage #T7Shield #T7 #Shield #2TB

Chise · 2 weeks ago

I'm very sorry to hear that. Most likely, your drive is dead, and please consider not to attempt to plug in again before further actions.

SSDs aren't built to last forever. Long plug-in time, a lot writes, or simply age can cause a drive to fail. On average, SSDs fail quicker than traditional hard disks. This is even more so if a portable disk is used as a data drive.

If the drive remains in warranty (both time and TBW), Samsung may be able to offer a replacement. However, if you want to recover data on the drive, the process of recovery will almost certainly break warranty, with some exceptions if the technician is authorised. Manufacturers usually do not cover the bills for recovery, and it could be quite large.

Data recovery on SSDs has a significantly higher failure rate, and please be prepared for complete data loss if there is no backup. There might be slight chance of full recovery if the damage on the drive is small and repairable, and drive back to some working order.

exp1orer · 2 weeks ago

This makes me worry about my 4gb T7 Shield as well... it's only been a year and rarely used... I only plugged it in if I need to access old important files or back up mportant folders in my pc.

NimNim1 · 2 weeks ago

Thank you for responding. I will make sure to not plug it to the laptop anymore.

It´s weird though, because I´ve only had this SSD for a little more than two months. So it´s literally brand new, so one would think that it would last longer...

Chise · 2 weeks ago

I was previously expecting the drive to be a few years old. In any condition, it sounds like something off has happened. However, to the best of my understanding, the suggestions remain valid.

Samsung SSDs do not have particularly good quality control in recent years (despite I am still using them), including quickly deteriorating health on some individual drives. I think similar may have happened to you. I hope you have backups for your audio projects as this kind of errors are usually irrecoverable.

NimNim1 · 2 weeks ago

Luckily I have a backup from an earlier drive to some of my older work, but I lost a lot of my newest and best work, which is such a huge bummer.

I think I´m able to get a replacement, but I´m not sure If I should give back the one I have now without trying to get my files back. What would you do in this scenario? Would you just replace it and let it go? Because it feels so wrong to let go of the drive knowing that there is a slight chance to recover the files...

Chise · 2 weeks ago

You can attempt - but I have no good suggestion as I have never done this in the UK before. I cannot accurately estimate the cost for data recovery but it could be a really huge bill. Considering the cost of living (by PPP), I would estimate the cost goes up and beyond 1000 quid. It is up to you if you'd like to give it a try for data recovery but I'd suggest you to find seriously good people, as it will be hard. Samsung may has on-drive encryption and make things much harder. I am no data recovery specialist but according to some the rate may be as low as 10%, yet for some individual drives it might be a 0%.

For myself, as I always consider SSDs and portable drives data subject to high risks of getting lost, and have data backed up on an HDD and then to the cloud (any files on SSD has two additional copies). I am paying a considerable sum of money for cloud services for this, but I think this is not a common case. This is set up after a catastrophic drive failure and I lost a great deal of precious memories.

Because in your case you have no backup, and there are some really good work on it, if I am in your shoes, I may do:

Search for whatever has been uploaded to any web services, such as webdrives (iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.)
Search in chat software and mailboxes for whatever is available.
Ask friends who have once received a copy.
Data recovery if I consider the data valuable enough, which is rarely the case.
Set up plans to prevent this from happening in future.

I wish every luck in your process of recovering your work.

NimNim1 · 2 weeks ago

Thank you for helping. This is great for me considering that this is my first time this is happening, so I appreciate that very much. I will definitely follow the 3-2-1 rule when it comes to backup in the future. I will just have to let this be a lesson and try to not let this happen again.