Data recovery from Samsung SSD LIF RAID

With the ever-increasing popularity of SSD drives, which is due to their better affordability, manufacturers are starting to use these drives more often in their devices. In some cases, however, these are not classic SSDs, but various combinations of SSD drives incorporated into a RAID array. These technologies are used primarily to increase the speed of the entire drive.

The same is true, for example, for top devices from SAMSUNG, which used a 240 GB drive consisting of 2 x 128 GB SSD drives 1.8" LIF MZ-RPA1280/0S0. Each drive is composed of two separate 60 GB modules. The individual 60 GB modules are managed separately and the RAID0 configuration is based on information from the motherboard.

The SSD drive was delivered to us due to data loss, when the drive is not detected in the computer's BIOS.

During diagnostics, we found relatively extensive damage to the memory cells of two SSD modules. In order to successfully complete the data recovery, it was necessary to read the individual SSD disks separately and then assemble them according to the exact configuration into RAID0. The data recovery was carried out with a result of 95% healthy data and 5% damaged due to faulty memory cells. We were able to precisely locate the damaged data and report it to the customer, fortunately most of it was outside the user data.

We have encountered a similar solution with other top devices from other manufacturers (Sony Vaio, MacBook Air, ….)