Category Archives: NAND

Can you detect a drive was trimmed by reading it?

Different flash operations (read / write / erase) have different power requirements. This is probably due to fact that an erase operation requires 4 times the voltage, about 20v, than what a read operation requires, about 5v. So idea is that power consumption gives clues about what a flash drive is doing. I am assuming the… Read More »

Decoding Status from NVMe SMART logs

I noticed this question a lot (on SuperUser for example) and I wondered about it myself too. Questions like: Decyphering NVMe SMART error root@truenas[~]# smartctl -l error /dev/nvme4 smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p12 amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF SMART DATA SECTION === Error Information (NVMe… Read More »

USB flash drive freezing – Optimal setup for disk imaging

About this post This is quick write up about observations during recovery of an ‘unstable’ USB flash drive (pendrive, USB stick). This also in response to messages I pick up in various forums, where people struggle seeing how DeepSpar’s USB Stabilizer can help them improve disk imaging – while they do see how it’s a… Read More »

USB Stick kapot – Gegevens redden

Ze zijn zo handig maar ook zo kwetsbaar, USB sticks. Om gegevens uit wisselen, de delen, op te sturen. Om je gegevens altijd bij je te hebben ongeacht op welke PC je werkt. Maar zoals gezegd ook kwetsbaar! Kwetsbaarheid USB Sticks USB Sticks zijn kwetsbaar juist als je ze veel gebruikt (maar het tegenovergestelde is… Read More »

USB Stabilizer, flash drives and ‘the big three’

Notification: Since this blogpost R-Studio has addressed USB Stabilizer issues (not tested yet), UFS Explorer has added functionality to streamline operation with USB Stabilizer (tested, nice!) and ReclaiMe reworked their imaging module (not tested yet). Just FWIW. I have been experimenting with imaging flash. Using R-Studio, ReclaiMe Pro and UFS Explorer, the ones that I… Read More »

Physically broken SD Card – Data Recovery

Seems that many articles about ‘broken SD cards’ refer to software solutions. If a SD card is truly physically broken no software will be able to help. Suggestions to format the card, use DiskPart, run chkdsk are just bullshit (pardon my French). Broken SD Card Micro SD cards If we talk about the standard form… Read More »

What makes photo and video recovery challenging?

Photo recovery challenges are often related to small flash based drives Most cases that land on my desk arrive as photo or video repair tasks. As I have stated before, many of those are the result of botched recovery jobs, or corruption is caused by a file system or physical issue with the drive. Also,… Read More »