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Trying to retrieve data from M.2 SSD (SOLVED - Bitlocker Key required)

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  • Mar 9th, 2022 8:21 am
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Trying to retrieve data from M.2 SSD (SOLVED - Bitlocker Key required)

So my old laptop died and I pulled the M.2 SSD and bought an external enclosure thinking I could just pop it in and plug it into my new laptop to retrieve the data. Unfortunately the new laptop isn't able to read the drive "...not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable".

The old SSD shows up on Disk Management but is listed as "RAW", which to my understanding the reason why it's unreadable.

Any ideas on how to access the drive and pull data from it?
Last edited by 9394 on Mar 8th, 2022 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Disk management listing the drive as 'raw' is a symptom of the drive being unreadable, rather than the cause of the drive being unreadable.

Data recovery from failed SSDs is extremely difficult. If your data is worth more than $1,000, then call a data recovery company that has experience with SSDs. Otherwise, the drive is scrap.
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$1,500 to retrieve from a Samsung 850 EVO, and that was 2017 prices.
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Thanks, is it possible that it's not recognized because it's a bios locked HP "branded" drive (with 32GB Optane memory) and can't be plugged into a non-HP laptop?
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9394 wrote: Thanks, is it possible that it's not recognized because it's a bios locked HP "branded" drive (with 32GB Optane memory) and can't be plugged into a non-HP laptop?
It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. It's common for laptops to reject non-brand wifi or wwan cards, and for enterprise NAS/SAN devices to reject non-brand drives, but I haven't heard of any manufacturer locking drives to their own computers.
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middleofnowhere wrote: It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. It's common for laptops to reject non-brand wifi or wwan cards, and for enterprise NAS/SAN devices to reject non-brand drives, but I haven't heard of any manufacturer locking drives to their own computers.
Thanks, this is clearly beyond my computer knowledge, but it would seem strange that disk management can still detect the drive and determine it's correct size.

I guess I'm in a catch 22 scenario - format the drive to see if it works, if so, I lose my data.
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9394 wrote: Thanks, this is clearly beyond my computer knowledge, but it would seem strange that disk management can still detect the drive and determine it's correct size.

I guess I'm in a catch 22 scenario - format the drive to see if it works, if so, I lose my data.
I once had the same "RAW" drive reported by Windows and no matter what I did, like using diskpart command prompt to fix/repair to no avail and finally a bright idea of connecting the drive in another computer and bingo!

Yours could be of drive controllers from old notebook to new notebook/PC or the drive controller in your enclosure is not compatible with your existing new notebook/PC (JMicron/Realtek etc). I think your drive is healthy, try it on another notebook/PC.
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9394 wrote: The old SSD shows up on Disk Management but is listed as "RAW", which to my understanding the reason why it's unreadable.

Any ideas on how to access the drive and pull data from it?
What version of Windows was on the laptop? Were you using Bitlocker or any other type of encryption?
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Which external case did you buy?

Could the problem be that the external case doesn't work with m.2 NVMe drives? As in, you bought one that only works with m.2 sata drives?
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Ben07 wrote:
I once had the same "RAW" drive reported by Windows and no matter what I did, like using diskpart command prompt to fix/repair to no avail and finally a bright idea of connecting the drive in another computer and bingo!

Yours could be of drive controllers from old notebook to new notebook/PC or the drive controller in your enclosure is not compatible with your existing new notebook/PC (JMicron/Realtek etc). I think your drive is healthy, try it on another notebook/PC.
I did try it on an HP (work) laptop that also wasn't able to read the SSD - not sure if related to older version of Windows or not having admin rights (and requiring encrypted disks).
Rick007 wrote:
What version of Windows was on the laptop? Were you using Bitlocker or any other type of encryption?
Windows 11 on the dead laptop and current laptop has been updated to Windows 11. I don't think I intentionally setup encryption.
ds2chan wrote: Which external case did you buy?

Could the problem be that the external case doesn't work with m.2 NVMe drives? As in, you bought one that only works with m.2 sata drives?
I purchased https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08C2T ... UTF8&psc=1
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That's like some no name cheapest m.2 nvme enclosure that I've ever seen. Maybe it's broken? Do you have another nvme drive that you could try? Maybe ask a friend if they have an external case that you could use to try out your drive?
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9394 wrote: Windows 11 on the dead laptop and current laptop has been updated to Windows 11. I don't think I intentionally setup encryption.
Windows 11 Home or Pro version?

The Pro version includes Bitlocker.
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Maybe you can look into Hiren's BootCD PE. Download it onto a usb thumb drive. It has a bunch of free recovery tools that you can try. Just don't install anything to the drive you're trying to recover your data from.

Hiren's BootCD PE
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is it just only one RAW partition on the m.2 drive? usually windows have a couple of separate partitions on the boot drive.

if everything is RAW, im inclined to think that the drive was encrypted (by bitlocker or a 3rd party encryption program like truecrypt/veracrypt), or it's in a filesystem that's not recognized by windows (linux EXT4 for example). is it possible to put the m.2 drive into a working computer and boot off the m.2 drive?

its very unlikely that the ssd is hardware-locked. coz i have a hardware/bios-locked SSD myself (it triggered a hardware lock when i tried to secure erase it), and if i connect it via USB, you wouldn't even see a partition showing in disk management. but since you can see a RAW partition, it's not necessarily hardware/bios-locked

if you can see a partition in disk management, at least you can re-use the drive by reformatting it (yes, you will lose data which is something you don't want at the moment). if it's hardware/bios-locked, the drive is totally unusable
Last edited by chroma_cg on Mar 4th, 2022 11:36 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Assuming your drive is not bitlocker encrypted.

There's a good chance your drive just has it's partition table (MBR or GPT) corrupt.

Here's what I would do.

Download "Testdisk" https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

See if a quick scan can see anything.

If it can't. Here's where you need to decide if you want to use the Tool to work on the drive directly to try to fix the table and file structures. This has the potential to make things worse or it can work and your drive can literally be bootable again and give you all your information.

This is what I've done in the past.

Use DDResue to make an image of the drive as is, mount the image and use Testdisk to try to fix the image and extract the data.
https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ completely FOSS
If you want to do it from Windows and use a GUI
https://www.hamishmb.com/html/ddrescue-gui.php this is like $5 or something. Totally worth it you're paying for the GUI and the ability to do it in windows via emulation.

use OSF mount to mount the image and work on it.
https://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount ... mages.html

This assume you have access to another computer and another drive able to hold the total raw size of the M.2 SSD, Eg if your SSD is 128 GB and you used 8GB you'll need another drive >128GB to hold the image and to recovery data to.

Good luck. I used the above process and tools to recover data from un-encrypted drives with 100% success rate as long as the drive is semi functional.
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ds2chan wrote:
That's like some no name cheapest m.2 nvme enclosure that I've ever seen. Maybe it's broken? Do you have another nvme drive that you could try? Maybe ask a friend if they have an external case that you could use to try out your drive?
The light on the enclosure is working and flashes, and I don't have another NMVE drive. Will need to ask a friend on the weekend.
Rick007 wrote:
Windows 11 Home or Pro version?

The Pro version includes Bitlocker.
I can't remember, old laptop had Windows 10 originally and I did the free upgrade. Current laptop is Windows 11 Home (but according to disk management, it's Bitlocker encrypted), so good chance old SSD is also Bitlocker encrypted?
chroma_cg wrote: is it just only one RAW partition on the m.2 drive? usually windows have a couple of separate partitions on the boot drive.

im inclined to think that the drive was encrypted by (bitlocker or a 3rd party encryption program like veracrypt) if everything is RAW. is it possible to put the m.2 drive into a working computer and boot off the m.2 drive?

its very unlikely that the ssd is hardware-locked. coz i have a hardware/bios-locked SSD myself (it triggered a hardware lock when i tried to secure erase it), and if i connect it via USB, you wouldn't even see a partition showing. but since you can see a RAW partition, it's not necessarily hardware/bios-locked
I don't have another computer to install the SSD onto. The SSD shows up as four partitions all "healthy" (see attached file).
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9394 wrote: I don't have another computer to install the SSD onto. The SSD shows up as four partitions all "healthy" (see attached file).
it's definitely not hardware/bios-locked if you can see those smaller (and healthy) partitions. and i doubt the boot record is corrupt if it can still see the smaller partitions

im willing to bet that it's most likely a bitlocker-locked windows partition (or something of that sort)

i have never used bitlocker myself, but maybe with a windows pro system (that supports bitlocker) you can unlock it. just guessing though

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... guide-plan

it might be a good idea if you can tell us the model number of the laptop that crapped out, and the model of the laptop that you are trying to connect via USB
Last edited by chroma_cg on Mar 4th, 2022 12:46 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Sorry if I missed this if already suggested or done.

Replace the boot drive in the new laptop with the old drive and see if windows will work (In my experience it almost always does). Copy the data to the new drive using the enclosure.

While your at it, pull the windows license as well for a spare.
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Step 1) Make a clone of the RAW Partition
Step 2) Try to run a data recovery program on the clone

Don't mess with the drive. Anything you do, format, etc will only increase chances of data loss.

If it was just a partition table error, then the recovery software should work great, and you should just be able to change the "partition type" back to NTFS using something like FDisk

If however, it was deleted, then the TRIM will have partially or fully cleared off the data
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Running any diagnostic software that performs automatic repairs could permanently destroy your data. So before running any type of "partition repair" software, you should try some more simple testing.

Since you cannot confirm or deny that the drive is encrypted, I think you should proceed, assuming it is encrypted, since the testing is non-destructive.

The easiest way to prove this, is to install the drive into another computer and try to boot from it. The computer should boot right into Windows, and after entering your login credentials, you should have access to your files.

When booting from this old drive on a different computer, you may find that the computer will crash or lockup when an incompatible driver is loaded. If this does occur , boot the computer into safe mode. Safe mode should still give you access to the data.

If you can access your data, then copy it to an external USB drive for safe keeping. Only after you have the data backed up, you could attempt to disable BitLocker and decrypt the data so that it can be read from the external enclosure in any computer.

I know that you have already mentioned you don't have another computer available, but you might have to find one.

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