Data Recovery Case File · Solid State & Flash · Check the Saves Elsewhere First
A New Drive That Failed, and the Warranty Trap
His enquiry was from a father trying to fix something for his son. An M.2 NVMe drive that "has stopped working after 2 months on my son's computer. The BIOS doesn't detect the drive, same with Windows — I tried it on my PC." His son lost every world he had built in a game he plays constantly, and took it hard; the father is "trying everything to get it back." Two things are worth putting before the technical answer, because either might end this today and both are free. Those saves may exist somewhere other than that drive. And there is a trap waiting at the end of this, because a two-month-old drive is under warranty — and claiming it is how people lose the data permanently.
| Media | M.2 NVMe solid-state drive approximately two months old — not detected by system firmware or by Windows on either of two machines; game save data required |
| Reported situation | Drive failing after approximately two months of service · absent from system firmware · absent under Windows on a second machine · no physical damage or event reported · saved game data of high personal importance |
| Fault class | Early-life controller failure with no enumeration — characteristic of solid-state failure; vendor-mode access the realistic route |
| Equipment used | Alternative save locations established first at no cost · vendor technological and safe-mode access (PC-3000 portfolio, SSD support) · firmware area assessment · imaging on restored access; save data verified by loading |
The decode: the free checks, the warranty trap, then the drive
Where the saves might also be, and this is worth an hour before anything else: saved worlds in that game are ordinary files, and they get copied around more than people realise. If the account has ever used the publisher's own cloud service, worlds may be stored there and simply need signing back in. If his son has ever played on another machine, a tablet or a console with the same account, worlds may have synced. If the family uses any automatic backup or file-sync service on that PC — the kind that runs quietly — the saves folder may be in its version history. And if the drive was ever cloned or the machine migrated, an older copy may sit on the previous drive. None of that costs anything, and any one of them ends this immediately.
The warranty trap, said plainly: a drive that fails at two months is squarely within its warranty, and the manufacturer will replace it. But a warranty claim requires returning the drive, and once it goes back it is gone — nobody gets data off a drive they no longer possess. So the sequence matters absolutely: recover first, claim afterwards. Manufacturers do not object to receiving a drive that has been assessed, and a replacement is worth having; but the order cannot be reversed, and a great many people discover that too late.
Why the drive failed so young: flash devices fail on a bathtub curve, with a cluster of failures very early in life from manufacturing defects that only appear under real use. Two months is squarely in that window. It is bad luck rather than misuse, and it says nothing about how the machine was treated.
What the symptom points at: absence from firmware on two separate machines is a complete elimination — drivers, operating system and host are all ruled out. On solid-state storage, total invisibility is the characteristic failure rather than an exotic one, because the controller holds the address mapping and often the encryption, so when it fails the drive presents nothing at all. The route past it is vendor technological and safe modes, which allow a drive whose normal start-up fails to be addressed anyway and its firmware area assessed and repaired.
The honest counterpart: where the failure lies in the memory rather than the controller's firmware state, reading the packages directly is not the dependable fallback it is on cards and sticks, because the mapping and keys live in the controller. So this is genuinely attemptable and genuinely not guaranteed, and both halves belong in writing before any money changes hands — particularly where somebody has promised a child an outcome.
On the bench
The free routes were established first, because a saved world found in a cloud account or a sync history costs nothing and beats any bench outcome: the publisher's own account service, any second device signed into the same account, and the version history of any backup or file-sync tool running on the machine. The warranty position was flagged before anything was sent anywhere. On the drive itself, access was attempted through the PC-3000 portfolio's SSD support in the drive's vendor technological modes, with the firmware area assessed for the corruption that typically prevents start-up, and the honest limits set out in writing beforehand. Recovered saves were verified by loading them rather than by confirming the files existed.
The outcome
The alternative locations checked first at no cost, the controller addressed in vendor modes and the recovered saves verified by loading. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; where a chip has to be removed, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The decode, for anyone in this position: check the free places first, because game saves are ordinary files that sync to publisher accounts, other devices and backup version histories more often than people expect; do not claim the warranty until the data question is settled, since returning the drive means nobody can recover from it; a drive failing at two months is early-life failure rather than anything anyone did wrong; and total invisibility on a solid-state drive is the normal failure, addressed through vendor modes.
New drive failed with something irreplaceable on it
Don't send it back for a warranty replacement yet. A drive that fails within months is certainly covered, and the manufacturer will replace it — but a claim means returning the drive, and once it's gone nobody can recover anything from it. Settle the data question first and claim afterwards; that order can't be reversed. Before spending anything, check the free possibilities: game saves, documents and project files sync to account services, second devices and backup version histories far more often than people realise, and one of those may end the problem in an hour. If the drive is solid-state and invisible to your machine's firmware as well as to Windows, that's the characteristic way these fail rather than something unusual, and there is a route — but ask for the honest limits in writing first, especially if you've promised someone an outcome.
Recover first, claim second — call Glasgow Data Recovery on 0141 404 0294; free locations checked first, controller addressed in vendor modes, and honest limits stated before anything begins.
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Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.