Taking work now — the first look is freeSSDs posted in from anywhere in the UK, or handed in at ten drop-off pointsQuicker still, give us a ring:0800 6890668
SDRSSD Data Recovery 0800 6890668 Price my job
SDR / Manufacturers / Crucial / Micron

MX500 · P3 · T700 · X9 · Micron OEM

Crucial / Micron SSD data recovery. Micron flash, several controller makers, and a brand that has stopped selling.

Crucial drives are Micron flash behind Silicon Motion, Phison or Micron's own controllers, depending on the model and the year. Micron stopped shipping Crucial consumer products at the end of February 2026 and said it would continue warranty support, so there are millions in service and will be for years. The badge is a constant; what is inside it is not. The MX500 is Silicon Motion, the P3 and the T-series are Phison, the P5 Plus is Micron's own, and the P2 changed its flash from TLC to QLC without changing its name. One Crucial or Micron SSD is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–5 days at the bench, and on most jobs no data means no bill.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Models we see, family by family.

Which kind of drive is it →
Family Models Controller commonly reported
SATA 2.5-inch and M.2 SATAm4, M500, M550, MX100, MX200, MX300, MX500 (CT…MX500SSD1 and SSD4), BX200, BX300, BX500Marvell (m4 to MX200) · Silicon Motion (MX500, BX500)
NVMe M.2P1, P2, P3, P3 Plus, P5, P5 Plus, T500, T700, T705Silicon Motion (P1, P2) · Phison E21T, E25, E26 (P3, T500, T700) · Micron (P5 Plus)
PortableX6, X8, X9, X9 Pro, X10 ProMicron, behind a USB bridge
Micron OEM and enterprise2200, 2210, 2300, 2400, 2450, 2550, 3400; 5300, 5400; 7450, 9400Micron in-house

What tends to go wrong on a Crucial / Micron.

m4 5,184-hour bug, 2012Crucial's 0309 firmware notes describe a SMART counter fault that made the m4 unresponsive after 5,184 hours of power-on time, recurring hourly after a power cycle. No data was lost; the drive simply stopped answering until the firmware was applied.
MX500 pending-sector quirkCurrent Pending Sector Count flips between 0 and 1 on many MX500s, widely reported on firmware M3CR010, and Crucial staff have said Micron drives have no true pending-sector count. A reporting oddity, not a failure; a drive with real read errors is a different matter.
P2 flash changed from TLC to QLC, 2021Tom's Hardware documented Crucial fitting slower QLC flash to the P2 without changing the product name. A P2 that is slower than it used to be is behaving as its revision does; a P2 that vanishes is not.
T700 shutting down without a heatsink, 2023The Phison E26 controller in the T700 shut down under sustained load without cooling until firmware changed the throttle curve. A drive that drops out under load should be imaged, not updated.
The brand has stopped, the drives have notMicron announced the end of Crucial consumer shipments for February 2026, with warranty support continuing. It changes nothing about recovery.

Crucial / Micron symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
It shows 0GB, or a strange name beginning SMSilicon Motion in ROM mode. Do not initialise it.Do not delay
It is not detected at allThe controller did not finish starting. The flash is usually fine.Do not delay
Slow, freezing, files that will not copyWeak pages being retried. Image it now.Everyday job
Deleted, or formattedTRIM is at work. Shut down and leave it off.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: a bare SSD travels in an anti-static bag inside a small padded box, with nothing able to move. Insure it for what the files are worth rather than the price of the drive, and use a tracked service. The posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

What the message means on a Crucial / Micron.

Describe yours to us →
What you see The usual reason Where that leaves you
m4 freezing every hour after about 5,184 hoursThe documented SMART counter fault, fixed in 0309Data intact; the drive needs its firmware, or imaging
MX500 pending sector flicking 0 to 1A reporting quirkNot in itself a failure
T700 or P3 vanishing under loadPhison thermal behaviour or a crashStop, cool, image
P2 slower than it used to bePossibly the QLC revisionPerformance, not failure
Shown at 0GB, or with a name such as SM2258AB or SM2262A Silicon Motion controller in ROM modeBench work; do not initialise it
Not detected at allFirmware will not loadDiagnostic-state work
Pending sectors flicking between 0 and 1 (MX500 and others)A known reporting quirk on some SMI firmwareNot in itself a failure; back up and watch it
Copies stall and errorWeak flash pagesImage now

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on it the day the parcel is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually failed before anything else happens. The drive is read on our own equipment, never in a computer that might send it a TRIM command. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo TRIM, no writes
02

Powered on our terms

Every power-on gives a failing SSD another chance to run its own housekeeping. Here the drive is brought up in the controller's diagnostic state instead, which lets the bench speak to the flash directly and keeps damaged firmware out of the conversation.

Vendor diagnostic modeNo hopeful reboots
03

Past the fault, to the map

Working code is loaded into the controller's memory rather than onto the flash, the service area is read, and the translation table is rebuilt from what is there. Where the controller itself is dead, the chips are read one by one and the controller's scrambling and error correction are undone in software.

Loader in RAM, never on the flashMapping tables put back together
04

A full image, then the volume

Nothing is worked on live. The whole drive is imaged once, weak pages retried in their own passes, and the file system is put back together on the image. Encrypted volumes are unlocked there too, with the key you supply, and never on the original.

One careful imageThe volume verified end to end
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–5 days at the bench

From the bench

  • Crucial's Storage Executive is for healthy drives. Its firmware update writes to a drive that, if it is already misbehaving, may not survive the write.
  • The P2 and P3 are QLC or DRAM-less on many revisions. Long writes that crawl are normal for them. Drives that vanish are not.
  • The X-series portables are ordinary SSDs behind a bridge, and the bridge is the usual fault. The drive inside is read on its own.
  • A Silicon Motion drive in ROM mode announces the controller, which tells us the family before the parcel is even open. It is not a new drive and it is not empty.
  • Many SMI drives carry no DRAM, so the map is on the flash and exposed to a bad shutdown; the DRAM-less SM2258XT and SM2259XT are common in budget 2.5-inch drives.
  • The maker's tool cannot help a drive in this state. It talks through the operating system, which the drive is not talking to.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · SDR-2026-0398JOB LOGGED ✓

A BX500 480GB in ROM mode, out of a family PC

The PC lost power during a print job and came back with a drive called SM2258XT at 0GB. The owner declined the initialise prompt, which was the right call. In the diagnostic state the Silicon Motion controller took a loader, the service area read back with its map partly damaged, and the rest was rebuilt from the flash. Every document came back; two temporary files did not.

99% of it recovered3 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Say no to Initialise, Erase or Format
  • Power it off and leave it off
  • Note the exact name and size it shows
  • Send the bare drive

What sets us back

  • Running the maker's tool or a factory tool
  • Creating a partition to see whether it works
  • Running recovery software against a 0GB device
  • Restarting it repeatedly

Questions answered before you commit.

Crucial has stopped selling SSDs. Does that affect recovery?

No. Micron continues warranty support, and recovery never depended on the maker. The controllers inside are Silicon Motion, Phison and Micron families the bench already knows.

Is the MX500 pending-sector warning real?

Usually not. Crucial staff have said Micron drives have no true pending-sector count, and the 0-to-1 flicker is a reporting quirk. If files fail to copy, that is real; send it.

My P3 disappears during big copies. Is it dying?

Possibly overheating, possibly a controller crash. Either way, stop using it and have it imaged; each return costs something.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing.

How long does it take?

3–5 days at the bench after the free look.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

SATA 2.5-inch →NVMe M.2 →Portable SSDs →Shows 0GB →Slow, errors, read-only →

Nothing gets worse while the power is off.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting