A400 · KC600 · NV2 · KC3000 · Fury Renegade · XS2000
Kingston sells more budget SSDs than almost anyone, and the A400 is the drive we see most often reporting SATAFIRM S11, because so many of them carry the Phison S11 controller. Kingston uses Phison and Silicon Motion silicon and changes parts between batches, which it has said openly: at CES 2017 it told the press the A400 would move to a Marvell controller and different flash while keeping its specifications. The NV-series does the same, so two NV2s bought a year apart can be different drives. One Kingston 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.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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| Family | Models | Controller commonly reported |
|---|---|---|
| SATA 2.5-inch and M.2 SATA | A400 (SA400S37, SA400M8), KC600 (SKC600), UV400, UV500, HyperX Savage and Fury | Phison S11 · Silicon Motion SM2259 · Marvell on some A400 revisions |
| NVMe M.2 | A2000, NV1, NV2, NV3, KC2000, KC2500, KC3000, Fury Renegade, Fury Renegade G5 | Silicon Motion SM2263 (A2000) · Phison E18 (KC3000, Renegade) · mixed on NV-series |
| Portable | XS1000, XS2000, HyperX Savage EXO | Kingston, behind a USB bridge |
| Enterprise | DC500R and DC500M, DC600M, DC1500M, DC3000ME | Phison enterprise controllers |
| What you see | The usual reason | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| SATAFIRM S11 (A400) | Phison S11 in ROM mode | Recoverable; do not flash it |
| A2000 gone after sleep on Linux | The documented power-state quirk | Data intact; firmware or kernel setting |
| An NV2 that behaves unlike another NV2 | Different controller and flash revision | Normal for the NV-series |
| It now reports as SATAFIRM S11 | A Phison S11 controller running from ROM; the map is still on the flash | Recoverable on the bench; keep well away from the factory tool |
| 0GB, or a small placeholder size | Fallback firmware, translation table not loaded | Loader in RAM; map rebuilt |
| Not detected at all | Firmware will not load, or the power stage has failed | Diagnostic-state work, or board repair |
| Full size but empty after a tool was run | The drive was regenerated | Only a carve of unreferenced pages is possible |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A family PC stopped booting, and the BIOS listed the drive as SATAFIRM S11. Nothing had been run against it, which mattered. On the bench the controller took a loader into its RAM, the service area read back cleanly, and the translation table was rebuilt from it. Ten years of photographs and the household accounts came off in one pass.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseBecause its Phison S11 controller could not validate its firmware and has fallen back to its ROM, which reports its own name. The data is still on the flash. Unplug it, do not download the fix, and send the form.
No. Warranty replaces the drive. Recover the data first, then claim.
Not necessarily. Kingston changes the controller and flash between batches on the NV-series. The free look identifies what is inside yours.
£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing.
3–5 days at the bench after the free look.
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.