Form factor first
Every kind of SSD, and how each one fails. The shape of the drive tells us more than the badge does.
Before we look at who made it, we look at what it is. A 2.5-inch SATA drive, an M.2 stick, a portable drive with a USB-C socket and the flash soldered to a MacBook's logic board all hold data in the same kind of NAND. They reach it by very different routes, though, and they fail in different ways. Pick yours below. A single SSD of any shape is £300 + VAT once the free look is done, with the figure in writing before anything chargeable starts, and on most jobs no data means no bill.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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Inside the machine, or outside it.
Rather begin with the symptom →Fitted inside a computer
NVMe M.2The long, thin stick in most machines since about 2018. It fails by dropping off the bus, with the flash usually intact→SATA 2.5-inchThe small metal or plastic box that replaced the laptop hard disk. The commonest home of SATAFIRM S11→M.2 SATATwo notches in the connector and SATA underneath. Often sent in as an NVMe fault it never had→mSATAThe small card in laptops of about ten years ago, and the odd industrial box→Soldered to the boardMacBooks since 2016, some Surface models and many thin laptops. Where the key lives in the processor, the board has to live too→eMMC and UFSFlash and controller in one package, soldered down in tablets, Chromebooks and small PCs. Not phones→Outside it, or at scale
Portable and externalUsually an SSD behind a USB bridge, sometimes the whole thing on one chip. Either way, £300 + VAT→PCIe add-in cardsA drive shaped like a graphics card: one controller, or a carrier holding several→U.2 and U.3Enterprise NVMe in a 2.5-inch shell, nearly always one of several in an array→SAS SSDsDual-ported server drives that were built never to be seen on their own→SSD RAID and NASTwo or more SSDs pretending to be one. Every member imaged first, from £500 + VAT→Why the shape matters more than the badge.
Every SSD is three things: a controller, the firmware that runs on it, and a bank of flash chips. The form factor decides how the controller talks to the computer — over SATA, over PCIe lanes, through a USB bridge, or straight into a processor that also holds the encryption key — and that route is what decides how a failed drive can be reached on the bench.
A SATA drive can be dropped into a diagnostic state through its SATA port. An NVMe drive needs the same thing done over PCIe, with routines that differ from one controller family to the next. A portable drive has a bridge chip in front of the SSD, which sometimes is the whole fault and sometimes only hides it. A soldered drive in a T2 or Apple silicon Mac cannot be lifted off the board at all, because the flash alone is ciphertext.
So the first question we ask is not what make it is but what shape it is. The second is what it is doing. The badge comes third, because a Kingston, a Patriot and a Silicon Power with the same Phison controller inside fail the same way and are recovered the same way. There is more on that on the manufacturers page, and a plain account of what goes on inside the drive on what is inside an SSD.
The questions that come up first.
How do I tell which kind I have?
Look at the label, or photograph it and send it with the form. A 2.5-inch drive is a small flat box. An M.2 stick with one notch is NVMe; two notches usually means M.2 SATA. An mSATA card is shorter and squarer, with a different connector. If it never comes out of the laptop at all, it is soldered. The model number settles it either way.
Does the shape change the price?
Not for a single drive. SATA, NVMe, M.2 SATA, mSATA, a portable drive or a soldered board are all £300 + VAT after the free look. The price moves only when there are several drives in a set, from £500 + VAT, or when it is enterprise storage, from £1,250 + VAT.
Is one kind harder than another?
Different rather than harder. Each controller family has its own routines, and newer PCIe 5.0 controllers have the least mature support. The free look tells you honestly whether yours is one we can take on.
Do you take the whole computer?
Only when the drive cannot come out. Send a bare M.2 stick or a 2.5-inch drive on its own; send a MacBook, a Surface or a thin laptop whole if its storage is soldered. Mobile phones are not handled.
Not sure which one you have?
Photograph the label and send it with the form. The model number is enough to tell, and the first look is free whichever shape it turns out to be.