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I have an SSD, Samsung Evo, 1TB, supposedly not the worst, that was not used in obviously damaging manner and CrystalDiskInfo showed supposedly 99% lifetime.

Still, there are uncopyable files - if the SSD is inside a laptop, I get a BSOD when that happens.

If it's on another computer via SATA-USB cable, only its drive goes byebye and I have to unplug/plug again, which is not feasible to copy hundreds of GB of data with this happening every couple minutes.

I tried to clone it with bootable clonezilla, as I wold have liked the strangely still running Windows installation on another used but ok SSD I have laying around, with that old laptop this was in as "emergency setup", until I get my new gear put together & up and running.

But that just says, error cloning partition after successfully cloning the special Windows reserved ones.

I have managed to copy some files manually, but it is too laborious.

I have no good idea as to the nature of those SSD errors and if it's even possible that a program exists which could detect it and skip affected files instead of upsetting the SATA controller or driver.

Well, is this a well known issue, and does a feasible rescue method exist?

Joep van Steen
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user1847129
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    so you could try imaging it with DDRescue, but its likely that you would not just be able to mount the image once its done (it would be as damaged as the disk). you would probably have to use file recovery tools against the image to try to extract the files that you would want to keep (just content, its very unlikely that windows would survive in a working state) from the image. also, you probably need to install it directly on a sata bus instead of using USB. – Frank Thomas Mar 17 '23 at 23:07
  • Honestly, a drive filled with data holes is a dying drive. Best solution? You should have had some backups in place. For now, your best bet is to do what @FrankThomas suggests. This is a data recovery operation and even if a bad sector could be skipped for now, that is fairly useless for sectors that will die as you power it up to handle this. – Giacomo1968 Mar 18 '23 at 00:36
  • @Giacomo1968 I was fooled by disk tools showing 99% lifetime for a long time, and my impression was that, if treated well, SSD failing should be less of a concern than HDD that can have a head crash. Tho Samsung's own Magician doesn't show much if connected over USB (my laptop does). I now conn. to an opened desktop PC & ran crystaldisk, now showing only "60% good". Weird. ~ 5 TB written, on 1TB SSD, if I can assume guaranteed 10k erase cycles even without wear leveling, that shouldn't be much? I always had >= 100 GB free, it's not like I was writing into the last 100MB all the time or so. – user1847129 Mar 18 '23 at 00:46
  • @user1847129 You assume that the lifetime promise includes things like power surges and accidental stuff. It doesn’t. Sorry, SSDs are great but backups are always needed. – Giacomo1968 Mar 18 '23 at 01:24
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    @FrankThomas, IMO your comment should be posted as an answer. – Joep van Steen Mar 18 '23 at 02:21
  • @JoepvanSteen while I will try it tomorrow, I doubt it will work. CloneZilla in "-rescue" mode, now with SSD @ SATA connector of a desktop PC, after the first erroneous block, everything else is also error - but that's not the real state of the disk, so here again my hypothesis that the sata controller is quitting after this happens. So unless DDRescue can actually restart that thing after every error, I don't see how it would have a better chance at copying. – user1847129 Mar 18 '23 at 03:39
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    ddrescue is designed to deal with read errors gracefully, so if anything will do it, it will. that said there are NO GUARANTEES in data recovery, ever. be sure to connect the disk directly to a native sata port without USB in the middle. thats likely the source of your instability. – Frank Thomas Mar 18 '23 at 05:18
  • Something in some 'rescue mode' and skipping files is something else than ddrescue or hddsuperclone. If drive drops all the time you can use ddrescue or hddsuperclone using relay. If data is important send to a data recovery lab, you will *not* have unlimited tries at this. – Joep van Steen Mar 18 '23 at 11:05

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