Modify SSD firmware

[Ace2213]

So I have a friend who works with importing SSDs from China. He has a bunch of defective SSDs sitting in his house that were returned due to defects. Either they don't get detected as storage or don't get detected at all. In some cases they are detected by disk manager, but you can't perform any tasks on them.

 

Now obviously there's a good chance these units are just defective or corrupt. But couldn't it also be a firmware issue? I know it's theoretically possible to manually modify hardware firmware based on all the fake Chinese GPUs with spoofed model numbers, but I can't for the life of me find out how to get into it. Thanks to Google prioritizing "authoritative sources" which would naturally never endorse this for so many reasons. 

 

I figure there's a reasonable chance at least some of these SSDs might have a typo or something in the firmware that would be stupid easy to fix, rather than discarding them as e-waste. 

 

Any keywords that can point me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. 

[OhYou_]

what is the model number of the controller

are they all the same?

 

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

11 minutes ago, Ace2213 said:

Thanks to Google prioritizing "authoritative sources" which would naturally never endorse this for so many reasons

Use a different search engine

 

Also those "sources" are only there to drive off noobs and leave them uneducated, obviously you shouldnt be screwing around with this stuff unless you atleast vaguely know what you are doing but like come on not even gonna show the steps and give uninformative garbage like general descriptions or rubbish warnings? After all they can just claim no responsibility for whoever the hell tries and fucks their storage over. Atleast be helpful for anyone looking to dive into this stuff not be fearmongering retards that dont know shit, most reasonable ppl will be driven off anyways when theyre shown the risks

 

18 minutes ago, Ace2213 said:

I figure there's a reasonable chance at least some of these SSDs might have a typo or something in the firmware that would be stupid easy to fix, rather than discarding them as e-waste. 

Corrupted firmware? Unlikely but possible, just have to find whatever chip that stores the firmware and flash it

 

Components can be outright defective and sometimes apparently controllers can also go into "panic mode" aka making the drive unusable cause it detects somethings off idk i dont dig into fixing storage cause no profits there aside from data recovery and i am not interested in that

 

 

For information sources on fixing ssds and stuff look on youtube for ppl servicing ssds, ive seen a vid or 2 just browsing around. They seem rather in depth so might just not be worth the time to fix all those ssds cause labor does have a cost and you cant just be working for free aside from doing this for fun or you really just have time to kill and not solely doing this for max profits. I am a max profits guy and i fix up boards so if a fix isnt as simple as a dunk in water, a bios flash, or a component swap (when i get a hotair station and a proper solder iron) then i deem the mobo dead and currently i resell as scrap but may start salvaging stuff off em once i get the equipment to do so, particularly chipsets (annoying cracked chipsets ruining perfectly good boards), mosfets (bad vrms just shorting out good boards), problably sockets too (nuked cpu sockets)

[Ace2213]

16 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

don't dig into fixing storage cause no profits there

In this case, my friend already bought these SSDs and is unable to sell them. So splitting their profit with me is better than not selling them at all. Sunk cost fallacy. And in my case, my motivation would be fun and educational purposes. 

 

And I couldn't agree more about Google. Crack down on fake news all you like, but real information that CAN cause harm if followed incorrectly? Sounds like some anti-right to repair bs. Maybe I'll try Chatgpt. 

 

Thanks for the tips. I'll see what I can find on YouTube. Fortunately they haven't entirely ruined that search engine just yet. 

[Ace2213]

38 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

what is the model number of the controller

are they all the same?

I don't have them on hand right now, but I'm pretty sure he does use the same vendor. I'll let you know when I'm at his place. What's the relevance of the controller model? 

[Ace2213]

So I've been able to get not very far with them. I see them in device manager but what I can do with them is almost nothing. Initializing in gpt mode hasn't worked so far but mbr does sometimes. But then formatting is very tricky as only certain format sizes end up showing in file explorer, with corrupt data inside. Formatting the entire drive doesn't work. 

 

I opened one up and couldn't find any useful info. There is a number on the controller though. Is that helpful? There's no brand name or anything