Corsair SSD Data Recovery

We recover data from failed Corsair SSDs at our own lab in Austin, Texas. Every drive is worked on in-house by our technicians; nothing is shipped to a third-party partner. Mail-in service covers the whole country, the evaluation is free, & there is no diagnostic fee. You get a firm quote before we touch the drive, & if we don't recover your data you don't pay a recovery fee.

Corsair SSDs use Phison controllers across their entire NVMe lineup: E12 in the MP510, E16/E18 in the MP600 family, E21T in the compact MP600 Mini, and E26 in the Gen5 MP700. Each controller has distinct failure patterns, firmware versions, and recovery pathways. The MP600 series (released 2019-2022) is now entering the 4-5 year failure window where NAND wear and capacitor degradation start producing dead drives.

SSD starting at $200 | No Data, No Fee | Free Evaluation | Since 2008

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Corsair SSDs We Recover

Gen5: MP700 and MP700 PRO

Phison E26 controller. M.2 2280. PCIe Gen5 x4. Known thermal throttling failure pattern.

Gen4: MP600, MP600 PRO, and MP600 XT

Phison E18 (PRO/XT) or E16 (original MP600). M.2 2280. Triple Cortex-R5 with AES-256 encryption.

MP600 Mini / Core 2230

Phison E21T. M.2 2230 for Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Surface Pro. DRAM-less HMB design.

Gen3 MP510 and legacy Force Series SATA

Phison E12 (MP510), SandForce SF-2281 (Force 3/GT). Legacy models still in active use.

Current Corsair NVMe SSDs use Phison controllers; legacy Force SATA used SandForce

Author01/13

Written by

Louis Rossmann

Founder & Chief Technician

Updated August 2026

11 min read

Recovery Cost and Intake02/13

What Does Corsair SSD Recovery Cost and How Do You Start?

Corsair SSD recovery starts at $200 for a working drive you only need copied, & runs to $1,200–$2,500 when the board is damaged badly enough to need a NAND transplant. Evaluation is free, the quote is firm before any work begins, & you pay no recovery fee if we don't get the data.

Corsair sells across two interfaces, so quotes come off two tier tables. MP600 & MP700 drives are NVMe; the legacy Force 3 & Force GT are SATA.

Recovery Tier	NVMe (MP600 & MP700)	SATA (Force 3 & Force GT)
Simple copy	$200	$200
File system recovery	From $250	From $250
Circuit board repair	$600–$900	$450–$600
Firmware recovery	$900–$1,200	$600–$900
PCB or NAND swap	$1,200–$2,500	$1,200–$1,500

Which tier you land in comes down to what failed. A drive that won't power on is a board problem, & that is component-level microsoldering work: we find the failed part with a FLIR thermal camera & replace it with a Hakko FM-2032 on an FM-203 base station, which brings the original controller back so the drive can be read normally.

A drive that powers up but never answers the host can be a board fault or a firmware panic, & the free evaluation is what tells the two apart. Worn NAND is a separate failure with a separate price, & it lands in the firmware tier, where the price depends on the extent of bad areas in the NAND.

The $1,200–$2,500 tier carries a 50% deposit & a donor drive cost on top. A donor drive is a matching SSD used for its circuit board. Typical donor cost: $40–$100 for common models, $150–$300 for discontinued or rare controllers.

Standard turnaround is listed per tier, from 3-5 business days on a simple copy to 4-8 weeks on a swap. If you need it sooner, +$100 rush fee to move to the front of the queue.

How Intake Works

Ship the drive or bring it in. Mail-in recovery works from anywhere in the country; walk-ins go to the Austin lab.
We evaluate the drive for free. No diagnostic fee, whatever the diagnosis turns out to be.
You get a firm quote tied to one of the tiers above, & nothing happens until you approve it.
We do the recovery in-house: board repair, or firmware corruption work on the controller when the drive still powers up but reports wrong.
Your data ships back on a target drive, & the Corsair SSD comes back with it.

Try software first in one specific case: the drive still shows up in your operating system & the problem is logical. Disk Drill, EaseUS, & R-Studio all handle deleted files, lost partitions, & volumes that mount wrong. Deleted files are the weakest of those cases, because once TRIM has run the controller unmaps those blocks, & no lab reverses that. None of those tools help when the BIOS doesn't see the drive, because there is nothing for them to scan.

That is where we start. No data, no recovery fee applies to every Corsair drive we take in, & every one of them is handled by the same technicians doing the rest of our SSD data recovery work at one address in Austin. No franchises, no outsourcing.

Featured Snippet Target03/13

How Corsair SSD Recovery Works

Every current Corsair SSD uses a Phison controller. The SSD data recovery approach depends on which Phison chip is inside the drive and the specific firmware revision installed at the factory.

PC-3000 SSD connects to the Phison controller through vendor-specific diagnostic commands, bypassing the normal NVMe or SATA interface. From there, we can read firmware modules, repair corrupted flash translation tables, and extract raw NAND contents when the controller firmware is too damaged to boot.

We evaluate every drive for free, provide a firm quote, and charge nothing if we cannot recover your data.

MP700: Gen5 Thermal Failure Pattern04/13

MP700: Gen5 Thermal Failure Pattern

The Corsair MP700 and MP700 PRO use the Phison PS5026-E26 controller, the same Gen5 silicon found in the Crucial T700, Sabrent Rocket 5, and Seagate FireCuda 540. Sequential write speeds reach 10,000 MB/s, but the controller draws enough power to reach its thermal throttling threshold of roughly 85 to 86C under sustained load, at which point it throttles or shuts down.

Corsair ships the MP700 with a heatsink on some SKUs, but many motherboard M.2 slots provide inadequate airflow for Gen5 thermal requirements.

The failure pattern: the drive operates normally for months or years under typical mixed workloads. A sustained sequential write (large file copy, game installation, OS migration) pushes the controller past its thermal throttling threshold. The firmware's thermal protection logic should reduce clock speeds before reaching the emergency shutdown temperature, but on some firmware revisions, the throttling engages too late. The controller executes an emergency power-down while a write operation is in progress, corrupting the FTL metadata stored in NAND.

On the next boot, the E26 cannot reconstruct its FTL from the corrupted metadata. The drive either disappears from BIOS entirely or shows as an uninitialized device with 0 bytes capacity. The E26 is not currently supported by PC-3000 SSD, so there is no firmware-level translator rebuild available for this controller. Recovery on an E26 is board-level work: restoring power delivery to the original controller so the drive answers the host again on its own silicon.

Phison E26 Gen5 Failure

Thermal shutdown firmware corruption across all E26 brands.

NVMe & PCIe Recovery

M.2 NVMe diagnostics and firmware repair.

MP600 Family: E18 Firmware Panic and E1605/13

MP600 Family: E18 Firmware Panic and E16 Thermal Stress

The Corsair MP600 family spans three Phison controller generations. The original MP600 (2019) uses the PS5016-E16, Phison's first consumer Gen4 controller. The MP600 PRO and MP600 PRO XT (2021-2022) use the PS5018-E18, a more mature Gen4 design with triple ARM Cortex-R5 cores, 4th-generation LDPC error correction, and improved thermal management.

The E16 has higher reported failure rates than its E18 successor. It is essentially the E12 Gen3 controller with a Gen4 PHY bolted on, and it runs hotter than the E18 under equivalent workloads.

Firmware corruption from thermal events is the primary failure mode: the drive operates normally until a sustained write pushes the controller past its thermal threshold, at which point the firmware panics and the drive drops offline. The E16 may or may not reappear after a cold boot depending on which firmware modules were corrupted.

The E18 is more reliable, but sudden power loss remains its vulnerability. Power loss during a write operation corrupts the FTL metadata. The E18's triple-core architecture maintains more complex internal state than the single-core E16, and a mid-operation crash can leave the FTL in a state the boot firmware cannot resolve.

PC-3000 SSD handles both the E16 and E18 through the Phison Active Utility, though the specific firmware revision determines the available recovery commands. E18 recovery capabilities in PC-3000 are more limited than older Phison generations; some firmware revisions restrict operations to repair or reset rather than full NAND-level extraction.

SSD Firmware Corruption

FTL failures, 0GB bugs, firmware lockouts across all brands.

Kingston SSD Recovery

KC3000 (E18), NV2 (E21T). Same Phison controllers.

SSD Pricing06/13

Corsair SSD Recovery Pricing

Low complexity
Simple Copy
Your drive works, you just need the data moved off it
Functional drive; data transfer to new media
Rush available: +$100
$200
3-5 business days
Low complexity
File System Recovery
Your drive isn't showing up, but it's not physically damaged
File system corruption. Visible to recovery software but not to OS
Starting price; final depends on complexity
From $250
2-4 weeks
Medium complexity
Circuit Board Repair
Your drive won't power on or has shorted components
PCB issues: failed voltage regulators, dead PMICs, shorted capacitors
May require a donor drive (additional cost)
$450–$600
3-6 weeks
Medium complexity
Most Common
Firmware Recovery
Your drive is detected but shows the wrong name, wrong size, or no data
Firmware corruption: ROM, modules, or system files corrupted
Price depends on extent of bad areas in NAND
$600–$900
3-6 weeks
High complexity
PCB / NAND Swap
Your drive's circuit board is severely damaged and requires NAND chip transplant to a donor PCB
NAND swap onto donor PCB. Precision microsoldering and BGA rework required
50% deposit required; donor drive cost additional
50% deposit required
$1,200–$1,500
4-8 weeks

Hardware Repair vs. Software Locks

Our "no data, no fee" policy applies to hardware recovery. We do not bill for unsuccessful physical repairs. If we replace a hard drive read/write head assembly or repair a liquid-damaged logic board to a bootable state, the hardware repair is complete and standard rates apply. If data remains inaccessible due to user-configured software locks, a forgotten passcode, or a remote wipe command, the physical repair is still billable. We cannot bypass user encryption or activation locks.

No data, no fee. Free evaluation and firm quote before any paid work. Full guarantee details. NAND swap requires a 50% deposit because donor parts are consumed in the attempt.

Rush fee: +$100 rush fee to move to the front of the queue
Donor drives: A donor drive is a matching SSD used for its circuit board. Typical donor cost: $40–$100 for common models, $150–$300 for discontinued or rare controllers.
Target drive: The destination drive we copy recovered data onto. You can supply your own or we provide one at cost plus a small markup. All prices are plus applicable tax.

SSD Recovery Calculator07/13

Estimate Your Corsair SSD Recovery Cost

Select your symptoms and drive type for a preliminary cost range. Final pricing comes after a free evaluation.

Drive Type

Symptoms

Estimate

What type of SSD do you have?

This determines the recovery method and pricing.

Not sure which type you have? Call (512) 212-9111 and we can help identify it.

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What Customers Say About Our SSD Recovery

4.9 / 51,837 Google reviewsverify on Google Maps

May 10, 2020

“I consulted Rossmann Repair Group for data recovery services. A new IT client was recently referred to me, because his main computer crashed and his business database went offline as a result. It turned out that the computer crashed because its main storage, a 500 GB Solid State Hybrid Drive, failed. That part was easy - replace it with a new 1 TB SSD and reinstall Windows along with the software he uses. However, the data on the SSHD was critical and would have meant serious problems for his business if he didn't get that back. That's where Rossmann Repair Group came in.”

Shomari Hohn

View on Google

July 24, 2024

“Went in to ask if they could retrieve my SSD from my Surface Pro 4 for me and they gave me a good rate, but was still a bit too expensive for me. So, they let me use their equipment for about an hour until I was able to fish it out myself and recover my data.”

Aravind Udayakumar

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November 17, 2021

“Sent in a SSD for data recovery for a client of mine. Data was recovered! What else can I say. Thank you.”

David Dachenhaus (DDock)

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February 2, 2026

“Amazing place! Super friendly and knowledgeable people! I have a LaCie Rugged Pro SSD that stopped mounting. It turns out the enclosure was the problem, not the SSD itself. They helped diagnose the issue and offered solutions—all free of charge. Great experience, and I highly recommend them! 😊”

Ludwig Jonsson

LaCie

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Read all 1,837+ reviews

MP600 Mini / E21T 223008/13

MP600 Mini: E21T 2230 and the Known Data Loss Bug

The Corsair MP600 Mini and MP600 Core (2230 variant) use the Phison PS5021-E21T controller in the compact M.2 2230 form factor. This is the same controller found in the Sabrent Rocket 2230, Crucial P3 Plus, and many aftermarket Steam Deck and ROG Ally upgrade SSDs. The E21T is a 4-channel, DRAM-less NVMe Gen4 controller that relies on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) for FTL caching.

In July 2023, PCPartPicker discovered a reproducible data loss bug on 1TB 2230 E21T drives running at PCIe 4.0 speeds. Data written without errors became permanently unreadable. The bug does not reproduce at PCIe 3.0 speeds. Phison acknowledged the issue. This specific bug destroys data during the write operation itself; the NAND cells contain corrupted data from the moment of writing, and no recovery tool can reconstruct what was never correctly written.

For E21T failures not caused by this specific bug (firmware corruption from power loss, FTL inconsistency from HMB desync), recovery depends on PC-3000 SSD module support. The E21T is a newer controller, and PC-3000 support is under active development. We evaluate each drive honestly: if the current tooling does not support the specific firmware revision on your MP600 Mini, we will tell you rather than accept a drive we cannot work on.

MP510 / E12 Gen309/13

MP510: Phison E12 Gen3 and Legacy Force Series

The Corsair Force MP510 uses the Phison PS5012-E12, the most commercially successful NVMe Gen3 controller. The same silicon powers the Sabrent Rocket, PNY CS3030, and Seagate BarraCuda 510. The E12 is an 8-channel controller with DRAM cache and AES-256 hardware encryption. It has mature PC-3000 support through the Phison NVMe module in SSD Extended.

E12 failure modes are well-documented: firmware corruption from unclean shutdown is the primary cause. The drive disappears from BIOS or drops offline under load. Some units show as an unallocated RAW volume after a system crash.

PC-3000 accesses the E12 through Phison's diagnostic mode, reads the firmware state, repairs or replaces corrupted FTL modules, and images the NAND contents to a target drive. E12 recovery is among the more straightforward NVMe procedures because the controller has been in production since 2018, though ACE Lab scopes its E12 coverage to drives built with Toshiba/Kioxia NAND, so the NAND on your specific board decides what is available.

The older Corsair Force 3 and Force GT (SATA) used the SandForce SF-2281 controller. SandForce drives implement always-on AES encryption and proprietary DuraWrite compression that makes both chip-off and standard tooling recovery difficult. The SF-2281 requires specialized proprietary techniques outside standard PC-3000 utilities. These drives are now 10+ years old, and we still receive them when users pull data from old systems or backup drives.

Controller Architecture Grid10/13

Corsair SSD Controller Map

MP700: Phison E26

Gen5 NVMe x4. M.2 2280. Up to 10,000 MB/s sequential read. AES-256 encryption with controller-bound keys. Known thermal shutdown failure pattern. Not currently supported by PC-3000 SSD; no firmware-level translator rebuild exists for this controller. Chip-off not viable due to encryption. Board-level repair is the recovery path.

MP600 PRO and XT: Phison E18

Gen4 NVMe x4. Triple ARM Cortex-R5. 12nm process. 8-channel with DRAM. 4th-gen LDPC error correction. AES-256 + TCG Opal 2.0. PC-3000 support is more limited than older Phison generations; some firmware revisions restrict to repair/reset rather than full extraction. Firmware panic from power loss is the primary failure.

Original MP600: Phison E16

First consumer Gen4 controller. Essentially an E12 with Gen4 PHY. Higher failure rates than E18 successor. Prone to firmware corruption from thermal events. AES-256 encryption. PC-3000 SSD Phison module. Chip-off not viable.

MP600 Mini: Phison E21T

Gen4 NVMe x4. 4-channel. DRAM-less (HMB). M.2 2230 form factor. Known data loss bug on 1TB models at PCIe 4.0 speeds (confirmed by Phison). PC-3000 support under development. Common in Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Surface Pro upgrades.

MP510: Phison E12

Gen3 NVMe x4. 8-channel with DRAM. AES-256 encryption. Most commercially successful Phison NVMe controller. PC-3000 SSD support via Phison Active Utility, scoped by ACE Lab to Toshiba/Kioxia NAND builds. Firmware corruption from power loss is the primary failure mode.

Force 3 and GT: SandForce SF-2281

Legacy SATA 6Gbps. Always-on AES encryption, DuraWrite compression, and RAISE parity. Chip-off not viable due to encryption. Requires specialized proprietary techniques outside standard PC-3000 utilities. These drives are 10+ years old but still arrive for recovery from old systems and backup drives.

NAND Supplier Variance11/13

NAND Supplier Variance Across Corsair Revisions

Corsair does not manufacture NAND flash. They purchase NAND from Micron, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), and SK Hynix, and the supplier can change between production revisions of the same model number. An MP600 PRO purchased in early 2022 might use Micron 176-layer B47R TLC NAND, while the same model number purchased six months later might use Kioxia BiCS5 112-layer TLC.

This matters for recovery because NAND supplier differences affect data scrambling patterns, page sizes, spare area layouts, and error correction parameters. PC-3000 SSD detects the NAND configuration automatically when connected through the Phison diagnostic interface, but the technician needs to verify that the detected NAND parameters match the physical NAND packages on the PCB.

A mismatch between the firmware's expected NAND configuration and the actual NAND installed (which can happen if a previous repair attempt installed the wrong firmware) will cause read errors during recovery.

For board-level repair requiring donor components, NAND supplier variance means we need a donor board from the same production revision, not just the same model number. The firmware on a Micron-NAND MP600 PRO is different from the firmware on a Kioxia-NAND MP600 PRO, and flashing the wrong firmware variant will brick the controller.

AES-256 and Chip-Off Limitations12/13

Encryption and Why Chip-Off Does Not Work on Corsair SSDs

Every Phison NVMe controller used in Corsair SSDs (E12, E16, E18, E21T, E26) implements AES-256 hardware encryption. The encryption is always active, even when the user has not set a password. Data written to the NAND is encrypted with a key generated on the drive and cryptographically bound to that specific controller silicon, so the key does not travel with the NAND packages.

Desoldering NAND flash packages from the PCB yields only ciphertext. Without the AES-256 key from the original controller, the raw NAND contents are indistinguishable from random data. This is why chip-off recovery (desoldering NAND and reading it on a separate programmer) is marked as "not viable" for every Phison NVMe controller in our recovery database.

When the controller firmware is too corrupted for PC-3000 to access through the diagnostic interface, and the controller silicon itself has not failed, board-level repair is the next step.

Replacing failed passive components (capacitors, resistors, voltage regulators) around the controller can restore it to a state where PC-3000 can establish a diagnostic connection. If the controller die itself is damaged (rare but possible from electrical surges or severe thermal events), recovery options are limited to finding a donor controller from the same production revision and transplanting it, though this is not guaranteed to preserve the encryption keys.

Data Recovery Standards & Verification

Our Austin lab operates on a transparency-first model. We use industry-standard recovery tools, including PC-3000 and DeepSpar, combined with strict environmental controls to maintain drive integrity. This approach allows us to serve clients nationwide with consistent technical standards.

Validated Clean Zone

Open-drive work is performed in a ULPA-filtered laminar-flow bench, validated to 0.02 µm particle count, verified using TSI P-Trak instrumentation.

Transparent History

Serving clients nationwide via mail-in service since 2008. Our lead engineer holds PC-3000 and HEX Akademia certifications for hard drive firmware repair and mechanical recovery.

Media Coverage

Our repair work has been covered by The Wall Street Journal and Business Insider, with CBC News reporting on our pricing transparency. Louis Rossmann has testified in Right to Repair hearings in multiple states and founded the Repair Preservation Group.

Aligned Incentives

Our "No Data, No Charge" policy means we assume the risk of the recovery attempt, not the client.

Technical Oversight

Louis Rossmann

Our engineers review all lab protocols to maintain technical accuracy and honest service. Since 2008, his focus has been on clear technical communication and accurate diagnostics rather than sales-driven explanations.

We believe in proving standards rather than just stating them. We use TSI P-Trak instrumentation to verify that clean-air benchmarks are met before any drive is opened.

See our clean bench validation data and particle test video

FAQ Section13/13

Corsair SSD Recovery FAQ

My Corsair MP600 PRO disappeared from BIOS after a power outage. Can you recover it?

The MP600 PRO uses the Phison PS5018-E18 controller with AES-256 hardware encryption. Power loss during a write operation can corrupt the controller firmware and flash translation layer. The drive drops from BIOS because the E18's triple Cortex-R5 cores cannot boot past the corrupted firmware module. PC-3000 SSD accesses the E18 through its vendor-specific diagnostic interface to rebuild the FTL and extract data from NAND. Firmware-level recovery on E18 drives is listed as $900–$1,200.

My Corsair MP700 overheated and stopped working. Is the data gone?

The MP700 uses the Phison E26 Gen5 controller, which throttles or shuts down at a junction temperature of roughly 85 to 86C under full sequential write loads. When the thermal protection engages, the controller powers down; on some units the firmware corrupts during that emergency shutdown, leaving the drive invisible to BIOS. The E26 is not currently supported by PC-3000 SSD, so there is no firmware-level translator rebuild for this controller. Recovery on an E26 is board-level work to revive the original controller, listed at the circuit board repair tier $600–$900 or the PCB/NAND-swap tier $1,200–$2,500 depending on the extent of the board damage.

Can you recover data from a Corsair MP600 Mini 2230 SSD?

The MP600 Mini uses the Phison PS5021-E21T controller in a compact M.2 2230 form factor. This DRAM-less controller uses Host Memory Buffer (HMB) for FTL caching, which means the mapping table lives partially in system RAM. A system crash or power loss can leave the FTL in an inconsistent state. The E21T also has a known data loss bug on 1TB 2230 models running at PCIe 4.0 speeds, confirmed by Phison after discovery by PCPartPicker. If your drive is affected by this specific bug, the data was destroyed during write operations and is not recoverable. For firmware corruption failures, PC-3000 SSD support for the E21T is under development; contact us for an honest assessment of your specific situation.

How much does Corsair SSD data recovery cost?

Corsair SSD recovery pricing follows our published SSD tiers. SATA simple-copy starts at $200; SATA file-system recovery starts at From $250; SATA PCB repair is listed at $450–$600; SATA firmware recovery is listed at $600–$900; SATA PCB/NAND swap is listed at $1,200–$1,500. For NVMe drives (MP600/MP700 family) the corresponding tiers are $200, From $250, $600–$900, $900–$1,200, and $1,200–$2,500. Free evaluation with no diagnostic fees. No data, no fee guarantee on every recovery.

Why does Corsair use different controllers in different SSDs?

Corsair does not manufacture SSD controllers or NAND flash. They source controllers from Phison (E12, E16, E18, E21T, E26) and pair them with NAND from various suppliers (Micron, Kioxia, SK Hynix). Different product tiers use different controllers: budget models use DRAM-less E21T, midrange uses E18, and flagship Gen5 uses E26. NAND suppliers can change between production revisions of the same model number. This matters for recovery because the controller determines which toolchain and firmware version we need, and whether a firmware-level path exists at all, and NAND supplier changes affect the data scrambling patterns we must reverse.

Is chip-off recovery possible on Corsair NVMe SSDs?

Chip-off is not viable on any current Corsair NVMe SSD. Every Phison NVMe controller (E12, E16, E18, E21T, E26) implements AES-256 hardware encryption with keys bound to the controller silicon. Desoldering NAND packages yields only encrypted data that cannot be decrypted without the original controller. Board-level repair to revive the original controller is the only path when firmware-level PC-3000 access fails.

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