SSD Format Issue

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Philip Shaw

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Jun 10, 2026, 1:31:13 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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Good afternoon. I received a 1TB SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD with a lot of important data on it from a customer who mistakenly formatted it in exFAT. He wasn't sure how it was formatted originally but he said it was for Windows so I am guessing it was either NTFS or exFAT. A raw recovery in R-Studio, PC3K, and Disk Drill gives nothing but a few useless files. He doesn't think it was encrypted before. He said the format took only a few seconds. 

Could TRIM cause something like this? If not, the only other thing I can think of is encryption. Am I missing something?

Thanks.

Luke Coughey

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Jun 10, 2026, 1:36:23 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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Are you not able to see the sectors and determine if they are returning zeroes vs garbled data?

Luke Coughey
CEO
Recovery Force Inc

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Philip Shaw

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Jun 10, 2026, 2:25:51 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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It does appear that it is almost all 0s on the drive. Is the only explanation that the entire drive got formatted?

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RecuperoDati299

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Jun 10, 2026, 2:32:41 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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TRIM process runs in background when  the drive is IDLE

as explained it in many places 

after an n inizialization or delete command , the longer the drive remain Active , the bigger it becomes the Real erasure of cells 

and anyway the unique possibility is the creation of a virtual translator from a previous copy of the translator 

this mean that it the drive is not supported by PC 3000 you anyway won't find anything more that what you have already found


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Data Recovery Guru

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Jun 10, 2026, 2:35:09 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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How are you testing? 
Disassembled with the internal NVMe alone?

Or through the SanDisk controller board that the NVMe SSD is connected to internally?

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Desert Data Recovery

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Jun 10, 2026, 2:38:12 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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IMHO It's not TRIM. TRIM leaves all/most of the MFT records in place. So a scan will find files via the MFT, but the files show all zeros. A full format wipes the drive, so shows all zeros.


RecuperoDati299

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Jun 10, 2026, 2:38:55 PM (2 days ago) Jun 10
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SanDisk Extreme USB in addition require di USB adapter 

because such adapter is transparently encripting the drive, like it happen with WD USB drives


RecuperoDati299

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Jun 11, 2026, 2:37:53 AM (yesterday) Jun 11
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"IMHO It's not TRIM. TRIM leaves all/most of the MFT records in place. So a scan will find files via the MFT, but the files show all zeros. A full format wipes the drive, so shows all zeros" 

never seen before, meant if they did a quick format and created a new partition 

when the customer calls and begins telling "I have tried (list of these, several) data recovery tools" 

we already know it has only the MFT/catalog of the new partition and nothing else except blank sectors



DiskTuna

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Jun 11, 2026, 3:33:23 AM (yesterday) Jun 11
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Yes, typical TRIM behavior. If you see nothing + only new file system structures in R-Studio, it was TRIM (check in hex viewer or check entropy).
TRIM commands can be sent to entire LBA space if you're going to quick format the entire drive. So entire LBA space is un-mapped, then new file system is created. 
It's immediate, what runs in background is GC, but you will see zeros for entire LBA space (assuming DZAT).

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