One bit in RAM: fixing a Phison SSD controller in "SATAFIRM S11" state
Comments
Ranked by a public rubric, not by votes: what a comment adds counts, not who wrote it. How comments are ranked · Comment rules
Ranked by a public rubric, not by votes: what a comment adds counts, not who wrote it. How comments are ranked · Comment rules
Summary
A blogger (stperin) recovered data from a Silicon Power 120 GB SSD with a Phison PS3111-S11 controller stuck reporting "SATAFIRM S11". Using trulycrisp's Psychite vendor-command tooling, the author traced the state to one RAM flag bit, set at boot because of a single crash-log page on the NAND. Erasing that block restored the drive and its NTFS volume, avoiding the data-wiping MPTool reflash. This is one drive and one fault, and the raw-dump reconstruction stayed incomplete. SMART data pointed to repeated power loss as the underlying cause.