Troubleshooting Slow Data Recovery with OpenSuperClone on a Samsung SSD

If you’re dealing with a failing Samsung 850 Pro SSD, you’re likely aware of the potential frustrations involved in Data Recovery, especially when confronted with issues like slow processing speeds during cloning. In this post, I’ll share my recent experience using OpenSuperClone (OSC) to navigate this challenge and offer some insights that might assist others facing similar situations.

The Scenario

My aim was to recover crucial data from a BitLocker-encrypted Samsung 850 Pro SSD that has been showing signs of failure. The plan was straightforward: clone the drive, transfer the image to an SD card, and utilize repair-bde on the SD card since it can only run on drives, not images.

During the process, Phase 1 completed at a reasonable pace of 20MB/s. However, the landscape changed dramatically in Phase 2, where the speed plummeted from 1MB/s down to an alarming < 100 kB/s, eventually settling around 60 kB/s—indicating a potential firmware issue rather than a typical hardware failure.

Current Status and Observations

I have been monitoring the clone’s progress closely, which has dropped the estimated time to completion to nearly 40 days—significantly longer than anticipated. Here are several points I’ve noted during this process:

Initial Settings: I utilized the default settings for OSC as outlined in their manual. I’m curious whether any advanced configurations could expedite this situation. I wonder if stopping the process to modify settings could be accomplished without jeopardizing the data. Should I backup the image file first?
Working with the Image: While OSC is running, I successfully copied the image to an SD card using dd, which did not present any issues. This makes me hopeful about my options moving forward.
Recovery Attempts: Although BitLocker can unlock the image, I encountered access issues as the disk structure was reported as corrupted and unreadable. Given that only about 20% of the drive has been recovered at this point, it’s clear recovery efforts may take additional work.
Repair Efforts: I initiated a repair-bde command, which completed without errors; however, the result was still defective and could not be mounted. Despite this, Software like DMDE has begun to recover some files—an encouraging sign.