Liam’s Adata SX8200 2TB NVMe appears to have died. It briefly mounts on the desktop of a macOS machine, but there’s no access to the data and only its root folder contents are viewable. As far as we can tell, the controllers on these NVMe frequently fail and data recovery specialists wielding PC-3000 devices are helpful people who can recover the data by loading a new controller through software – hopefully I have that description correct.

Anyway, we’re in a holding pattern at the moment. I’d love to help him recover more of the data, but I don’t currently own a PC-3000. We looked into Open Super Clone and how to set it up, but it isn’t really designed to handle a volume where a hardware controller may be failing. We also tried using it through its Live-CD mode. I would have loved to use Drat or follow these APFS troubleshooting instructions, but ultimately the issue lies with the Adata controller.

Next step if he wants his data back (our last backup is from 1.5 years ago), talk to an independent data recovery shop that has a PC-3000 and knows how to operate the Silicon Graphics 2262 controller recovery, like this video or this one.