Counterintuitive, and it follows from how TRIM works: a drive that has stopped responding cannot erase anything, so failure preserves data that continued health would have destroyed. Here is what actually fails, and what can be read back.
TRIM genuinely erases the blocks behind deleted files, and quickly. It also cannot run on a drive that has stopped answering — so outright failure preserves exactly what routine deletion destroys.
When an SSD stops working, people assume the memory has worn out. It almost never has. Consumer drives are usually replaced long before the NAND exhausts its write endurance, and the great majority of failures we see are the controller — the chip that manages the flash — rather than the flash itself.
That is genuinely good news, because it means the data is still physically present. The problem is access rather than loss, and there are two established routes past a dead controller.
The exception is deletion. If files were deleted and TRIM has run, those blocks have been erased at the hardware level and no method recovers them. That is a different question from a failed drive, and it has a different answer.
Whether the drive was encrypted. Several NVMe drives enable encryption by default, and BitLocker adds another layer. Without the key, reading the NAND achieves nothing however healthy it is.
Whether the controller responds at all. A drive that enumerates intermittently is a considerably better prospect than one that has stopped. Do not keep power-cycling it hoping it will catch.
Whether it is soldered. On most Windows laptops soldered flash is still readable at chip level. On Apple T2 and Apple Silicon machines it is not, because the key is fused into the board.
Controller failure, most likely, and the flash behind it is usually intact. Reached through vendor mode or by reading the NAND directly.
Usually not. TRIM erases the blocks within minutes of deletion. If the machine was powered down immediately there is a real chance.
Rarely. Physical failure of the memory is uncommon; failure of the controller managing it is not.
From £300 +VAT, fixed after the free diagnostic, whether the route is vendor mode or a direct NAND read.