You are probably searching for "hard drive repair." A damaged or failing drive requires only to be made readable once, cloned / imaged, and then removed from service, because a drive with donor components is a recovery vehicle and not one you should rely upon. Below is a list of possible failures for the hard drive; how they can be addressed; and the cost. Searching for "hard drive repair"? This is typically a completely different subject from what you have anticipated.
If there is a click, tick, grind, or beep coming from the drive that's failing, these sounds indicate that the mechanical portion of the drive has begun to fail, and it will get worse with every minute it is powered. The amount of time the drive continues to function after its first failure to work properly is the greatest determining factor regarding the amount of data which may be recovered, and the single most controllable element on your part.
This is the query that most people enter into their browser when looking for information on repairing their drives. As such, it would be beneficial to clarify what “repair” entails.
When you have a disk failure, the disk is not fixed and put back into service. Where the fault is mechanical, the disks are opened up, a new head assembly installed on them (matched donor), they’re read once, and then that’s it; they’ll never see another bit of data in them again. A hard drive that has been fitted with donor parts is a recovery vehicle, not something anyone should put their data on again. When the problem is electrical/firmware related, we only go as far as getting the data out of them. We do nothing else.
Therefore, the correct question isn’t about if we can fix your disk but about if we can recover your data from your disk. That’s what we do. And that’s why we give quotes for recoveries instead of repairs. If some company is willing to offer to repair a clicking disk and give it back to you running, beware – that’s not how this game ends.
You don't need to know where the failure occurred. Just tell us what the failure behaviour was. Usually, the type of failure follows from that.
The diagnostic exists for you to make an informed decision based on actual information versus estimates.
When it arrives at our workshop the hard-drive is registered for work; where the symptoms suggest mechanical damage, it is examined without being powered. We identify the drive family, firmware revision and head configuration first. Where it's safe to do so we connect the hard-drive to diagnostic equipment rather than a computer. This way, no one will write to the hard-drive and nothing will try to mount the hard-drive either.
We respond with a written evaluation based upon answers to four different questions: what specifically failed, are the actual platters damaged, what percentage of the data may be reasonably recovered, and one fixed price. That last part is very important – a quote that changes once the hard-drive has been opened is one of the most common complaints in this industry and ours doesn't. If our honest assessment is that all the data is unrecoverable or that using some type of software would have been sufficient to recover all the data, then you receive that instead of an invoice.
Not really a listing of our capabilities but a true representation of what we see on our workbench.
Laptop drives 2.5 inch in size and portable USB powered drives are sent to us most weeks — these include mostly Seagate and Western Digital as they supply the majority of the products found on store shelves. Then there are desktop 3.5-inch drives removed from failed computers, followed by NAS disks from Synology and QNAP units, and also occasionally drives from machines which were discontinued years ago.
The final group mentioned (discontinued drives) should be noted, since many people believe that these would be hopeless. These include older models of IDE/PATA style hard disk drives; SCSI drives; twenty-year-old Maxtor and Quantum type hard disk drives taken from lab equipment and industrial equipment; etc. With regard to the feasibility of recovering data from these older model drives, the problem is not with recovering data from them; the issue lies with obtaining a donor for the original failing unit. However, as far as time goes, if there is no readily available donor, it may take longer. Toshiba, Hitachi and HGST, Samsung, Fujitsu and the legacy names all pass through.
This is published data, rather than quoted per individual unit — so you may compare it with anybody else's.
One single hard drive is from £300 +VAT regardless of whether it's an internal, external or laptop type — the same for either a failed board or failed heads. If the hard drive was part of a RAID, NAS or server configuration the cost will begin at £500 +VAT.
This split comes down to the deposit. Most jobs have no cost for the job itself should it fail: Recovery fails, you owe nothing. If the drive needs to be opened or parts need to be added from a donor drive then these costs become irreversible as soon as the work begins, therefore a 50% deposit is due prior to work commencing and the remaining balance is owed only upon successful recovery. Which type of payment agreement applies will be known by you before any agreement can be made.
Bring your failed hard drive to us along with a brief description of its failure. Your diagnosis has no charge. When we quote you an amount for the recovery after the diagnosis, that amount will be written down and locked in place before any work begins.
This is the only step that requires input from you and nothing else can happen until the device is on our bench. Package your item properly and include all the information we require about you and your item(s), then ship them to us. Then comes a no-cost diagnostic, followed by a written quote.
Posting it? Use a tracked and insured service. The value of what is on the drive far exceeds the cost of postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays from 9am to 5:30pm, and it still needs packing as described above for the journey.
Still unsure if it's worth sending? Describe the problem(s), describe the drive, describe the faults, describe anything else you've tried — every single one of those gets read by an engineer, who then returns with their honest opinion of the likelihood of success and a price range — before you spend postage.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
We do not use utility software provided directly by consumer brands (Western Digital, Seagate etc.) to diagnose or recover faults, instead we address each issue using platform and firmware-level commands, thus, regardless of the label on your failed hard drive — Western Digital (Blue, Black, Red, Gold, Ultrastar), Seagate (Barracuda, IronWolf, Exos and Rescue-bundled drives), Toshiba, Hitachi/HGST, Samsung or legacy Maxtor — the steps involved in recovering data from it will always follow the same process: stabilise the mechanics of the hard drive first, copy over the adaptive information, build back up the service area, create a read-only image of the recovered data. Different firmware families may be present, but the imaging-first approach does not change.
A few common technical questions regarding failed hard drives.
No. Not really. Data recovery is about getting your data off your disk and restoring it to a safe place. Fixing a drive means making it readable just far enough to image it once — donor heads, board repair, or service-area work — but don't expect that disk to stay functional. A disk with 'donor' components should never be trusted again.
You are hearing your hard drive because the heads are unable to find the servo positioning information. As such, the head assembly moves back to its home position (the click), calibrates and attempts to read/write again. It usually means the heads are damaged or failing, and each time your disk spins round there is an increased risk of scratching the surface containing your files.
Firmware most often. Your drives use their operating code loaded into memory from a reserve service area located on the disks. If one of these modules becomes unreadable the drive is unable to tell you how big it is or even identify itself. In other words, it appears to have no capacity at all, while sounding perfectly healthy. It's normally fine and the data is unharmed.
A minimum of £300 + VAT per hard disk for a single unit. Any quotes are fixed price, given in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic. Most jobs are at our expense if we fail. Work using donor disks requires a 50% deposit, with the balance only payable when successful.
Yes, and often — frequently from lab and industrial equipment that's been around longer than your company's IT policy. The recovery process is very well understood. It's the donor part for an odd model that will affect how long it takes, not whether it can be done.
At Peter House, Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5AN. Monday to Friday. 9am to 5:30pm. Or you can send it insured from anywhere in the UK. We would appreciate you removing the hard drive or SSD, and sending just the bare drive. Laptops and desktops are not accepted. External drives are the exception — we'll accept them as supplied, in their enclosure, as on many models the case holds the encryption key.
Mechanical drives all use the same physics. Therefore, the make matters less than the fault; however, since a drive can only use parts from the exact same series/family/headcount/revision of firmware, that's when knowing a manufacturer's line-up becomes worth its cost.
Names with an arrow have their own guides, i.e., brand-specific failures and what those will mean for the recovery.
A fixed price of £300 +VAT per single drive — and once agreed in writing after the free diagnostic — that price will never change. Donor parts where the fault is mechanical, and on most jobs nothing to pay if the data doesn't come back.