Most hard drives announce their demise for weeks before finally giving up — there are periods where the disk will stall during copying or freeze then come back on its own. This happens at the end of the life cycle of a hard drive, but while it is doing this almost everything can be recovered from the failing drive. In many cases, by yourself with no charge.
If your computer is taking forever to load programs, copy files, or simply access what you've stored there; it may well be failing. And if the process stalls at the same point each time; it's probably the drive. This is likely caused by a disk that's having trouble accessing some parts of itself. At this stage almost everything is still recoverable, and it is the stage people spend months ignoring.
The failure of a drive rarely occurs suddenly. Typically, it announces its intentions over the course of weeks or even longer by way of intermittent slowness. Most users misinterpret the symptoms as a sign that their old computer is finally wearing out.
Once you recognise the pattern, however, these are easy to identify. Files that take twenty seconds to open but will open immediately after that. Copies that initially copied quickly, but then halt at the same percentage. The computer freezes for thirty seconds with the hard disk indicator light solid — and then simply continues as if nothing had happened. In each case, the drive was repeatedly attempting to read the same bad sector until it finally succeeded. And in each case, the operating system was waiting for it.
The reason that there is value in taking action now is that a drive in this condition is still readable. Just about all data contained within the drive may be copied off, by you, during that same day without cost. All but a very few of the failures which ultimately come to us as costly recovery jobs have been in this exact same phase for months while someone determined the laptop had simply become too old.
SMART gives you free and non-destructive information so you don't have to take guesses.
Use CrystalDiskInfo on Windows, DriveDx on your macOS computer, or use smartctl through a terminal window. Then install the program onto a different hard drive from the one you're concerned with.
Reallocation is when the drive retires sectors because they have failed. Most drives retire a few sectors over their life. Anytime the number of reallocated sectors is over a hundred, and/or increasing, the drive is actively deteriorating.
Pending sectors – those that cannot be read by the drive but have not been retired — are the more informative figure. As soon as there is a pending count greater than zero on any drive you care about, take action today.
It is the rate of change that is more important than the actual value. If the pending count changes from one reading to another, the drive is failing now and not at some point in the past.
Do not do an image or clone; just copy your important files to another location, most important first. Then stop using that drive.
They’re all well-intended, all commonly suggested — and wrong for a hard drive physically failing.
The best service we perform with regard to these is occasionally telling you not to bother.
Single bad drive – from £300 +VAT, fixed after a free 48-hour diagnostic. Imaging a deteriorating disk requires stepped passes and therefore takes longer than imaging a good disk. The cost however remains the same as for a good disk.
Should you contact us whilst the drive is still able to mount and read then we are likely to advise that you simply transfer your files off the drive and keep your money. That advice would cost us the contract, yet it's the right advice – there is nothing in a laboratory that can be added to a readable disk. Call us first – either way, the telephone call is at no charge.
Send the device in with an initial report of what has occurred to it. The diagnosis is at no charge and commits you to nothing, and the subsequent fee is written as a firm price prior to opening anything.
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.
Tell us about the item in question, tell us how it has been behaving lately, and let us know if there is anything you have done as far as troubleshooting goes so that our engineers may provide a realistic estimate of success and a probable cost range prior to sending your items off.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
We get asked these questions more than anything else when talking to people about drives their computer won’t detect or recognise.
A hard drive is failing when transfers stall at the same point every time, files fail to open but open successfully on a second try, there are long freezes with the light from the disk stuck solid and slowing down suddenly rather than gradually. Install CrystalDiskInfo or DriveDx and look at reallocation count and pending sector count.
Pending sectors are sectors that the drive cannot currently read. However, they have not been retired. These numbers give you an idea of the "active" problems occurring with the drive, whereas when a sector is retired it indicates that the problem has already been dealt with. When there is a pending count greater than zero on a drive that matters, it deserves attention today.
No. The program runs through all sectors to verify them for hours, which would make a drive that was already having trouble reading even worse. In addition, since chkdsk makes repairs by discarding the unreconciled sectors, you would end up with a consistent file system rather than your files. If the drive still reads at least some sectors, copy your files off to another device as soon as possible.
Most likely not, and we will say so. If it mounts and reads, copy your important data off first. Then stop using it. A lab adds nothing to a drive that you can still read yourself.
Honestly – nobody knows. Some drives continue running for months with rising reallocated counts. Others fail within days. What we are certain of – the numbers never go back down. Therefore, the time frame only narrows.
A single drive is from £300 plus VAT. We do everything by way of a written quote, so you'll know what price to expect after a free 48-hour diagnostic. If the recovery fails, then you won't have to pay on most jobs.
There are 10,000 parts in our inventory. Each job comes with a complimentary written diagnostic. If the recovery fails, you won't typically have to pay. Start recovering your data today.