The spindle had frozen solid — a platter transplant into a healthy donor body got the disk turning again to be imaged.
A Gateway desktop belonging to a home user had gone quiet — it no longer spun, and all it produced on power was a faint hum. The usual irreplaceable things were on it, documents and family photographs. When a drive hums but the platters never turn, a seized spindle motor is nearly always to blame: the bearings the disks spin on have locked up. Nothing you do from the outside — retrying, tapping — will shift it, and leaving it powered while it strains only threatens the heads, so it came in as it was.
Inside the clean-air environment we verified that the spindle was locked rather than the fault lying with the heads or electronics. This is among the more demanding mechanical jobs, because you can’t simply substitute a seized motor where it sits — the platters have to be lifted out and rehomed in a healthy drive, and they have to go across with their alignment to one another kept exactly as it was.
So the whole platter pack was migrated into a matched donor body with a working motor, held throughout by purpose-made tooling that preserves their alignment to a hair — get that even slightly wrong and none of the data reads. Spinning once more inside the donor, the reassembled drive was imaged on the DeepSpar to keep things easy on a mechanism that had only just been rebuilt, with the PC3000 standing by for firmware. Transplant work of this sort is painstaking and unforgiving, and a little loss is par for the course even on a clean run.
We rebuilt the file system from the image and made sure the documents and photos opened properly before committing them to modern media.
The contents were recovered and the user’s documents and photos handed back after seven working days. Like any one-drive arrangement, it makes the case for a second copy — a spindle can seize without any warning at all, and the only thing that really protects you is having the data in more than one location.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — platters transplanted into a donor, then imaged and rebuilt on our bench. A copy is taken first and the original is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Getting your data back begins with getting the device to us. Pack it up safely, pop your contact details inside, and send it over — once we’ve run the free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work starts.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Want a bit more detail first? Fill in the form with more about your issue and an engineer will review it and send you a custom quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 01483 901310.
Usually, yes. A hum with no spin is typically a seized spindle motor, which we address by transplanting the platters into a matched donor drive in the clean-air environment before imaging. Don’t keep powering it on to try — that only risks the heads.
From £300 plus VAT, most jobs no fix, no fee, with a fixed quote before any work starts.
No — the old tricks do more harm than good and can wreck an otherwise recoverable drive. A seized motor needs a platter transplant done properly; switch it off and send it in.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.