Months switched off had left the heads welded to the platter surface. Here’s how they were released without wrecking them.
This one came in from a Woking company that needed a few years of old accounts back. The Deskstar had been sitting in a cupboard, unpowered, for a very long time; when they finally connected it, all it managed was a soft whir and then nothing more. That combination — long-term storage followed by a drive that tries to turn but can’t — is the tell-tale sign of stiction, where the heads have effectively glued themselves to the platter they were resting on. Repeated attempts to power it up only add to the risk.
We opened it in the clean-air environment to see what we were dealing with. Sure enough, this was stiction and not a crash — the heads were bonded to the platter rather than parked on their ramp, and the recording surfaces underneath looked undamaged. The whole outcome now hinged on one thing: could the heads be released without harming them? Rush that step and you turn a straightforward rescue into a scrapped drive.
Using dedicated tools, we separated the heads from the surface a fraction at a time, keeping them level so they never scraped as they came away, then examined them closely. They were fine. A drive brought back from stiction doesn’t stay stable for long, though, so we went straight to imaging rather than leaving it running. The DeepSpar handled that, easing the platters up to speed and capping how long the drive was allowed to labour on any one command, and the whole surface was captured in a single unbroken session.
We rebuilt the folder structure from that image, opened the ledgers and a handful of the letters to be sure they were readable, and only then committed everything to a brand-new disk.
The lot came back — the accounts, several years of letters, and a set of scanned paperwork — and the drive was on its way home inside five working days. If there’s a moral for other firms, it’s this: a disk shut in a drawer is not a backup, and anything valuable on old media should be moved onto something you actually use before the old disk seizes for good.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — heads released and the drive imaged and rebuilt on our own bench. A working copy is taken first, and we never write to the disk that came in.
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.
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Frequently. A whir that fades to silence is the signature of stiction — heads bonded to the platters — and releasing them is careful hand-work done in the clean-air environment before we image the drive. The recording surfaces usually come through untouched.
Pricing opens at £300 plus VAT, most jobs run on a no fix, no fee basis, and you approve a fixed quote in writing first.
Assume it’s vulnerable. Sitting unpowered for years invites stiction and other wear faults, and a forgotten drawer copy isn’t a backup at all. Move anything that matters onto live storage while the disk still turns.
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.