The drop had jammed the spindle and knocked the heads out of true — each fault a fix before the disk would read, and a careful image before things slid further.
A dropped Sony VAIO arrived dead — it wouldn’t start, and the drive was ticking inside with the give-away rhythm of damaged heads. Of everything that can befall a spinning laptop disk, a fall ranks near the top, because one impact can wreck several parts of the mechanism together — exactly what had happened here.
With the drive open on the clean-air bench, two things were plain: the platters wouldn’t spin freely and the heads bore damage from the fall. Both needed sorting before a single sector would come off the disk, and sequence was everything — unsticking the motor buys nothing if the fresh heads then can’t follow the tracks.
On the clean-air bench the platters were freed and a donor head set, matched to the exact drive, fitted so the replacements would read the surfaces true. Any disk reassembled after a seizure is delicate and behaves without warning, so imaging ran on a DeepSpar, keeping a tight grip on power draw and command timeouts and letting us bank the strongest surfaces before asking anything of the areas the fall had reached; firmware was handled on the PC3000. A few patches of the platters had picked up minor surface scoring in the accident, and scored media never yields quite everything, however gently it’s read.
From that image we reassembled the file system, then made certain the recordings, along with the project files and documents, each opened and played back as they should, and only then wrote it all across to fresh media.
The disk gave up its data — the recordings and nearly all the project files — over the course of eight working days. If ever a job made the argument for backing creative work up as you make it, this was it: the drop was over in a heartbeat, yet the recordings it put at risk stood for months of work that couldn’t be redone.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — motor unstuck, matched donor heads fitted, then imaged and rebuilt on our own bench. The image comes first, and the original disk is never once written to.
Get the device to us for a free diagnostic and a quick note on what went wrong — an engineer looks it over and puts your exact quote in writing before anything is started.
The route to your data starts with the device reaching us. Box it up securely, tuck your contact details inside, and send it across — after the free diagnostic, we put your exact price in writing before a single step is taken.
Sending it by post? Go with a tracked, insured service. Prefer to bring it round? Our door is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just pack the device as described above beforehand.
Prefer to get a sense of things first? Complete the form with a bit more about the fault and an engineer will look it over and send back a tailored quote.
We’ll get back to you soon. Anything pressing, call 01483 901310.
Often, yes — a single fall can hurt several parts at once. On the clean-air bench we unstick a seized spindle and fit donor heads as required, then image from a copy on the DeepSpar. Impact-scored surfaces can cost a little, but the bulk normally comes back.
It starts at £300 plus VAT; most jobs are no fix, no fee, with a fixed written quote before anything begins.
With most laptops you can take the drive out and post just that — any local computer shop will pop it out in minutes. Where it’s soldered to the board, though, or you’d sooner not crack the case open, send the machine entire and we’ll handle taking it out and testing it.
Kick off with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it through first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.