Clicking, dropped, dead, or simply not showing up? We recover hard drives of every make — Seagate, WD, Toshiba and the rest. When a drive has to come apart, we transplant matched donor heads and a motor, and recover your files. For the wider trade-offs of the technology, see hard drive advantages and disadvantages.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: Seagate Barracuda · 2 TB → Status: CLICKING — head crash, will not spin → Client: confidential · Guildford, Surrey $ bdr engineer-working → Read-write heads: replaced · matched donor → Service area: firmware modules repaired → Imaging: 1.9 TB / 2 TB · 9sectors mapped $ bdr verify → ✓ documents — 18,300 files → ✓ photos — 24,110 files → ✓ drive recovered — data back
If the drive is clicking, grinding or beeping, pull the power straight away. Those signatures mean the heads are touching the platters, and continued spinning drags the sliders over the recording surface, spreading media damage until the tracks are scored past reading. Don’t run recovery utilities, don’t open the drive outside a clean-air environment, and don’t freeze it. Powered down early, a drive images far more completely.
Hard drives fail across four domains — mechanical (a failed head-stack or spindle motor), electronic (PCB and preamplifier faults), firmware (corrupt service-area modules or a broken translator) and logical (file-system, partition-table or $MFT damage). All four are our territory.
Every make and model of hard drive is in scope — current or decades old, internal or external. The brand on the case rarely decides whether your data comes back.
Covering Blue, Black, Red, Purple, Gold and Ultrastar (WD) · Barracuda, IronWolf, Exos, SkyHawk and FireCuda (Seagate) · X300, N300, MG and Canvio (Toshiba) · internal or external · across SATA, SAS and IDE.
Recovery follows a set pipeline — stabilise the mechanics, take a strictly read-only sector image, then rebuild the file system from that image. Where the failure is mechanical, the physical repair leads.
Tell us what happened — clicking, dropped, dead, undetected. We identify the fault and return a written quote, usually within 48 hours.
Failed heads or a seized spindle mean the drive is opened under filtered clean air, where a matched head-stack or motor from a compatible donor is transplanted and aligned. Donor-part work takes 50% up front.
A failed PCB is repaired or swapped with the original ROM/NVRAM adaptives carried over; a firmware fault has its service-area modules — translator, P-list/G-list, SMART — rebuilt until the drive enumerates and reports its true capacity.
The drive is imaged sector by sector on a hardware imager — strictly read-only, with per-head maps and adjustable read timeouts — so the original is never written and weak heads get short passes to lift the most data.
From that image the file-system metadata is parsed and rebuilt — NTFS $MFT, ext inodes, APFS/HFS+ catalogues — and your files extracted, including data pulled from remapped and hard-to-read regions.
Recovered files are checked to open correctly and the folder structure confirmed intact before anything is handed back.
Your data comes back verified on a fresh external drive, or by secure download for jobs up to 75GB.
Any make of hard drive — WD, Seagate, Toshiba and the rest — brought back from a read-only clone, with head, motor and board work handled in-house.
Tell us what happened and we’ll get back to you, usually within a working day.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
A single fixed price to recover one hard drive — after a free diagnostic and a written quote, before any work begins.
A handful of recent recoveries across mechanical, electronic, firmware and logical faults. Identifying details removed; every result verified.
A head-stack failure with the sliders resting on the platters. A matched donor head-stack went in, the service area was rebuilt, and the drive imaged.
An impact-induced head crash. Opened under clean air, fitted with a donor head-stack, and imaged sector by sector.
A PCB failure. The board was repaired, the ROM adaptives migrated across, and the drive imaged end to end.
Corrupt service-area firmware. The affected modules were rebuilt until the drive enumerated, then it was imaged in full.
Liquid had reached the internals. We decontaminated and dried the assembly, replaced corroded parts, and recovered the bulk of the data.
The media was intact beneath a corrupt file system. We imaged read-only, then rebuilt the file-system metadata to recover the files.
Send the drive in for its free diagnostic with a brief fault description; an engineer evaluates it and confirms the exact quote in writing before any work starts.
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.
Need a scoped quote first? Describe the drive and fault on the form and an engineer will assess it and reply with a tailored quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
Because we work at platform and firmware level rather than through consumer brand utilities, the label on the enclosure rarely sets the method: Western Digital (Blue, Black, Red, Gold, Ultrastar), Seagate (Barracuda, IronWolf, Exos and Rescue-bundled drives), Toshiba, Hitachi/HGST, Samsung and legacy Maxtor all get the same discipline — stabilise the mechanics, carry the adaptives across, rebuild the service area, image read-only. Firmware families vary; the imaging-first approach doesn’t.
The technical questions we get most about failed hard drives.
Usually — but power it down now. That clicking or grinding is the head-stack striking the platters, and every rotation spreads media damage. Under clean air we fit a matched donor head-stack, image the drive read-only with per-head timeouts, and reconstruct from the clone.
Often not. A fully dead drive — no spin-up, no seek — has typically lost its PCB or preamp, frequently to a supply transient, while the platters and data sit intact. We repair or replace the board, migrate the ROM adaptives, and image it.
Usually yes, and it’s commonly firmware rather than lost data. A drive that spins but won’t enumerate, or reports the wrong capacity, tends to have corrupt service-area modules or a broken translator. We rebuild those until it identifies correctly, then image and reconstruct.
Yes — head-stack transplants, motor swaps and platter work happen under filtered clean air with matched donors. It’s routine here, not a last resort, and it’s covered by the single recovery fee; donor-part jobs take a 50% deposit.
One drive is a flat £300 + VAT, opening with a free diagnostic and a written quote. Mechanical jobs that need donor parts take a 50% deposit with the balance on success — so most work stays no fix, no fee.
On most jobs, yes. A mechanical recovery takes a 50% deposit and the balance only falls due on success, so an unrecoverable drive never runs up the full fee. Only that donor-parts deposit sits outside no-fix-no-fee.
Every make — Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, Hitachi/HGST, Maxtor and Fujitsu — across SATA, SAS and IDE, internal and external. Working at firmware and platform level means the brand rarely shifts recoverability.
Not on a physically failing one. Recovery software keeps the platters turning and the heads seeking, which turns a repairable mechanical fault into scored platters and permanent loss. If a drive is noisy or won’t enumerate, power it off and let us image it first.
No — it’s a myth that wrecks drives. Thermal cycling brings condensation onto the platters and corrodes the internals. Keep the drive off, dry and still, and get it to us.
Logical recoveries usually finish in two to three working days. Mechanical jobs that need donor sourcing and clean-air work run to three or four, depending on parts and platter condition.
Drop it at our Guildford unit, Monday to Friday 9am to 5:30pm, or post it fully insured. Send the bare drive — not the host laptop or PC — well packed, with your contact details enclosed.
That plan is Seagate’s own bundled recovery cover; if your drive still qualifies, use it first. Where the cover has lapsed or a claim was declined, send the drive to us — we treat in- and out-of-warranty units the same.
Free diagnostic, a flat £300 + VAT per drive, no fix no fee on most jobs, and every make of hard drive recovered in-house. Start your recovery today.