When a hard drive starts clicking or grinding, something inside has physically broken — and each time you power it back on you risk losing more of what can still be read. Our engineers open it up, swap in matched parts from a 10,000-piece store of heads, motors and boards, and recover everything here on site.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/sda → Device: Seagate ST2000DM008 · 2 TB → Status: CLICKING — head stack failure → Client: confidential · Woking, Surrey $ bdr engineer-working → Donor heads matched: from stock · 0 days wait → Head-stack swap: complete → Imaging: 1.79 TB / 1.81 TB $ bdr verify → ✓ wedding_photos — 142,318 files → ✓ tax_records — 4,201 files → ✓ everything else — back home
A click or a grind means the mechanics are in trouble. Every time it powers up, the heads get another go at scraping the platters and destroying data that is perfectly recoverable at this moment. Skip the recovery software, keep it out of the freezer, and stop rebooting it — turn it off and come to us.
The clicking or grinding you hear is a drive tearing itself apart mechanically. These are the failures that turn up here most weeks — and the ones we routinely reverse.
Since 2002 we have brought clicking and grinding drives back from every big name in storage. If your data lives on spinning platters, chances are we can reach it.
Internal or external · 3.5-inch desktop and 2.5-inch laptop · SATA, SAS, IDE/PATA and SCSI · from 40 GB veterans to the newest 24 TB helium drives.
Recovering a clicking or grinding drive is hands-on physical repair. We open the drive, replace whatever is broken, and only after that read your data off — carefully, and in the right order.
Bring the drive in or post it. We establish what has failed and send a written, no-strings quote — normally within 48 hours.
The drive is opened so our engineers can examine the heads, platters and motor and identify exactly what has gone wrong.
Matched heads, motors or boards come straight from our 10,000-piece store — no weeks lost waiting on a donor drive to arrive.
The broken components — most often the head stack — are swapped in with care so the drive can read its platters once more.
The repaired drive is cloned sector by sector onto sound storage, working patiently around anything that is still fragile.
Your files are reconstructed from that clone, checked off against a file listing, and put onto fresh media.
We load your data onto an external drive and post it over, or for anything up to 75GB send it by free download.
With the right heads, motors and boards already sitting on the shelf, most clicking and grinding drives head straight into repair — none of the weeks usually wasted hunting down a donor.
Tell us about your drive and we’ll come back to you, usually within half an hour during the working day.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
No surprise charges and no pressure — a free diagnostic and a written quote come before any work starts.
A few recent clicking and grinding jobs, all done in-house. Identifying details removed, every result checked.
A classic head-stack failure from the knock. A donor head assembly came out of stock, we did the swap on site, and the clone completed on the second pass.
It came down to a seized spindle motor. The platters were moved across to a matched donor base, the heads realigned, and the entire volume came back intact.
The heads had bonded to the platter after a drop. We replaced the head stack from inventory, cloned the drive, and returned every file with time to spare.
Send the device in for its free diagnostic and tell us briefly what happened; an engineer reviews it and confirms your exact quote in writing before anything 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.
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. If it’s urgent, call 01483 901310.
The questions we hear most about clicking and grinding drives.
That noise almost always points to a mechanical failure — usually crashed or worn read/write heads, or a spindle motor starting to seize. The drive keeps resetting itself, which is the repetitive ‘click of death’ you are hearing. It needs opening and repairing, not just plugging into another machine.
No. Every power-up of a drive with failed heads risks scoring the platters and turning a recoverable case into a total loss. Turn it off, leave it alone, and get in touch before anything is lost for good.
Usually, yes. We open the drive on site, replace the failed parts — typically the head stack or the motor — from our own store, then clone the drive and rebuild your files. The drives other firms post away are day-to-day work for us.
The standard fee for a clicking or grinding drive is £300 + VAT. A free written diagnostic comes first, so there are no surprises; most jobs are no fix, no fee, though drives that have been dropped, have scratched platters, or were opened before reaching us carry a parts-and-labour charge.
Once you approve the quote, most clicking-drive jobs are finished inside two working days; the diagnostic itself usually takes under 48 hours. Genuinely urgent cases can often jump the queue — just tell us.
Every major maker. On the mechanical side that means Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung and Toshiba, plus Hitachi, HGST, Fujitsu, Maxtor, Quantum and IBM; on the external and flash side, LaCie, SanDisk, Buffalo, G-Technology, Transcend, Verbatim, ADATA, Iomega, Silicon Power, UnionSine, Intenso and ModusTech — in 3.5-inch desktop, 2.5-inch laptop and external sizes, over SATA, SAS, IDE and SCSI.
Bring it to our Guildford point Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, or post it fully insured. Wrap and seal the drive with your full details tucked inside — name, address, phone number and email — so it can be logged properly. As soon as it reaches us the free diagnostic runs and a written quote follows before any work starts.
Every repair is backed by a 10,000-piece donor store, opens with a free written diagnostic, and on most jobs is no fix, no fee. Begin today.