One drop, knock or fall can drive the heads down into the platters — and every power-on afterwards risks scoring them deeper. Our engineers open the drive, replace whatever the impact broke from a 10,000-piece parts store, and recover the data here on site.
$ bdr diagnose /dev/sda → Device: Seagate ST1000LM048 · 1 TB · 2.5" → Status: DROPPED — head crash / heads not reading → Client: confidential · Woking, Surrey $ bdr engineer-working → Donor heads matched: from stock · 0 days wait → Head-stack swap: complete → Imaging: 0.81 TB / 1.00 TB (81%) $ bdr verify → ✓ photos — 58,210 files → ✓ university_work — 3,940 files → ✓ everything reachable — recovered
A dropped drive that clicks, grinds or only works now and then has damaged heads — and each spin gives them another go at scratching the platters and destroying data that is perfectly recoverable right now. Leave the recovery software alone, stop retrying it, and switch it off before you call us.
Hard drives are built to microscopic tolerances, so even a short fall can cause real mechanical damage. These are the failures we see — and reverse — most.
Since 2002 we have recovered dropped and damaged drives 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.
The first stage is a physical fix: whatever the fall broke gets replaced, and only then is your data read off — gently, and in the correct order.
Bring the drive in or post it. We assess the damage to heads, platters and motor and send a written quote — normally within 48 hours.
Opened on site, the drive is examined under magnification — heads and platters both — so we can pin down precisely what the fall has broken.
Matched heads, motors or parts come straight from our store — no weeks lost waiting on a donor drive.
The crashed head stack — the usual casualty of a fall — is swapped out with care, together with any other failed parts.
The repaired drive is cloned sector by sector onto sound storage, working patiently around any scratched or fragile areas.
Your files are reconstructed from that clone, checked against a file listing, and put onto fresh media.
Your data comes back on an external drive by insured post, or — for up to 75GB of it — as a free download.
Because the right heads, motors and parts are already sitting in stock, most dropped and damaged drives move straight to repair — skipping the weeks normally spent tracking down a donor drive.
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 dropped and damaged jobs, all done in-house. Identifying details removed, every result checked.
A textbook head crash from the tumble. A donor head stack was matched from stock, the swap done on site, and the clone finished on its second pass.
The impact had taken out both the heads and the motor. We replaced the pair from inventory, realigned the assembly, and recovered the whole volume.
Crashed heads after the tumble. We fitted a matched donor head stack, cloned the drive, and returned nearly every file.
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 dropped and impact-damaged drives.
In all likelihood the impact drove the read/write heads onto the platters and damaged both. What you are hearing is those heads unable to read and resetting on repeat. That is a mechanical fault: the drive has to be opened and the heads swapped — no software will touch it.
No, and nothing matters more here. A dropped drive with damaged heads risks gouging the platters a little more with every spin, and that can turn a recoverable job into a dead loss. Switch it off immediately and do not touch it until we have had it on the bench.
In most cases, yes. On our own bench the crashed heads and any other broken parts are replaced from stock, the drive is then cloned, and your files rebuilt. How bad it is varies from drive to drive, but drops and knocks are bread-and-butter work for us.
No. Access that flickers in and out after a drop is a sign the heads are on their last legs; every further attempt threatens more platter damage, so the more you use it the more you stand to lose. Cut the power and get in touch.
A dropped or damaged hard drive is £300 + VAT as standard, with a free written diagnostic up front and no fix, no fee on the majority of jobs. Really severe damage — scratched platters, say — may warrant a higher critical-recovery quote, and that is always agreed in writing before we begin.
Once you approve the quote, a dropped-drive recovery is usually finished in three to four working days, and the diagnostic on its own normally takes under 48 hours. Genuinely urgent cases can often jump the queue — just tell us.
Every major maker. Among the mechanical brands: Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung and Toshiba, then Hitachi, HGST, Fujitsu, Maxtor, Quantum and IBM; and among external and flash names, 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.
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.