Devices · the disk that travels in a bag
If you open one up, you will find a hard disk with a small bridge board connecting the hard disk to the USB connector. These bridge boards can be faulty by themselves, and on most models these boards also hold the encryption keys. Taking into consideration how much damage a rucksack may do to a spinning disk on the way across Plymouth, there are potentially two problems here that need to be separated out before starting your recovery.
You will be talking to an engineer
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| What turns up | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| The hard drive is not accessible, and Windows offers to format it before it will open. | A lead was pulled during a write and left the volume RAW, but everything under it remains intact | Ignore that prompt |
| USB device not recognized: Windows does not have an identity for this device | Nothing appears — the bridge or the disk | Try one other lead, then leave it |
| Device Manager identifies it as Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed) | Windows is handed no device identity whatever | The bridge has gone — bench job |
| Data error (cyclic redundancy check): unable to open the hard drive | Failing sectors on the disk behind it | Unplug it and leave it alone |
| Disk Management shows RAW, or Not Initialized | Windows reports the inability to read the partition table, therefore it suggests erasing the entire contents of the drive. | Refuse. Initialising finishes it. |
| Upon attempting to attach the external drive to each available USB port, Windows reports a faulty USB device. | Either the 5V rail within the enclosure has failed or the bridge has failed | Circuit boards fail long before platters ever do |
Whatever is delivered is booked in using a unique reference (case number) on the date it arrives at the bench. The engineer will identify the actual fault at no charge. This gives a straightforward answer on what can be recovered from the drive and what cannot, plus one written quotation. There will be no further activity until you have read and accepted the quotation.
Before addressing anything else, there is one thing we need to know: has the enclosure failed, or has the disk? Many of these devices arrive completely inactive, with LaCie and Iomega two of the worst offenders, and testing reveals that the disk behind the dead board is good.
Nobody switches this capability on; it is always turned on when the drive ships. What we need to figure out is which part does it: the enclosure (housing) or the disk. Most portable drives have their bridges perform that function, so the keys reside on the board and never reach the platters. Once they are lifted off, sectors of data that appeared as noise will once again be organised as folders.
Before any rebuild process, a hardware imager takes a copy of each sector of your disk. All rebuilding is then performed against this copy rather than your original disk. Any recovered data is placed onto new media and sent back to you, with no cost to you for return postage.
Give yourself time to consider it. It costs you nothing. We list all of the files we recover for you before sending out an invoice, and we only ask for payment once you have authorised it. We also buy media specifically for your recovery and send it back to you, with the return postage paid by us. The case stays here on our bench until we have your confirmation that the files open properly on your own machine.
Worth knowing: in 2023 users of SanDisk Extreme portable SSDs (at both 2TB and 4TB) reported having files disappear with no warning whatsoever. This prompted a US class action against Western Digital, and a firmware update issued while it was running settled nothing. If your portable drive is acting strangely, make sure an image of it is taken right now.
The ticking started nine days before the hand-in. A matched donor stack was put into the Passport, and the copy was made at a deliberately slow rate. On the Passport, the encryption keys reside on the bridge board, so that's where they were taken from. All chapters and references came back, with a week left before the deadline.
No. Send everything as is, regardless of what condition the outer case is in. On most portable drives the encryption is done by the USB board rather than the disk itself. Thus, even though the disk may arrive in perfect condition without the outer case, it can only give us ciphertext.
No. All it means is that Windows does not recognise the file structure on the drive; it is telling you nothing about the content of the drive. If you allow Windows to format the drive, you will wipe out the very file structure that we would need to rebuild from.
Disks are not treated kindly in removal vans: hours of vibration, a lot of tossing around, and a big change in temperature at the far end. In many cases an already weakened disk will fail to start spinning after arrival. We see this regularly.
Almost always. It doesn't matter much to us what the casing looks like. Three things do: (1) the condition of the hard disk itself; (2) the condition of the disk's own circuit board; (3) whether or not there is enough remaining function in the bridge chip to give up the keys.
Diagnosis costs nothing. We give you a report listing which files can be read, which cannot, and what is needed to get them off. Do not connect the drive until then.