Hard drive repair · what the word covers
The first question is nearly always the same, and there is a hidden choice in it. Mending the hardware and getting your data off it are different tasks, and only one ends with your files in your hands. The electronics and firmware can genuinely be restored. The heads, motors and platters cannot: they last through one careful read and then have to be retired. We receive disks from Plymouth, Tavistock and Saltash across the Tamar, as well as from Truro, Falmouth and Camborne; wherever the disk comes from, every job ends the same way, with your files on brand new media bought for you.
You will be talking to an engineer
0800 6890668
| What turns up | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Ticking or clicking — can that be mended? | The head stack has gone. Borrowed heads last for one full read, and after that the mechanism is finished | Recovery work, not a repair |
| No sound, no light, nothing | Almost always the board: a blown TVS diode or dead electronics. Genuinely repairable | Mend the board, then image it |
| Reports 0GB, or answers to a different name | The translator or a service-area module has become corrupted. Repairable through firmware | Put the firmware right, then read |
| The USB socket has torn off a portable | Connector and bridge-board work. On WD portables the keys sit in that same bridge chip | Send the whole unit, enclosure included |
| A shop has handed it back 'working' | Ask exactly what was changed. A blank replacement disk does nothing for you | Get that answer before you pay |
| Would a second-hand board be cheaper? | Its ROM holds adaptives specific to one mechanism, so an untouched donor board gives nonsense | Your own ROM has to travel |
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.
There are three quite different causes of a disk stopping: the electronics, the firmware, or the mechanism turning inside. One word covers all three, which is why quotes vary so widely. Our free look will identify whether you have an electronics, firmware or mechanism problem.
Your ROM is moved across to a rebuilt board. Modules in the service area are corrected one at a time. Donor mechanics replace the originals that have failed. Every step serves to create one continuous read of the surfaces from start to finish.
Everything that comes off is checked, listed for you and stored on media bought new for your job. A hard drive is merely a container. If there is still light duty left in it, we will let you know; if the mechanism is done, we will say that instead.
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.
Set down here, and stuck to: the electronics and the firmware can be repaired. Repairs to heads and motors are good for one copy and no more than that. A platter scored through its coating gives back nothing, not on this bench nor on any other, whatever an advertisement states; that has never changed. Disks labelled IBM, Hitachi, HGST and Fujitsu keep coming in from Plymouth, Saltash, Tavistock and Truro. When a company agrees to send your failed drive back fit for use, read the promise next to its fine print and count what is left standing.
The laptop came back from the shop working: a new disk had been fitted, and it was completely empty. The old disk had been given up on, and it sat clicking in a drawer in a Plymouth student flat. It went on the bench for a donor head stack. Within two days the student's essays and photos had been copied to the shop's new disk.
In part. The electronics are genuinely repaired and so is the firmware: a board restored, a service area put right module by module. Anything that turns is a different matter. A donor head is fitted for one reason: to get across the surfaces once. After that the mechanism is finished and does not travel home. Your files do, transferred onto new media.
A repair means the hardware is fixed and the owner walks away with a working unit. A recovery means the data is recovered and the hardware can be discarded. Once a disk has properly failed, only a recovery is an honest answer. This is how a laptop comes back from a shop quickly and quietly without any of your work on it.
Hardly ever, and never by itself. A tiny ROM on the board stores adaptive values measured against your mechanism and no other. Move that chip across to the replacement and the disk will read. Leave it behind and the heads report noise. Moving it is soldering work, and it needs the right bench and the right tools.
Cheap disks are precisely why that comparison collapses. We are not selling you storage. Your payment covers the contents of the disk that stopped, given back to you on hardware that works. Spend the same money keeping a dead mechanism going and you'll be holding a part that nobody can rely on.
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.