Cause of loss · a file that has gone
People ring from all over Plymouth about the file. However, the key question is which drive it lived on. When you delete something off a hard drive, the name is deleted from the index and the clusters that held the data are marked as free. The bytes inside those clusters stay in place until another file needs the room. An SSD will not wait. TRIM sets the controller clearing out those cells on its own, normally before you even decide what to do next. Both are covered below.
You will be talking to an engineer
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| The behaviour | What that points to | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Gone, and the Recycle Bin is empty too | Nothing was ever sent to the bin: Shift+Delete, a card, a stick, or a file over the limit | Put nothing more on it |
| Bigger than the bin allows | Windows deleted it right away; it never sat in the bin | The contents are usually still there |
| Missing from a camera card or a USB stick | Cards and sticks have no bin to keep it in, so the entry is removed immediately | Take it out and stop |
| Everything vanished after a sync | Deleting something on another machine has deleted it here too, through OneDrive or similar | Look in that service's own online bin first |
| A folder you open daily, now empty | A deletion, a sync conflict, or a second profile | Power it off before you start hunting |
| It is an SSD, and it has gone | When TRIM gets to the controller, those blocks are cleared out within seconds | Take the power off now |
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.
A computer left running writes to its own disk all day long and doesn't ask permission: thumbnail cache files, browser files, updates quietly unpacking. These writes go wherever there is free space, and that free space now holds your file. That is why the disk is removed for imaging.
If the index has survived, the files come back with their names, dates and folder structure. If it has not, each file has to be identified by its signature bytes (the format-specific marker at the start of each file) and carved from the image.
Counting files on a recovery report proves nothing. All recovered files are opened and examined, and any files you said were important are checked separately.
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.
One keystroke, two completely different clocks: on a hard disk, each byte stays where it was put, often for years, until another file needs the space. Do the same on an SSD (whether a WD Blue or a Seagate BarraCuda) and TRIM will have cleared the cells within minutes. Same action, opposite results. That's why we ask about the drive before the file.
A year's worth of accounts left an office machine near the Barbican in one keystroke, bin included. An image was taken the same day; the index was rebuilt from the image and not the original, and the folder came back intact with all its file names and dates.
This is decided by the medium, not the file. On a hard disk, the contents stay in place until another file needs those sectors, and most of these come back. With TRIM enabled on an SSD, the drive clears out those same blocks by itself, often while your computer is still powered on.
No, not on a hard disk. All it skips is the waiting room. Both routes free the exact same clusters and leave the actual bytes sitting in them. The bin was always meant as a convenience, never a safeguard.
There isn't. Confirm that prompt on a camera card or USB stick and Windows acts immediately, without holding on to anything. Generally the data itself stays in the flash memory, and it is the flash memory that our tools read: chips, not directory entries.
It cleans up after itself. Once the file system has finished with a group of blocks, TRIM passes that on, and the SSD clears them before the next write rather than during it. None of this appears on screen. That's why an SSD gives you minutes where a hard disk gives you weeks.
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.