Devices · hard disk drives
Any of 4 components can be found to have failed with your drive: the heads, spindle motor, board & firmware. All of the above cannot repair themselves once a PC continues to attempt to use the drive; and it is the continuous attempts by the PC that damage the drive to the point where it is no longer readable. Unplug the power from the drive. Leave it unplugged wherever it may sit in Hull. Allow a workbench to determine which component(s) failed.
An engineer will take the details
0800 6890668
| What you see | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| The disk in drive X: is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? | There was no usable file table. So, the volume came up as "RAW". The data that was placed on it remains. | Shut it down immediately. Do not let it format! |
| Data error (cyclic redundancy check) | When a sector's checksum doesn't match upon reading, that indicates the surface of the disk is probably going. | Stop making a copy of it right now. Make an image of the entire disk instead. |
| 0x8007045D — the request failed with an I/O device error | Drive will stop taking commands before a time-out occurs | Turn it off. Get the exact model number. |
| Windows detected a hard disk problem | At least one SMART attribute has exceeded its threshold (limit) | Image it all. Don't pull files off it. |
| 0x800701E3 — a fatal device hardware error | Disk dropped from the bus while in the middle of copying data. | No more retries. It needs to go onto a bench. |
| SMART Status BAD, Backup and Replace | The drive already tested itself. It's done. | Do not use the machine with this disk installed again. |
| Shows capacity as 0 GB, or shows nonsense when trying to get the model name. | Service area unreadable. Drive will give false information about itself. | Firmware repair needed in the lab. |
Every piece of gear that shows up receives a case number on the very same day it arrives. An engineer examines it and determines what is really wrong with it and there is no charge for this. We give you straight language about which files we will be able to copy from the disk and which ones we won't be able to. Then we provide you with a single price quote, in writing, based upon these findings. We don't begin working on anything until you agree to the quoted price.
No repair is done on a disk without having made a complete copy of it first. The disk is sent to a hardware imager, which uses whatever speed your drive will allow and puts the difficult to recover areas off until last, instead of attempting to grind through them. After that image is safely stored, we can finally proceed with any other repairs.
We take heads off a donor disk identical to yours. We free a stuck spindle. We remove a burned circuit board and obtain the ROM chip from that to place into the new one.
Everything above is done on your disk image. Your file system will be restored there. Prior to receiving your invoice, you will receive the list of recoverable items from your disk image.
You will not be charged while you think about this. First, you receive a list of everything that was recovered from the drive. Once you have seen the list and given us the go-ahead, the bill comes next. Files are returned to you on media purchased specifically for this job and we cover the return postage as well. Your job is kept open by us until you can view them on your personal computer.
Chances of having a drive fail this year? The one big publicly available dataset is Backblaze's "Drive Stats", which include a 1.36% annualised failure rate for the 344,000-plus drives they ran themselves in 2025. The previous year's failure rate was 1.55%. A desk based drive in Hull is not in that fleet: it will be knocked, unplugged and taken around, and its SMART data may never even have been read. Take the 1.36% figure as a minimum.
The disk had not spun for weeks and two of the heads were dead. A matching donor stack was fitted. Upon completion of the first imaging pass, 96% of the disk had been recovered, and the books, the invoices and a lot of family photographs were checked and returned.
Typically, no. If you hear a click from the heads when trying to access data on a disk with mechanical failure, this is simply a sign that the heads have lost track of the servo patterns that they use for navigation. This does not necessarily indicate whether or not there has been damage to the physical disks (the ones in which your files are stored). When we replace the head assembly on a disk and slowly run the heads back over its surface, most clicking disks give up all but a small portion of their files. Each time you turn the disk back on before recovery, the amount of data that can be recovered typically decreases.
Generally yes. Please tell us everything that was done to the drive, and who did it. Ordinary household air contains dust particles, and dust already settled on a disk platter can put a job outside our standard terms of service, where in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. So we do not start working on any pricing until an engineer has visually inspected each and every surface.
There is no cost associated with diagnosing the fault. Once diagnosed, we give you a fixed quote in writing for the amount of work needed to recover your data. No further work begins until you agree to proceed. At the low end of the scale there are logical faults and at the high end of the scale there are the costs of replacing donor parts and labour. Generally speaking, recovering a single drive costs £300 + VAT.
Yes. In general, we see IDE/early SATA/SAS drives coming into our lab regularly. We determine which adapter and which imager we need based upon age alone.
Leave it off. There are only a few start attempts left in your failing drive and each attempt uses up a little more of what remains. Our complimentary diagnosis will determine what files are readable.