Cause of loss · files deleted or missing
Callers from around Hull ask about the file. The useful question is which drive it was on. On a hard disk, a delete strikes the name out of the index and marks the clusters free; what is written inside them stays where it is until something else needs that space. An SSD does not wait. TRIM sets the controller clearing those cells for itself, usually while you are still working out what to do. Both are covered below.
An engineer will take the details
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| The symptoms | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| Gone, with nothing left in the Recycle Bin | It never went into the bin at all — a stick, a card, Shift+Delete, or something too big for it | Write nothing else to it |
| Over the bin's size limit | Windows deleted it there and then; it never sat in the bin | The data itself is usually untouched |
| Missing from a memory card or USB stick | Cards and sticks have nowhere to hold it; the entry is freed at once | Pull it out and stop there |
| It all disappeared after a sync | OneDrive or similar has copied down a deletion made on another device | Check the web bin for that service first |
| A folder you use every day, now bare | A deletion, a sync clash, or another profile | Shut it down before hunting for it |
| SSD, and the file has gone | TRIM goes out to the controller, which clears those blocks within seconds | Cut the power at once |
Each item that arrives gets a case number the day it lands. An engineer looks at it and finds the real fault, and that costs you nothing. You are told in plain terms which files can come off the drive and which cannot. A price follows — one figure, written down. No work starts until you have seen it and agreed to it.
A running computer writes to its own disk all day and asks nobody — thumbnails, browser caches, an update quietly unpacking itself. Those writes go wherever there is free room, and that now includes your file. So the disk is lifted out and imaged.
If the index is intact, the names, the dates and the folder structure return along with the data. If it is not, files get carved from the image using the signature bytes that start each format.
A file count on a report proves nothing. Everything recovered is opened and looked at, and whatever you said was important gets checked individually.
You are not billed while you are still thinking. The list of what came off the drive goes to you first, and the invoice waits on your word. Files go home on media bought in for the job, with the postage back on us. We keep the job open until you have opened them on your own machine.
Same keystroke, two clocks entirely: on a hard disk the bytes sit where they were written, sometimes for years, until another file needs that space. Move it to an SSD — a WD Blue, a Seagate BarraCuda — and TRIM has those cells empty inside minutes. One action, two opposite outcomes. That is why we ask about the drive before we ask about the file.
Twelve months of accounts went from an office machine in Hull's Old Town with one keystroke, bin included. The disk was imaged the same day, the index rebuilt from that copy rather than the drive, and the folder came back entire — every filename and date.
The medium decides that, not the file itself. On a hard disk the contents stay put until something else needs the sectors, and most of these jobs come back. An SSD with TRIM switched on clears the same blocks on its own, often while the machine is still running.
Not on a hard disk. It skips the waiting room, that is all. Either route frees the same clusters and leaves the bytes sitting in them. The bin was always a convenience, not protection.
No. Say yes to the prompt on a stick or a card and Windows carries it out there and then, with nothing held back for later. The data itself usually stays in the flash, and that is what our tools read — the chips, not the directory.
The drive tidies itself. When the file system has finished with a set of blocks, TRIM says so, and the SSD wipes them ahead of the next write rather than during it. Nothing about that appears on screen. It is why an SSD gives you minutes rather than weeks.
Leave it switched off. A failing drive has a limited number of starts in it, and each one spends a little more. The free diagnosis will say which files can be read.