If the drive is clicking, beeping or grinding, switch it off now. Those are the sounds of a mechanical fault, and every extra minute of spinning can scrape data off the platters for good.
Before you try anything else
- Do not keep plugging the drive in to see whether it has woken up
- Do not open the casing, because ordinary household dust can wreck a platter
- Do not put it in the freezer, whatever the forum post from 2006 says
- Do not run CHKDSK or any repair utility on a drive that is making noises
- If you deleted or formatted something, stop saving anything to that drive
Two kinds of fault, two kinds of job
Logical faults
The drive spins and is detected, but the files are missing or unreadable. Typical causes are accidental deletion, formatting, a corrupted file system or a virus. The data is still on the platters, so we recover it with software. Quick jobs take up to two hours, and badly corrupted drives can need 24 to 48 hours of work.
Physical faults
Something inside has broken. The read/write heads may have crashed, the motor may have seized, the circuit board (PCB) may have burnt out, or the firmware may be corrupt. Drops and liquid do the same damage faster. These drives are opened in an ISO Class 5 (Class 100) clean room and may need parts from a matching donor drive.
What hard drive recovery costs
| Job | Guide price |
|---|---|
| Initial consultation | Free |
| Logical recovery, up to two hours’ work | £99 + VAT |
| Logical recovery needing 24 to 48 hours of work | £150 + VAT (1TB) to £250 + VAT (4TB) |
| Clean-room diagnostic for a physically failed drive | £79 + VAT (you supply the donor drive) |
| Physical recovery on a single drive | £450 + VAT (labour, plus a donor drive if needed) |
You get a firm quote before we start, and if we cannot recover the data there is no charge. The full list is on our data recovery prices page.
Drives we work on
We recover internal and external hard drives with SATA, PATA (IDE) and USB connections, from Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, HGST, Samsung, Fujitsu, Dell, Lenovo and IBM. There are separate guides for Seagate and Western Digital drives.
We also take drives out of desktop PCs and laptops from Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, Acer, HP, Alienware and Sony VAIO. For more on those jobs, see laptop data recovery or desktop data recovery. Bring it to 68A North End Road in West Kensington, or ask for a free collection from your home or office. Your files stay confidential throughout.
Questions people ask
My external drive is not showing up. Is the data gone?
Not necessarily. Often the USB connection or the circuit board has failed while the platters holding your files are untouched. Stop plugging it in and let us examine it. The initial consultation is free.
Why does a physical recovery cost more than a logical one?
A logical recovery is done with software on a drive that still works. A physical recovery means opening the drive in an ISO Class 5 (Class 100) clean room and sometimes fitting parts from a donor drive, so there is more labour involved.
Do I pay if you cannot get my files back?
No. The initial consultation is free and you get a firm quote before work starts. If the data cannot be recovered, there is no charge for the recovery.
How do I get the drive to you?
Drop it in at North End Road, ask us to collect it free of charge, or post it to us. Wrap a bare drive in an anti-static bag and plenty of padding, because another knock is the last thing it needs.