Western Digital data recovery in London

Tell us the model and what happened to it, and Kensington Computer Repairs will give you a quick quote by phone or email. Once the drive is on our bench we diagnose it properly and confirm a firm price. If the data cannot be recovered, there is no charge.

If your WD drive is clicking, buzzing or no longer recognised, unplug it. Do not keep reconnecting it, do not run repair or recovery software on it, and do not open the casing. Each attempt risks more damage to the surface that holds your files.

How we inspect a Western Digital drive

Internal or external, every hard drive goes through the same sequence before we try to read a single file from it.

1. Visual and electrical inspectionWe look for impact marks, burnt components and signs of liquid, then test the circuit board and the power it delivers.
2. Firmware checksFirmware is the drive’s own operating code. We check it for corruption and repair or update it where needed.
3. Magnetic media analysisWe assess the platters and the read/write heads to see how much of the surface can be read safely.
4. RepairAny faulty component we find is replaced with a comparable new part, so the drive runs for long enough to be read.
5. ExtractionThe data is copied off the repaired drive, checked and transferred to return media.

The repairs behind a recovery

Most of our work is on mechanical hard disks, where getting the data out usually means getting the drive working again first. Depending on what has failed, that can involve any of these jobs.

• Swapping, repairing and reprogramming damaged circuit boards, including the My Passport type with the USB socket built onto the board
• Replacing and testing ROM chips
• Replacing the read/write head stack, the usual cure for a drive that clicks or buzzes
• Moving the platters into a new drive assembly when the spindle motor has seized, a fiddly job that needs specialist tools
• Imaging the repaired drive with hardware that builds head maps and works around bad sectors and read errors

Head replacement is the repair we carry out most often, and it depends on sourcing parts that match the original exactly. Any job that means opening a drive is done in our ISO Class 5 (Class 100) clean room. There is more about the method on our hard drive data recovery page.

External drives: My Passport, My Book and Elements

External drives are small, portable and in constant use, which leaves them open to drops, knocks, spilt drinks and component or electrical failure. The classic symptom is a drive the computer no longer recognises, often with a buzzing or clicking sound to go with it.

We can often pin down the fault on an external drive quickly. From there we replace the failed parts, extract the data, test it and copy it to a brand new drive, which goes back to your home or office securely.

WD solid state drives, including the ones fitted inside laptops and notebooks, are a different job. They have no moving parts and tend to fail in the controller or firmware. We recover those as well: see SSD data recovery.

Data loss we deal with

• Drive formatted by mistake
• Drive that has become inaccessible
• Knocking or clicking sounds
• Misaligned read/write heads
• Motor and spindle faults
• Contaminated or damaged platter surfaces
• Boot sector and partition problems
• Corrupted system files
• Drive not detected in the BIOS
• Liquid damage from spills
• Corrupted file allocation table
• Component failure and mechanical faults

How your data is returned

Recovered data is checked by hand by one of our technicians. Once it has been validated we email you a file list, so you can see exactly what we have before you accept it.

When you are happy with the list, we transfer everything to an external hard drive or equivalent storage, ready for you to collect or for delivery to your home or business. We keep a copy of your recovered data for up to 14 days in case there is a problem with what was returned. After that, every copy we hold is securely destroyed.

Collection and return are free. Kensington Computer Repairs follows the General Data Protection Regulation and is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, and everything on your drive is treated as confidential.

Guide prices

The first conversation costs nothing, and the price we quote is the price you pay. See the full data recovery price list for RAID and NAS jobs.

Western Digital drives we recover data from

From a My Passport that lives in a laptop bag to a four-bay My Cloud in the office cupboard, these are the WD ranges we work on. Drop-offs are welcome at 68A North End Road in West Kensington if you would rather hand yours over in person.

Portable drives

• My Passport for Mac
• My Passport Ultra
• My Passport Wireless SSD
• WD Elements SE
• My Passport Game Storage
• My Passport X
• My Passport Wireless Pro
• My Passport
• WD Elements Portable
• My Passport SSD

Desktop external drives

• My Book
• WD Elements Desktop
• My Book Duo
• My Book Pro

My Book Duo and My Book Pro units hold two drives working as a RAID. If one fails, keep both drives together, in order, and leave the rebuild to us. Our RAID data recovery page explains why.

Internal hard drives

• WD Black Performance Desktop
• WD Black Performance Mobile
• WD Blue PC Desktop Hard Drive
• WD Blue PC Mobile Hard Drive

Business, surveillance and NAS drives

• WD Gold Enterprise-Class
• WD Purple Surveillance
• WD Red NAS Hard Drive
• WD Red Pro NAS Hard Drive

Internal SSDs

• WD Black NVMe SSD (2018)
• WD Black PCIe SSD (2017)
• WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD
• WD Green PC SSD

My Cloud NAS

• My Cloud Pro Series PR2100
• My Cloud Pro Series PR4100
• My Cloud Expert Series EX2 Ultra
• My Cloud Expert Series EX4100

The My Cloud Pro and Expert Series are multi-bay network drives. We recover and repair NAS units and rebuild RAID servers, and our NAS data recovery guide covers what to do, and what to avoid, when one goes down.

My Cloud personal storage

• My Cloud
• My Cloud Home
• My Cloud Mirror

Full list of WD models