External hard drive recovery · UK-wide, by post · every make, every box
An external hard drive is a hard disk in a box, and when it fails it is nearly always the heads, the drive's own board, its firmware or the USB board in the box that has stopped, with the platters underneath holding everything. It clicks, it beeps, it vanishes from the computer, or the computer offers to format it. Send us the drive, case and all. We look at it free and tell you one fixed figure in writing: £300 + VAT for a single external hard drive, from £500 + VAT for a two-bay or RAID unit, from £1,250 + VAT for larger arrays. On most jobs, if we cannot get your files back, there is no bill. Recovered files come home on a new drive, postage paid, usually after 3–4 days at the bench.
Put it to an engineer and hear what it would take
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What kind of drive is it?
Choose the closest match. You get a likely cause, the band it falls in, and the one thing not to do tonight.
The heads had stuck to the platter on impact, and the owner unplugged it and left it alone, which is why the platters were unmarked. Heads freed and replaced on the clean bench, the drive brought up through its own board so that its encryption key could be used, and imaged head by head over four nights. The photographs since 2014 came back complete.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseThe light had stopped and a supermarket adaptor had not helped. The adaptor was fine and the box's board had a failed regulator; the drive behind it had never powered since and was in perfect health. Board repaired, drive imaged through it, eleven years of a small charity's records back.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseOne of the two Seagates had failed at the heads; the other was fine. Heads replaced on the clean bench and the failed drive imaged head by head, the healthy one end to end. The stripe was reassembled from the two images with the block size read from the LaCie's own metadata, and the volume mounted whole.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseThe drive was hanging the USB bus while it retried bad reads at the start of the disk. Brought up on the bench with its retries controlled and imaged slowly around a damaged band over two nights. Everything except one video came back.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseThe two jobs that ask more of you
Most external drive work ends the same way: the heads or the board are dealt with, the drive is imaged once, and the files go home. Two kinds of job add a step. Western Digital's My Passport, My Book and easystore scramble every sector on their own USB board whether or not you set a password, so the board is the key and the case must never be thrown away. And a two-bay or RAID unit is two or more drives that only mean something together, imaged one by one and rebuilt from the images, never on the originals.
Take the drive out of a My Passport and plug it into anything else and you get noise, not files. The encryption is always on; the password only locks the key. A dead board is repaired so its key survives, or the key material read out and applied while the drive is imaged. A board thrown in the bin is a drive whose data nobody will read. WD keeps the warranty alive after a laboratory recovery confirmed in writing, which we provide as standard.
One drive clicking in a striped pair takes the volume with it until that drive is imaged. A mirror that quietly stopped mirroring, a controller that forgot its configuration, a Drobo whose maker has gone: all of them are sets, and the rule for every one is the same. Power it down, label the bays, and let nothing rebuild. Every member is imaged first and the set reassembled in software from the images.
Tell us the drive, what it sounds like and what the screen says. Back by email come the posting address, the nearest drop-off point, packing notes and a booking sheet to print. The address is not published; it comes by email in reply to the form, and the booking sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened.
Whole, in its case, with its lead and adaptor, wrapped in a box with nothing able to move. Tracked post from anywhere in the UK, or handed in at the nearest of ten drop-off points; say where you are on the form and it comes by email with the posting details. Nobody collects, and we pay the postage home whichever way the job turns out.
A drive that clicks or beeps is not powered again; one that spins is read on our own imaging equipment. An engineer settles what has failed — heads, board, firmware, bridge — and how much can honestly be read back. That stage carries no charge, and you may stop at it owing nothing.
Findings and price arrive together, and nothing chargeable begins until you have agreed to the figure.
What is recovered travels home on a new drive bought in for your job, after 3–4 days at the bench for most single drives. Your case stays open until you have opened the files yourself and confirmed they are right.
A clicking or beeping drive drags failed heads across the platters that hold your files every time it is powered, and a drive that asks to be formatted is one click from losing its index. Unplug it, send the form, and back comes an honest account of how much still reads, with the price of getting it home. That account is free, and so is the parcel returning.