LaCie Rugged · StoreJet · HD710 · Armor A60
A rugged drive is an ordinary 2.5-inch hard disk in a case with a rubber bumper, sold to survive drops that would kill a plain portable. Within limits, it does: a drive parked and switched off will usually shrug off a fall the bumper was designed for. A drive that is spinning when it falls is a different proposition, because the bumper cannot stop the heads inside from slapping the platters, and a rugged drive that clicks after a drop has exactly the injury a plain one would have. LaCie Rugged, Transcend StoreJet M3 and H3, ADATA HD710 and HD650, Silicon Power Armor and Seagate One Touch are the ones we see. One rugged drive is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–4 days at the bench.
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| What is going on | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Clicking after a fall | Failed heads; the bumper protects the case, not the mechanics | Head work on the bench |
| Not showing up after a fall while off | Bridge board or socket knocked loose | Board repair |
| Not readable after a card offload | Damaged file system from a disconnect | Imaged and rebuilt; do not initialise |
| Wet inside | Corrosion on the bridge or the drive's board | Cleaned, repaired, read once |
| Rugged RAID showing one drive or none | One member failed, or the RAID metadata | Both drives imaged; set rebuilt |
A case number goes on it the day the parcel is opened, and an engineer settles what has actually failed before anything else happens. A drive that clicks or beeps is not powered again; one that spins is read on our own imaging equipment, never in a computer that will retry and time out and retry. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.
Every external drive is two things: the drive, and the USB board that talks to it. The board is checked first, because a failed bridge, a snapped socket or a dead regulator is the whole fault on a good share of jobs, and because on WD's encrypted drives the board holds the key. Where the drive itself has stopped, it comes out of its case onto the bench.
Stuck or failed heads are replaced with a matched set from a donor, seized spindles freed, and firmware faults corrected in the drive's service area from the terminal. The drive is not repaired to be used again; it is made to read once, in a single careful pass, and that pass is planned before it begins.
Nothing is worked on live. The whole drive is imaged once, head by head and weak areas last, with reads timed to what the platters can stand, and the file system is put back together on the image. Encrypted volumes are unlocked there too, with the original board's key or the password you supply, and never on the original.
What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.
The bumper was unmarked; the Rosewood drive inside clicked from the first power-on afterwards. On the bench the heads were replaced with a matched set, the terminal unlocked, and the drive imaged head by head with one weak surface last. Every RAW file from the day came back, and the ones from the days before it.
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine caseThe bumper protects the case and, on a switched-off drive, the mechanics. A drive that is spinning when it falls slaps its heads into the platters, and no case stops that. A rugged drive that clicks after a fall has an ordinary head failure.
Neither. The case comes off and the drive inside is an ordinary 2.5-inch drive, usually Seagate, Toshiba or WD, recovered the ordinary way.
One job, two drives. Both are imaged and the set is rebuilt from the images. A two-drive set starts at £500 + VAT.
£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing.
3–4 days at the bench after the free look.
Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive unplugged.