Our in-house engineers’ own practical tips to help you avoid making things worse when your computer freezes up, fails to boot up or your important documents go missing.
Before we even start working on your failed hard drive, the first thing that is likely going to happen is you will turn the failure into an unrecoverable one if you keep powering it on. So, don’t power up that failed drive. Stop using that dead hard drive and get in touch.
A brief guide to the most common types of hard drive failures (clicking, vanishing, dying or dead) and what you should do with them.
Mac recovery software needs to be able to read the APFS container, access any snapshots, and interact with System Integrity Protection (SIP), and on an M-series based Apple Silicon system it often cannot get to the drive at all. Here are the steps to take in order.
This section explains what BitLocker recovery entails; why Windows asks for a key and how long it takes; and, how to find and enter those 48 digits.
The open source RAID operating systems (Linux) used by Buffalo’s LinkStation and TeraStation units are still open despite being presented through a proprietary interface. Why EM mode doesn’t spell disaster and how much a firmware restore will cost you.
Recovery for SSDs splits into two types: a faulty unit that has your data can usually be recovered, however deleted files typically won’t be recoverable if they’re located on an operational drive. Why, and what determines it.
There are four ways hard drives can die: mechanically, electrically, through firmware and logically. What does each look like? How would you know it when you hear/see it? And do you have any chance at recovering them?
A corrupted SD card is typically either a damaged file system or a dying controller, rather than lost photos. What you should attempt to do with caution, and the one response prompt that you absolutely should not accept.
Prices for data recovery services in the UK range from £250 to several thousand pounds. What factors contribute to the variance in price? Which pricing strategies are most suspicious? Typical prices.
Before downloading anything, four simple questions help determine whether your software will work or not.
An honest view of how well Disk Drill works (and when) as seen through the eyes of a recovery lab, in addition to the scenarios where the free version of Disk Drill ends and when no recovery software should be used.
Hardware gets replaced by Apple; they do not recover data, and some of what they do will end up destroying yours. What the Genius Bar can accomplish, and the point at which an outside lab takes over for recovery.
When you reset an encrypted device the key goes away and so does the data; but for non-encrypted devices this is merely marking that particular space as available. Which type of drive you have and what that means for your recovery efforts.
Most free recovery software searches for things free of charge, then asks to charge money to save them. Which recovery tools are actually free, their limitations and the risk that nobody warns you about.
If an external disk does not show up on your computer’s desktop, problems are typically related to cables, bridge boards or partitions and rarely do they occur as a result of the physical failure of the hard drive itself. How to determine which, and how you know you can stop checking.
Hard drive manufacturers Hitachi/HGST contain the Deskstar technology developed by IBM and are currently owned by WD. What this means for donors, helium filled Ultrastar drives and failed heads that are stuck in one position.
Data recovery involves taking an image of a drive first, then working through other issues. What occurs to a drive once it arrives at a lab, why the original is never written to, and ultimately what determines the final outcome.
Forensic recovery: we have to prove nothing changed. Write blockers, hashing, chain of custody, ACPO principles. Explained simply.
Hard drive failure signs: the five SMART attributes that predict a failing hard drive; noises made by your hard disk; when to stop testing.
Reading SSD health: which SMART attributes matter; percentage used and wear levelling meanings; warnings worth acting on.
What to do when RAID fails: rules for every level; changes between levels (RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 & 10); one action ends it all.
Usually deleted files continue to exist until they are overwritten. Order to try things in; why SSDs differ; when software stops helping.
If you have an external hard drive that will connect to your computer (but all the information is missing), there are some actions you can take yourself, and others you should not. When to try something on your own and when it’s time to let a professional do the work.
Iomega external hard drives, eGo, StorCenter and the Zip click of death: what each failure means and when it’s time to have the drive read by a professional.
LaCie makes enclosures not drives; this changes how these fail. The Rugged, d2, 2big and Thunderbolt series, and why the disk is usually okay.
Your Maxtor DiamondMax, OneTouch and Basics external hard drives are now 15 to 25 years old. Why they fail when powered up after being stored for long periods of time; and how to safely retrieve data from them.
A network attached storage device (NAS) is actually just a computer, so “not accessible” has four different definitions. How to tell when you’re talking about your network vs. a share vs. volume vs. array.
“No bootable device” implies that the firmware can’t locate your bootloader; there are four reasons this happens (the order of where your BIOS looks first; your hard drive died or is dead; etc.). How to determine which one you have.
RAID 10 mirrors drives in pairs then stripes them together, which provides both performance & data protection w/o using parity. How many disks RAID 10 can lose, compared to RAID 5. What the process of recovering lost data in RAID 10 entails.
Why do RAID rebuilds fail, and what does “data corrupted after rebuild” really mean? Is an array recoverable if a rebuild has already occurred?
There are four different types of problems with a “dead” hard drive, and only one is going to make you cry. How to tell which problem you’ve got with your drive before spending any money to fix it.
Deleted photos are most often still sitting on the memory card waiting for something else to come along and overwrite them. Where they go when you delete them, why a RAW file carve works so well, and what you should do before you start taking pictures again.
Recovery of Samsung SSDs across the board: 970 & 980 NVMe, SATA EVO and PRO, and T5 and T7 portables, where encryption as default is a game changer.
Predictable failures in SanDisk media: monolithic cards, Extreme portable SSDs and counterfeit stock. What you will be looking at to fix them, and what you should not do first.
A look at Seagate recovery across their line of products: Barracuda, IronWolf, Exos and Expansion. How firmware module faults can cause issues, how SMR complicates things, and what each fault sounds like.
Most drives give you warning signs before they go bad. Signs that indicate “act today”, signs that indicate “act now” and signs that are likely something else entirely.
Toshiba makes the hard drive in many laptops with a label that does not reflect this. Why repairing a laptop is a different job from recovering data from one, and why Canvio units have such unique requirements.
When you repair your USB stick and attempt to restore its data, those actions are mutually exclusive as one writes and the other does not. Broken connectors, format dialogues, monolithic chip designs.
The reason a Western Digital My Passport disk will not read in any other case than inside of its own enclosure, what really is being done by the bridge board on a My Passport and how WD internally and externally stored data is retrieved.
A Data Recovery Agent is an account on Windows that can retrieve encrypted (EFS) files if the original account holder is unable. What it is, why it is there, and what occurs without one.
When we speak about crypto recovery, this is referring to locating the seed phrase or wallet file, not “breaking” the device. What is genuinely recoverable from failed media and what is not.
When a drive is clicking, it is because the heads have lost their ability to position themselves. Each time a head attempts to locate itself, it results in a loss of additional data. What each click rhythm represents, and why it cannot be repaired sitting at a desk.
A CRC error occurs when the drive reads in data that has failed to pass its own checksum. How this happens, why you usually shouldn’t run chkdsk if you get this error, and how we recover your data.
When this NTFS error occurs, the index entry for the file/folder cannot be read, most likely due to bad sectors or improper removal of media. Why running chkdsk will put you at risk versus fixing the problem.
Access denied, parameter incorrect, not formatted: one Windows error with multiple endings pointing in different directions. What not to click on.
chkdsk states that it cannot read part of the NTFS file table. While a few are repairable, hundreds means your drive is failing and chkdsk should never be run again.
Hard drives still win out on cost per terabyte and cold storage; SSDs win out on every type of speed involved. What to use them for and how each will fail you.
RAID 1 data recovery explained: why mirrors fail together, how two degraded copies are merged into one good image, and why rebuilding is a risk.
Why a single disk failure on a RAID 0 array puts the entire stripe in jeopardy of complete loss, how the array is reassembled from read-only images, and what may be recovered.
When you lose data due to either a catastrophic hardware failure or backup failure: emergency server, NAS and RAID data recovery services covering Oxfordshire.
Recovering data on a QNAP NAS: volume mounting failures, member RAID failures, thin pool (thin provisioning) issues and missing snapshots, rebuilt outside of the NAS unit.
What causes signature failures on Samsung 860 EVO SSDs? What do controller failure and corruption of firmware mean, and how is the data read from the V-NAND?
How to know when you should try to DIY, and ways to restore lost files that won’t make things worse.
The easy explanation of more serious recoveries such as array failures, and failing SSDs.
Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsung & SanDisk: the brands we are seeing the most often and what to do when they fail.
It is one thing to read about this; there is no substitute for sending us some info or giving us a call. We will provide you with an honest assessment and a complimentary diagnostic, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.