Almost every different choice (lab) vs. (software) ultimately boils down to this decision: work on a copy, rather than an original. All other decisions are made subsequent to this.
A failing drive may only allow for one full read. Making use of that first successful read to create a copy ensures that every additional read thereafter is cost-free, repeatable and risk-free.
A diagnosis must first identify the type of failure: mechanical (clicks), electrical (spins and no read), firmware, or logical. This identifies what will need to be replaced and how much time it will take. Thus, the purpose of a diagnostic is not just a formality. For example, a drive which makes clicking sounds requires head replacement using donor parts; a silent spinning drive which cannot be detected typically requires work on the circuit boards/firmware; and a mounting drive which can mount but does not recognise a partition does not require either.
A free diagnostic is offered and takes up to 48 hours. A written quote will be produced in this stage. This is also where we can tell people that the answer is no: crypto erasure of a phone, trimming an SSD or encrypting a volume with no key.
This objective is never a working drive. It is always going to be a drive that holds long enough for copies. If the heads fail, we replace them with a matched donor set. If a board fails we either fix or swap it with original ROM adaptives carried across. Corrupt firmware modules in the service area are fixed until the drive enumerates at its true capacity.
Nothing done here constitutes a “repair” in the ordinary sense. The drive is not expected to work afterwards and usually won’t.
The drive is cloned sector by sector on a hardware imager designed for faulty media: timeouts are adjustable, per-head maps exist, we have the ability to retry weak spots on short passes while skipping dead sectors rather than freezing. It is read only so the original is never changed.
When no part of a sector can be read then we log those areas (instead of using a guess) therefore providing you with an exact outline of where there are gaps instead of having that appear much later as a file opening to a blank page.
The FS is rebuilt from an image of the file system (i.e. NTFS MFT, APFS containers & checkpoints, ext inode trees, or even a virtual RAID constructed from multiple images). If the structural elements have failed to recover we will carve out files based upon signature which will return content but no names or folder hierarchy.
Verification: we’ll open files to verify their integrity, check the hierarchical folder structure against the customer’s expectations and report any files by name where they were lost within an unreadable area. The recovered data is written to new media. Pricing starts at £250 +VAT for cards and sticks and £300 +VAT per disk before work commences. All prices are provided in writing prior to the process being initiated.
The procedure of obtaining information from an item that was broken or damaged, while allowing the equipment sufficient time to create a duplicate (clone) and thereafter recreate those files from that clone, with the fundamental tenet being that the original is read once but not rewritten.
Five stages: diagnose what went wrong, repair the unit no further than required for imaging, clone the unit read-only on hardware designed for failing media, rebuild your file system from that image, and verify the success of the above steps by checking the contents of files instead of simply verifying their presence.
There may be only one complete read remaining from a failing unit. Using that single read to create a clone provides the ability to repeatedly use that same clone for future attempts without worrying about damaging the original. Software works on the original, which is fine until it no longer is.
No, and that’s also not our objective. Repairs will be limited to making a copy of the data. A drive that has been fitted with donor heads cannot be expected to continue working and typically does not. What you receive is your data on brand-new storage media.
Prices start from £250 + VAT for memory cards & USB sticks; £300 + VAT for individual drives; and £500 + VAT for RAID, NAS & server recovery, which is fixed in a formal written quote after a no-cost 48-hour diagnostic. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.