No noise, no failure — just a laptop growing slower each day and files that increasingly refused to open. That is a drive shedding sectors, and it is a race between reading it and losing it.
A solicitor’s laptop had been slowing for a fortnight. Documents took longer to open, some threw errors and then opened on a second attempt, and Windows had begun freezing during saves. Client files and years of correspondence were on the internal drive.
Mechanically sound — it spun cleanly and made no unusual noise. SMART told the real story: a reallocated-sector count in the hundreds and a pending count that rose measurably between two readings taken an hour apart. The drive was retiring sectors faster than it could keep up with, which is why everything had become slow — each read of a weak sector was being retried many times before succeeding.
A single end-to-end sweep would have been the wrong approach. On a drive shedding sectors, spending hours grinding through the difficult regions early risks the drive failing outright before the easy majority has been captured.
So imaging ran in graduated passes: first at short timeouts with retries disabled, sweeping the whole drive quickly and banking everything that read on the first attempt — roughly 94% within a few hours. Then successive passes over the gaps only, with longer timeouts, reading in both directions and at reduced speed, with the drive powered down between passes to cool.
Client documents were opened in their applications, and the correspondence archive checked against the practice’s own index. Files still unreadable after the final pass were reported by name, which mattered here — a solicitor needs to know precisely which files are missing rather than approximately how many.
About 96% recovered. The drive deteriorated visibly during the work, with the pending count rising across the six days, which is exactly why the good regions were taken first. The practice replaced the drive rather than continuing to use it — a disk that has started retiring sectors does not stop.
On a drive shedding sectors, the order of reading decides the outcome. Sweeping quickly to capture everything that reads on the first attempt secures the bulk before the drive deteriorates further; grinding through the worst regions early risks losing the rest. It is also why running chkdsk or a recovery scan on a slow drive is so damaging — both do precisely the opposite. Single drives from £300 +VAT.
Get the device to us for a free diagnostic and a quick note on what went wrong — an engineer looks it over and puts your exact quote in writing before anything is started.
The route to your data starts with the device reaching us. Box it up securely, tuck your contact details inside, and send it across — after the free diagnostic, we put your exact price in writing before a single step is taken.
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Very possibly. Transfers that stall, files that fail then succeed on a second attempt, and freezes during saves all describe a drive retrying weak sectors many times before they read. Check SMART for reallocated and pending sector counts.
No. Both read the whole drive intensively, which is hours of exactly the stress a failing disk cannot take — and chkdsk writes as it repairs. If the drive is still readable, copy the important files off and stop.
Because a deteriorating drive may not survive a single long sweep. A fast first pass banks everything that reads immediately — usually the large majority — and later passes revisit only the gaps, so the bulk is already secured if the drive worsens.
From £300 plus VAT for a single drive, quoted in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with most jobs no fix, no fee.
Kick off with an instant online quote, or ring us and talk it through first. Either way you’ll know a clear, fixed price before any work starts.