Most external drives have a standard internal drive attached to a very small circuit board called a bridge board. The bridge board has a failure rate equal to or greater than the internal drive. Therefore it’s not uncommon for the internal drives of many failed external drives to be working fine, which means if you pull the internal drive from your failed external drive, the chances are high you’ll only make matters worse. Before we even discuss other methods, check our guide to external hard drive repair for information on what you can safely attempt and when you should stop.
On most modern WD My Passport and My Book units the encryption key lives on the USB bridge board so a bare disk removed from its case reads as unformatted even when it is perfectly healthy; letting Windows initialise it at that point will cause real damage to a drive that was fine.
That is the single most useful thing you need to know about external drives, and why so many arrive here recoverable.
It’s worth trying these checks before jumping into anything else, since they are essentially free and will rule out the most common issues that people experience.
First try swapping the cable (USB cables can fail internally without showing any physical signs of failure) and also swap ports (ideally use one right on your machine versus a hub) since a bus powered 2.5” drive may literally fail to spin due to insufficient power being delivered by the hub. If you have a desktop model that uses a separate power brick (as opposed to using USB), then substitute this if possible. Finally, try a completely different computer, which takes about a minute and will allow you to determine whether the issue lies with either the drive or the machine.
Check to see if the drive spins silently and never appears on your computer. If so then you can look towards the bridge; in all likelihood your disk is good. If it clicks, ticks or grinds, the problem is mechanical: unplug it and stop there.
The disk itself is typically just a common drive; it’s the housing around the disk which will be different.
This includes the encrypted bridge models, where the drive must be sent in its own original enclosure.
Both portable and desktop units. This also includes units with built-in encryption.
Individual drives and multiple bay RAID enclosures. In addition, we handle proprietary controller layouts within these enclosures.
Including legacy Iomega products which no longer receive brand-level technical assistance.
When two (or more) drives in the multi-disk enclosure form an array, these are charged at the rate of an array failure, not as a single disk.
Any single-enclosure drive will be quoted at the same price regardless of what has failed within it.
The cost to recover a single external drive starts at £300 +VAT, once a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic has been completed and a written quotation has been supplied. The prices for multi-bay and/or RAID-based enclosure solutions begin at £500 +VAT. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data; however, all donor-part recoveries require a 50% deposit, and the final payment will only be taken upon successful completion.
Please send us the complete unit, with both the enclosure and the original cables and power supplies (if you still have them). For full details please see: LaCie Rugged Recovery: I/O Device Error, a My Book Duo mirror that wouldn’t open and why a My Passport is useless on its own.
Send the drive in for a free diagnostic with a quick summary of what went wrong so that our engineers can take a look at it and confirm your exact quote in writing prior to beginning work on it.
Get a quote from us via phone or the form prior to posting/dropping off your item. To begin the process of retrieving your data, you must send us the entire unit, including the case. So be sure to pack it securely, include your name/contact information and after we have done a free diagnostic we will provide you with a written confirmation of your exact quote prior to doing anything else.
Posting it? We would suggest using a tracked and insured delivery method. Want to drop it off? That’s okay too. Monday to Friday, from 9am to 5:30pm is good; no appointment necessary: simply prepare the item as described above.
Do you want a quoted price prior to having one of our engineers evaluate it? Fill out the description of the drive and issue/problem on this page and one of our engineers will review your request and respond with a customised/quoted price.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 01865 593000.
Most common technical questions regarding failed external hard drives.
Often not. The USB bridge board fails at least as often as does the disk; a drive that spins quietly but never appears suggests there is a faulty bridge with a healthy disk behind it. Try a different cable and port first; it’s cost free.
No, especially with WD. Most modern My Passport and My Book units have their encryption keys located on the bridge board so even if the disk is healthy it reads as an unformatted disk when connected bare, and initialising it then does real damage. Please send the unit complete.
Turn it off and leave it off. Clicking means the heads are failing or contacting the platter, and any further power-on will cause more damage. No cable change or software can help this problem.
No. That prompt indicates that Windows can’t read either the partition or the file system on the device; it doesn’t indicate the loss of your data. In fact, formatting will write a brand-new structure for a file system on top of the structure that a recovery program would need to use.
Yes. These devices have two or more drives in a disk array; therefore, each member can be physically imaged to determine the layout of the device instead of using information provided by the controller. The cost of these products will start at £500 (plus VAT), as they are priced as array work.
A single bay external product will range in price starting at £300 (plus VAT). Multi-bay and RAID capable external storage units will begin with pricing at a higher level (£500 plus VAT); however, prices for each product will be clearly defined within a written quotation that is developed after our complimentary 48-hour diagnostic period.
We offer a complimentary diagnostic on all data recovery projects. Our pricing model is based on a “per drive” basis where we charge a one-time fee of £300 (plus VAT). All types of external hard drives are accepted regardless of manufacturer, type (portable/desktop), including the outer enclosure, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.