Devices · spinning disks
Failures occur on four different components of a spinning disk drive: the heads, the spindle motor, the printed circuit board and the firmware. None of the four improve with time, and when you continue to try to access the drive, a surface that could still have been imaged gets scored. Simply turn off the power and leave the drive sitting, wherever in Reading it is. Which of the four has failed is a bench question that costs nothing to answer, and a single drive is £300 + VAT, fixed in writing before any chargeable work.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
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| What you are seeing | What is likely wrong | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Windows will not let you access your drive and wants you to format it first | Windows cannot read the file table, so you will get RAW on your volume. Whatever was on that drive in the first place is still there | Power off. Refuse any format offers |
| Data error (cyclic redundancy check) | One sector failed to verify with its checksum; the surface underneath is usually going | Abandon the copy. Take an image of the full disk instead |
| 0x8007045D: the request failed, I/O device error | The disk is unresponsive and does not reply within the allotted time to requests from your system | Disconnect the power and take down the full model number of the unit |
| Windows detected a hard disk problem | SMART attributes have exceeded their threshold values | Image all of it. No cherry-picking files |
| 0x800701E3: hardware failure on the target device | The disk disconnects from the computer's bus in mid-copy | No further retries. This is bench work |
| SMART Status BAD, Backup and Replace | The drive has already run a self-test and decided it is dead | Don't boot that machine from this drive again |
| 0 GB reported or a model name that makes no sense | The service area cannot be read, so the drive misreports itself | Bench-level firmware work |
A case number is assigned to your device when we receive it. An engineer then finds the real fault (free) before anything else occurs; you will be advised clearly of what will be returned and what will not, along with a single written price. Charges cannot begin until you have read this and accepted.
Nothing gets fixed until there is a copy. Your disk goes onto a hardware imager that will pull at whatever pace the mechanism will take and set the awkward regions aside for one last pass instead of labouring at them. Work doesn't start until that image is safe.
Heads are taken from a donor matched to your hard drive. When a spindle seizes up, it gets freed. If the board itself fails, the ROM chip goes over to the new board.
None of this touches your disk. All of it happens on the image. The file structure is rebuilt within that copy, and before you see an invoice, you will have a listing of what came back.
You look at the file list first and make a decision about what to do. We will never invoice anything until you have said yes, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. All of the information that we recover will be put on new media purchased by us specifically for this job, and our company pays the cost of postage back to you. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.
How often are drives really likely to fail? The only extensive published dataset on this question is Backblaze’s Drive Stats: 1.36% annualised, across approximately 344,000 disks the firm ran through 2025, against 1.55% the previous year. Your own drive in Woodley or Caversham has had no such quiet life: bumped, unplugged during a write, hauled around, and its SMART data never even read. So take 1.36% as your best case.
Two heads had gone, and the drive had been stationary for a few weeks before we received it. Donor heads matched to the model went on, and 96% came back from the first pass of imaging. The ledgers, invoices and years' worth of family photos were checked on screen and sent home.
Typically no. The files you are trying to recover reside on the platters, and clicking does not indicate something wrong with the platters. It indicates that the heads have lost track of the servo pattern they use for positioning. Fit matched heads from a donor drive, take your time copying each surface, and the majority of what a clicking drive holds will normally come off it. With each additional power-up, you reduce the amount of data that can be recovered.
Generally, yes. Tell us what was done and by whom. Dust from ordinary room air settles on platters, and that can move a job beyond the standard terms of our most common services, in which you only pay if we recover your data. The price will be set after an engineer examines the surfaces.
£300 + VAT is what you will be charged for the recovery of one drive. There is no cost to have us assess it, the figure comes in writing, and there are no charges until you decide to go ahead. Logical faults sit at the bottom of the band; donor parts and bench hours push it up. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Yes. Most weeks, IDE, early SATA and SAS drives arrive at our workbench. The one thing that changes over time is the adapter they sit on and the imager that goes behind it.
There is no charge for the look. You then receive a list of the files that opened, those that did not, and a fixed amount to complete the job. Keep it switched off until you have received that in writing.