Our data recovery team see dropped hard drives that have stopped powering up all the time – here’s how they got on with a dropped Toshiba drive.
A customer got in touch with us via the contact form on our website, and received a call straight away from one of our call handlers. He was talked through the data recovery process from start to finish, and afterwards sent the Toshiba hard drive into our data recovery lab for a free diagnosis. All drives that come through our lab receive a free data recovery diagnosis and no-obligation quote. While it is difficult to give an exact cost to complete the data recovery upfront, we will always look at your device for free, and you won’t pay anything unless you agree. If you choose not to accept your no-obligation quote, we’ll send your hard drive back to free of charge. If you choose to go ahead, we will continue with the data recovery process on receipt of payment.
Our data recovery team disassembled the Toshiba hard drive in our class 100 clean room, which creates an environment very similar to that in which hard drives are assembled in. This allows our data recovery engineers to work in optimal conditions and reduce the risk of any contaminants getting into the delicate workings of hard drives. Considering the platters hover a fraction of a millimetre above the spinning platters, you don’t want even a particle of dust to get in between them, as this can cause further damage.
Upon initial inspection, our technicians noticed visible damage to the platters, likely caused by the drop and then powering up of the hard drive. The client informed us initially that he had only powered up the drive for a few seconds, before turning it off after hearing a scratching noise. This is the correct course of advice, as strange hard drive noises are never a good sign; continuing to use a drive that has failed or is about to fail is inadvisable. Our data recovery team found that the drive’s heads had shifted out of place, which when powered up, had caused damage to the platters.
Donor parts were sourced from our library of spares, and the drive was carefully imaged. Due to the damage sustained to the platters, it was not possible to salvage all of the data, but around 80% was recovered. The data was then copied onto a blank hard drive, and returned to the customer via courier, free of charge.
If you have a hard drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, SD card, RAID system, tape drive, or anything that can store data on, and you need data recovering, contact us for a free data recovery diagnosis. Remember, it costs nothing for our data recovery team to inspect your device and get to the bottom of the problem.
