Repairing a hard drive in the clean room

ISO Accredited Hard Drive Recovery Service

• Free UK collection • Diagnosis within 24 hours • Transparent pricing • No obligation

0800 223 0162
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Recognised as one of the UK's leading hard drive recovery services.

Expert hard disk recovery for physical failures, logical faults, corruption and complex data loss.

Hard disk drives can fail for many reasons, including head crashes, motor seizures, platter damage, data corruption and malware infections. At Data Recovery Specialists, we understand how important your data is, whether you are a major corporation such as EDF Energy or a student with a lost thesis.

We prioritise fast, cost-effective hard drive recovery and have successfully recovered data that other firms had deemed irrecoverable. Our laboratory supports hard drives from leading manufacturers including Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Seagate, IBM and Hitachi, across Windows, Apple Mac and Linux/Unix systems.

Where donor parts are required, our ISO 100 Class clean room provides a controlled environment for complex repairs. PC-3000 hardware, working with UDMA data extractors, helps reduce the amount of read data and the duty cycle of hard drives, placing less stress on the device and reducing recovery time.

We offer a transparent, no-obligation hard drive recovery service. We can collect your HDD at a convenient time, assess the fault, provide a list of recoverable files and issue a no-obligation quote. Once approved, recovered data can often be returned within hours.

1,936 hard drives received for diagnostic evaluation last year

16,192 spares catalogued and stored in our donor parts library

98% success rate for hard drive recovery cases

88% of clients told us they were satisfied with our service

ISO 100 Class clean room for complex hard drive repairs

Recent Hard Drive Recovery Case Studies

Logical Recovery

Drive not recognised by the BIOS

The hard drive was no longer detected due to severe logical corruption. Our engineers repaired the damaged file system and successfully recovered every file without requiring any internal hardware repairs.

Price: £195
Recovered: 100%
Turnaround: 1 Day

Mechanical Recovery

Clicking hard drive with head crash

A failed read/write head and minor platter damage prevented access to the drive. Replacement heads were fitted in our ISO clean room before imaging the media and recovering almost every file.

Price: £595
Recovered: 99%
Turnaround: 3 Days

Mechanical Recovery

Hard drive not spinning

A seized spindle motor prevented the platters from rotating. Our engineers transplanted the platters into a donor assembly inside our clean room, resulting in a complete recovery of customer data.

Price: £495
Recovered: 100%
Turnaround: 3 Days

HDD Data Recovery FAQs

Clicking Noises

Strange clicking sounds coming from your hard drive are normally indicative of a head crash. These noises are caused when the read/write head in the drive reaches the edge of the platter, and hard drive recovery is typically successful as long as the platters are not scratched.

Grinding or Screeching

Grinding and screeching sounds indicate that parts of the hardware – such as the motor or spindle – are failing. Although this results in a time-consuming hard drive recovery process, there is a high chance of saving your precious data with professional data recovery techniques.

Not Recognised by BIOS

While it is difficult to define the cause of your drive not being recognised, it could be due to anything from an issue with power reaching the drive to a blown component on the PCB board to a serious head crash. Make sure your SATA cable is tightly connected, as they can sometimes come loose.

Firmware Issues

The firmware is like the operating system of the hard drive, and without it, the drive wouldn’t even spin. As such, firmware failures can be devastating. Typically, we can simply re-flash the firmware, although we may need to rebuild it from the source code if this fails.

Logical Failure

If the hard drive is recognised by your machine, but you’re unable to perform any read/write tasks, it's likely the file structure is corrupted. In this scenario, the chances of a full hard drive recovery are high, as long as the data hasn’t been overwritten.

"I would definitely recommend them"

"I had an employee who kept two years worth of his work, on his local drive rather than his network drive. When the drive died the user was in a panic! I send the drive to Data Recovery Specialists, who were able to recover all the users data, promptly and at a good price too! I would recommend them to all - 5 Stars!" - Gary Mulvihill

"You guys saved my data"

"Laptop died with everything for my business on, all invoices, contacts, emails, resources and financials. One hard drive recovery 'expert' just said "your hard drive is dead", but everything was recovered by DRS... Also, provided an extremely fast turn around for reasonable price, where other companies were asking for a significantly higher fee just to look at the computer. Literally, you guys saved my company. I can not thank you enough!!!" - Andrew Laundy

"Professional and friendly throughout"

"I am so pleased as data recovery specialists managed to recover all of my thousands of photographs which I stupidly didn't back up. Service was great and fast. The service wasn't cheap, but they kept in touch with me the entire time, and were professional and friendly throughout. And they recovered my data too!" - Claire Whalley

"I would definitely recommend them for hard drive recovery"

"What do you do when faced with a data recovery situation - I just wanted to cry. After an internet search and phoning around several companies, Data Recovery Specialists seemed to be the best solution. Even though it was a Saturday, they dealt with my enquiry and assured me they could help. I sent my hard drive to them and within a day of receipt they had already determined what was recoverable. They quote was reasonable and I am so thankful to Data Recovery Specialists. I would definitely recommend them for hard drive recovery!" - Shaun Weston

"I would definitely use them again"

"Our RAID-5 failed after two hard drives went down with mechanical issues. Data Recovery Specialists were recommended and they immediately responded to our enquiry. On receipt of the RAID hard drives they expedited the data recovery process and 24 hours later we received all the RAID data. We were expecting considerable downtime, so to be up and running again so quickly was definitely a bonus. I would definitely use them again, but I am hoping we don't have any more data recovery issues!" Willmott Dixon

"Surprised how quick it was"

"Thank you for processing our data and copying it to hard drive. We were pleasantly surprised how quick the data recovery was and you kept us informed throughout the process. Data Recovery always raises trepidation, but we found the whole experience quite reassuring. I would not hesitate to recommend Data Recovery Specialists in future." Ministry of Defence

"Fast, effective and professional data recovery"

"I thought we would never get our scans recovered and imported back onto our PACS system, but you came to our rescue. Your RAID data recovery service was fast, effective and professional and the consultants we dealt with were very knowledgeable and helpful. Brilliant data recovery service - thank you!" NHS

"You are real life savers"

"Thank you so much for all your help - Data Recovery Specialists are a real life saver! I do not know what I would have done without the data you recovered from our external hard drive. We would have probably had to re-record all the location shots, which would have been time consuming and very expensive." BBC Wales

"Your service was second-to-none"

"Thank you for solving our stiction issues so promptly from our reel to reel tapes. We were expecting to lose some of the data, so we were extremely happy when you recovered the full survey. Your hard drive data recovery service really was second-to-none! The data you recovered has proved invaluable." Regal Petroleum

"They eased my mind"

"I was so worried when I dropped my laptop. It contained all my work and stupidly, I had not backed up the hard drive! I had heard the hard drive data recovery was expensive but had no option. From my first discussion with Data Recovery Specialists, they really eased my mind and I felt confident they could do the job. And to my surprise, the quote for data recovery was not nearly as much as I had budgeted. Thanks for all your help guys! " Victoria Hall

"They really are life-savers!"

"From the moment I called Data Recovery Specialists to receiving the data, I cannot fault the service. They recovered absolutely everything from my hard drive and at a price I was comfortable with. Data Recovery Specialists really are life-savers! Whilst I hope it doesn't happen to me again, I would certainly call their data recovery team if I need to." Shenda Falvey

Data Recovery Services Limited | Registered Number 04417876 | VAT Number 803 1178 66

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