Physical damage · terms first · ADR-2025-3677
Damaged, Turned Down, and Still Holding the Day.
The couple’s wedding pictures were stored on one drive. However, it had been physically damaged. He knew that much. As for the extent of the damage, he didn’t know, and the local repair shop can't help
had been seen in his home as a decision rather than a limit. This is his wife’s drive. He is blaming himself for what occurred to her drive. There wasn’t a backup of the wedding photos along with many
other items that both of them care about. All he wanted was a true evaluation rather than empty assurances. On damaged drives, nothing less than examining the damage through magnification can provide that type of evaluation.
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What failed, and why.
A repair shop that says it cannot assist is providing information about its own bench rather than the hard drive. Shops fix computers. The type of physical damage to a hard drive requires donor parts and imaging hardware which do not belong inside a computer shop. Therefore, what he thought was a verdict was actually a boundary. Damage to a physical device may include several faults; however, these are not the same. Damage due to an impact may damage the heads and leave the platters undamaged. A connector may break and leave the internal mechanism untouched. A board may be damaged while everything behind it remains intact. These each require a unique path and charge. As such, no honest response exists prior to determining the extent of the damage using magnification. This is why drives in this condition are not powered up in the meantime: once the mechanism of a drive is damaged, it will mark the platters. In addition, once a board is damaged within a drive, it will fail further. If the platters have been marked, recovery options narrow to those areas that remain readable. Recovery options are provided clearly at the beginning of recovery instead of being determined at the conclusion. The cost for a single drive is £300 + VAT, a published and fixed price, there is no charge for the assessment, and a deposit is required for labour and parts associated with mechanically opening the drive.
What the bench did with it.
The order of the job →| Equipment used | Its work on this job | The reason for it |
|---|---|---|
| ACE Lab PC-3000 Express | Asked the drive itself to tell us what shape it was in, through its own service port. | This allows access to the manufacturer's service area (where normal ATA commands cannot go) |
| PC-3000 Data Extractor | The areas that contained the photographs were imaged first. | Instead of working around the drive's firmware and controller, it works with the two natively |
| R-Studio Technician | The Mac file system was parsed off the image, then each individual photograph was rendered. | Constructs an array from the images, and reads nearly every file system |
What the bench did with it.
What could honestly be promised, and when
No promises were made until after the damage had been inspected. To keep power draw monitored, and to allow for minimal operation time, the drive was connected to a current-monitored supply. Examination of the damage itself was conducted under magnification, using a stereo microscope. Only at that point could the two values relevant to potential recovery be given: the cost to perform the work involved, and a reasonable expectation of success based upon evaluation. Anybody who names the second value prior to examining the damage on a drive containing important personal photography is simply speculating regarding your photographs.
Opened, once the damage was understood
When the mechanism of the drive is compromised, the drive has to be opened. In this case, it was opened. The heads and platters were examined separately, matched donor components were fitted as necessary, and the drive was subsequently brought up under close observation rather than being allowed to come on-line and find its own way. Platters dictate jobs like this; therefore, they were evaluated first and everything else was dependent upon their results.
Photographs before anything else
The imaging pass was ordered rather than sequential. While the mechanism was at its steadiest, the areas where photographs resided were accessed first, followed by the remaining portions of the volume. On a repaired drive, managing the sequencing in this way can make all the difference between recovering the wedding and recovering most of a file system.
What went home.
Prior to sending out anything, the photographs were individually rendered here in sequence. They were subsequently returned on new media. He had carried this burden as his own responsibility since it occurred, and it is owed directly to him to explain that what ultimately dictated completion of this job was the condition of the platters, and by stopping when he did he preserved them in their best possible state.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Jobs that came to nothing.
Yours doing something similar? Power it down first.
Published prices are fixed. Memory cards and USB sticks are £250 + VAT. Any stand-alone drive is £300 + VAT. Drive configurations containing multiple disks (RAID, NAS or server) start at £500 + VAT. First assessments are always complimentary. Thereafter, data recovery charges are also fixed in advance and in writing, so you'll always know how much you owe before paying any money. Shut it down, get a quote first (by phone or with the form), then send it in or drop it off at our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). On most jobs you only pay if we recover your data.