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ADR / The hardware we handle / Portable and desktop externals

Devices · drives that travel about

External hard drive recovery, London. Two devices in one shell, and rarely is it the disk that stopped.

The cost for one drive is £300 + VAT, and the free look settles that figure first. Before either of those, there are two suspects. If the shell were disassembled, it would become apparent that a standard hard disk drive (HDD) has been connected to the USB connector via a small bridge circuit. Bridge circuits also have an inherent failure rate, and most bridges retain the encryption keys within themselves. This means that all components, i.e. the unit itself, its cable and its power supply, need to be received here. On top of this, it has been subject to the rigours of a rucksack and the stresses of a London Underground commute for twelve months. So there are two candidates, and separating them is where the work on a London external drive begins.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs A free look first, then one figure in writing Media posted in from Croydon, Ealing and Camden

Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
0203 0868633

External drive symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Try the finder →
Knocked over, clicking sinceThe head stack is misaligned or the spindle has ceased to turn. In either event, give it no more power.Do not delay
A lit indicator and nothing mountingBridge board, usually. The drive behind it tends to be okay.Everyday job
A format prompt, or a volume gone RAWThe file system crashed, not the files. All of those things it used to reference are probably still there.Everyday job
Out of its shell, the disk reads as nothing at allA number of enclosures pass everything through them encrypted. When you remove the disk, that is all you'll get: just ciphertext.Everyday job
It reads only while the cable is held stillA worn socket, or the bridge going. With each attempt, some wear is added.Everyday job
Packing it and posting it: get a quote first (by phone or with the form), then box it so nothing can move about. Send it tracked and insured to our Guildford intake lab, or drop it off there, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed); the leg home is paid at this end. Want a word first about what goes into the box? Ring us before it is sealed and an engineer will run through it. You will find the lot spelled out on the guide to packing and posting.

Brand by brand, and what tends to go wrong.

Western DigitalMy Passport, My Book and Elements, and the SanDisk portable drives alongside them. No badge comes to us more often than that.
SeagateBackup Plus, Expansion, One Touch: some drawing power from the bus, others from the mains.
LaCie drivesThe d2 and the Rugged, sold under Seagate's ownership to photographers and film units, and known for beeping when a spindle binds.
Toshiba and VerbatimThe Canvio from Toshiba, the Store 'n' Go from Verbatim: different mechanisms under each badge, and each stops in its own way.

What the message about the external drive means.

Describe yours to us →
What is going onThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
The drive won't open, and Windows recommends formatting itThe cable parted during a write, so the volume shows RAW while everything beneath it standsShut it down first, then pull the cable
You receive the error message "USB device not recognized" from Windows, with no devices listedNo response coming from anything on the other side of that socket: either the board or the driveTry one other cable, then stop trying
In Windows you see nothing but "Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)"The unit gives Windows no device identity whateverA bridge that has failed. Bench work now
Data error (cyclic redundancy check) immediately once you go into itThe disk behind the board is failing sectorsTake the power off and keep it off
Disk Management calls it RAW, or Not InitializedIt doesn't have a partition table that Windows will recognise, so Windows wants to completely wipe itDecline it. Initialising is what ends these.
Any time you try using another port you get a "malfunctioning USB device" messageEither the 5V power rail in the case has gone out, or the bridge hasBoards fail a lot sooner than drives

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

As soon as your parcel arrives here, an engineer assigns a case number that same day, prior to determining what has really failed, which is the first thing done and costs you nothing. In addition to a note of what can and cannot be recovered from your drive, you will receive at the same time the fixed, written price for restoring what can be recovered. You can accept this quote, or decline it, which will result in no further obligation on your part and nothing owed to us.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNothing owed at this stage
02

Which half failed

Every one of these starts with the same question: shell or drive? Externals turn up unresponsive here constantly (LaCie and Iomega above all), and the disk behind the stopped board is very often perfectly sound.

Shell or disk, settled firstThe bridge tested by itself
03

Where the encrypting happens

Nobody switched this on: it was doing it when it left the factory. All that is in question is where. On portable drives the encrypting is normally done by the bridge, so the keys land on that little board rather than anywhere near the platters. Lift them off the board and what read as noise becomes your folder tree again.

Keys lifted from your own bridgeUnlocked, never guessed at
04

Imaged, rebuilt, on its way home

Before we attempt anything there will be a sector-by-sector copy made using a hardware imager; everything after that happens to the copy, and your drive is not touched again. Recovered files are sent home on fresh media with the return postage settled at our end. A Bromley surveyor with one set of site photographs and a family archive out of a Hammersmith loft get exactly the same treatment.

Rebuilt from the copy, never the driveNot one byte goes back to your drive
05

You see the file list before you pay

You will see what has been recovered as a list first, after which a bill exists. Accepting the list means that a bill will be issued. Rejecting the list means that a bill will not be issued, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The recovered data travels from here back to you via new media purchased specifically for your project, with the cost of postage paid by us. Your case is not resolved (i.e., "closed") until you personally view the files on a computer of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the jobThe post home is ours

What arrives most often

  • A My Passport encrypts even where nobody set a password: the bridge does it, which makes a bare disk on its own worthless. The key belongs to the board that drive was built with, and therefore the unit needs to arrive undisturbed.
  • Refuse the offer to initialise. When the enclosure does the encrypting, that single click ends a job that would otherwise have been routine.
  • Flash in the shell changes none of this: nothing moves, but a bridge, a controller and firmware are all still present, and any one of those items could cease operation independently. How vulnerable you are doesn't depend upon which item is failing.
  • The connector fails before the mechanism: the solder joints under where your micro-USB or USB-C port resides work loose with use, and when that happens it's very common for the drive behind them to have many years of life left.

Worth knowing: Files began disappearing quietly from SanDisk Extreme portable drives of 2TB and 4TB size during 2023. Class action suits followed in the U.S., and a firmware upgrade released midway through provided limited resolution. A drive from that same family behaving oddly needs to be imaged now, not next month.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3338JOB LOGGED ✓

A Passport that ticked, with nine days to a thesis deadline

A tick began in the Passport with nine days remaining before the deadline. Matched donor heads were installed, and the imaging pass was deliberately run at low speed. Units such as this keep their encryption keys on the bridge board, not on the platters, and therefore it was here that the keys were read. By doing so, the chapters, references and figures were home with a week in hand before the deadline.

100% of the thesis returned72 hours at the bench

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Include everything: the shell, the cable, and any power supplies, whatever the condition may be
  • If the drive begins making a new noise, disconnect the power source immediately
  • Identical? Label both of them prior to sending
  • Do not remove any screws, and get a price quotation first. Once you have received your price quotation, send the entire unit or drop it off at our Guildford intake laboratory, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed)

What sets us back

  • Throwing away the shell after removing the disk
  • Accepting the Windows offer to initialise it
  • Placing the bare disk into a spare caddy
  • Running data recovery software against a failing disk while it is still in its shell

Questions answered before you commit.

The case has broken apart. Should the disk come out?

No. It will travel just as it is, cable and all. Generally on a portable, it is the USB board that performs encryption and not the drive itself, so a functioning disk sent by itself will be nothing but encrypted content to us. Regardless, the shipping form specifically asks for external hard drives to be sent in their own enclosures.

Windows keeps offering to format it. Do I let it?

Absolutely never. This message simply indicates to you that Windows can't read the file system. It gives no information regarding the files contained within this file system. Accepting it will result in overwriting the structures we need to rebuild from when recovering your data.

It stopped the week we moved house. Why then?

Removals involve some kind of physical stress. The unit vibrates around in a van for hours, is physically manipulated at both ends, and finally finds itself at a different temperature. As a result, mechanisms that were marginal anyway often refuse to operate again after going through this process. This is one of the more common things we hear about regarding these units.

The plastic shell is in bits. Is the drive any use?

Almost every time. There are only three factors involved: the drive, the small circuit board mounted to the bottom of the drive, and whether or not the bridge chip has enough health to give up the keys. Whether or not the outside casing is in good shape really isn't important.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

The drive inside the machine → Pen drives and USB sticks → Iomega and LaCie drives → Begin with the symptom →

Nothing gets worse while the power is off.

It doesn't cost you anything for us to look at it. All we do is give you a breakdown of what opened and what did not, plus a single fixed price to complete, written down before you agree to let us continue. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. Please don't turn on the drive until you get that breakdown.

0203 0868633

Get it assessed Sending it to Guildford