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ADR / Media and machines / Iomega and LaCie external drive recovery

Iomega and LaCie · d2, Rugged, eGo, StorCenter

Iomega and LaCie recovery, London. The case gives out far more often than the disk. Post it as it stands, with its power supply.

A single drive costs £300 + VAT; the price of a two-bay LaCie 2big, a Rugged RAID or an Iomega StorCenter is in the £500 + VAT band and beyond. It costs nothing to look and the cost is agreed on paper prior to lifting the first spanner. The pattern repeats: a bridge board does not present the disk, a power supply fails silently, a FireWire or USB-C socket no longer holds a plug, a partition table that Windows wants to replace. None of it ever touches the recording surface. LaCie is owned by Seagate and the Iomega brand ended as part of EMC and Lenovo; therefore, there is usually no manufacturer left to return these items to, which is a major reason that they show up here. While there is no counter in London to drop your item off at, we receive drives by post from Islington, Camden, Wandsworth, Southwark and Watford, or you may bring your item into our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).

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
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Iomega and LaCie: what the symptom usually means.

Different fault? Try the finder →
What is going onThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
The light comes on; however, nothing displays on your desktopA bridge board that has ceased to present the disk, with the platters unscathed behind itRequest a quote first and then post the entire device, including its cable and power supply
It mounts successfully; however, it disconnects during the middle of a copy processEither a failing power supply or a socket that no longer retains the plugStop the copy operation and disconnect the power
A Rugged simply clicks and falls silentOlder 2.5in disks that are about ready to wear their heads outLeave it switched off now
A 2big indicates one amber bay yet it still mountsOne member is dead, and there is no longer any redundancy left on the other membersCopy everything important off it today
Windows will prompt you to initialise a disk that functioned fine with your MacYou have an HFS+ or APFS volume that Windows cannot read; therefore, it believes your disk is blankDo not say yes; do not touch that disk
It constantly overheats and restartsYour power brick is failing and it can take out the drive's own circuit board while doing soTake the power off and keep it off
Packing it and posting it: get a quote first by phone or with the form, then carefully pack it (so nothing inside shifts) and send it tracked and insured to our Guildford intake lab, or drop it off there yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). We will pay for the postage to return it home. If you would like an engineer to go through the packing with you first, ring us before you seal it. For complete details on this please see the guide to packing and posting.

Four families of drive, and what gives out first.

LaCie d2, 2big and the desktop drivesAluminium enclosures adjacent to a computer screen: a 3.5in disk, a bridge board and an external power source for said disk(s), with two disks in a 2big or Rugged RAID configuration and additional disks in a 5big configuration. The individual disks are standard fare; it is merely the brick and board that fail. Request a quote, by phone or with the form, prior to sending us any hardware; if it is just a single disk enclosure, please send the entire enclosure whole along with its cable and power supply; if it is a multi-drive configuration, remove the disks, label each with the number of the bay it came out of, retain the enclosure and send only the bare disks.
LaCie Rugged and the portablesThe orange-sleeved 2.5in drives (USB-C for newer models and FireWire for the older ones photographers have kept for a decade) that reside in rucksacks and die from travel rather than time. A 'tick' followed by silence signifies the head assembly: a matching donor and a read at whatever speed possible based upon how much life remains on the surface.
Iomega eGo, Prestige and StorCenterBus-powered eGo portable units, desktop Prestige units and StorCenter/Home Media network units with either one or two internal disks. Iomega was sold to EMC and later passed to Lenovo and the product lines were subsequently discontinued; therefore, there is no manufacturer available to send any of these products back to, which accounts for why they continue to appear here with somebody's decade-long archives intact.
One drive, and why this page existsA film editor sent in a LaCie that came alive with power, displayed an unwavering orange light and was never listed in Disk Utility. All symptoms indicated the drive. When removed from its housing and placed on a bench supply with current monitored, the native disk read perfectly well; thus, the failure occurred within the enclosure. The footage was successfully recovered from an image of it. This describes the typical workflow encountered on this page and explains why one of these devices gets copied rather than being connected again.

From the box arriving to your files going back.

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

The case and the disk, told apart

The disk is removed from its housing and placed onto a write-blocked port so that it may be interrogated independently of any faulty boards. In this manner, we determine what a status light never can: whether the failure lies with the enclosure or with the drive itself. If the enclosure was faulty, then the task evolves into a simple copy operation and costs associated with recovery decrease accordingly.

Read away from the failed caseCase or disk, decided first
03

Imaged first, opened only where it must be

Any disk that continues to rotate is copied end-to-end before attempting to perform anything else on it. Should the head assembly fail completely, the cover plate is removed, a donor of identical specifications (same model and near-production run) is installed, and data is read off the disk at whatever rate is possible based upon remaining usable surface area. All subsequent operations occur on the copy image, never on the original you sent us.

Donors matched on model and batchEverything runs on the image
04

The volume put back on the copy

All file system information (partition tables, HFS+, APFS, NTFS and exFAT) resides on the disk itself; therefore, removing it from its enclosure has no impact on restoring any of those attributes, and on a two-bay unit the stripe or mirror definition is carried on the members in the same way. The volume is then raised read-only above the image set, and the folders (documents, photos, project files, video) are opened here, since a name on a listing provides little assurance that the file behind it actually opens.

Read back off the imageFolders opened before they travel
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

  • The case itself fails much more frequently than the disk: the bridge board, the power supply (brick) or a connector that has lost its grip, and a drive like this will be sitting lit up with all sectors good. This is our most common job and also the least expensive, and the "free look" will tell you what type of failure you are experiencing prior to getting any price quoted.
  • A Mac-formatted disk is not a blank disk: it's just that it wasn't formatted for Windows. Plug one into Windows and a new partition table will be offered, because the machine truly cannot read HFS+ or APFS. Declining that choice is the most valuable thing an owner can do here. Not one file has left the disk yet; the computer simply does not speak that dialect.
  • Some of these bridges encrypt: a number of LaCie and Iomega enclosures encrypt the information written to them in hardware. Therefore, a disk on its own, with no problems whatsoever, is unreadable in terms of information when connected to a reader. Get a quote first, by phone or with the form, then send the drive whole, in its enclosure with its cable and power supply, so the board travels with it, and tell us about any password that was set, because the fact that you have a password set is important. If a hardware key was used and it has been disposed of along with the case, you won't be able to retrieve any information from that particular disk, and you will hear so at the free look rather than later.
  • Include the power supply when sending your drive. These drives require their own bricks to function, therefore a faulty brick provides an identical scenario to what people believe to be a malfunctioning disk. Sending the supply costs nothing and saves us a full working day. Include the cable when you send it as well. Please let us know what your light was displaying, whether or not the drive ever mounted and how frequently it was plugged back in before arriving here.

What cannot be done: a disk that has been damaged by a worn head will no longer retain the original data stored on those specific tracks. In other words, no amount of money will restore what is no longer physically present. Once a disk has been initialised or had a partition rewritten for compatibility with Windows, some of the data contained within is lost, and that is set out for you as a list before any money changes hands. An encrypted case requires its own key, which only you can provide. Storage is all we do at this bench: no phones or tablets. Each individual drive is £300 + VAT, while each multi-drive unit starts at £500 + VAT. We'll put each on paper once we've completed your complimentary examination, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3384JOB LOGGED ✓

A DriveStation Duo that would no longer present its volume

A ground-stability consultant working out of Westminster kept bore logs, scanned abandonment plans and site photographs on a two-bay DriveStation Duo, configured as a single striped volume. Power got to the device, the fan spun and a code appeared. There were no resources available when looking at the network or when using USB. Both disks were pulled out and imaged prior to asking them about anything else. Disk one finished processing normally. Disk two had a worn-out area roughly one-third of the way in, and this section was worked over in short runs during two consecutive nights, after all items that were easily recoverable were secured. Above those images the striped volume was then reassembled and mounted read-only. Ninety-eight per cent of the information was able to come home, and the report outlines exactly what didn't make it.

98% of them recoveredThe pair of disks imaged before any other step

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Turn off the power and obtain a quote prior to posting it just as it is
  • Pack its own cable and power supply in the box
  • Please describe what the LED indicator was showing
  • Before removing any of the disks from your 2big enclosure, mark each one with a label indicating the correct bay order

What sets us back

  • Trying a fifth different cable to determine if it becomes operational
  • Removing the bare disk from the original enclosure and inserting it into a second enclosure to check operation
  • Allowing Windows to initialise a drive it is unable to read
  • Attempting to run recovery software against a drive that will not mount

Questions answered before you commit.

The light is on and nothing mounts. Has the disk failed?

Mostly, no. On both brands an ordinary SATA disk sits in a case behind a bridge board, and most of the time it is the bridge board or the power supply that fails first. A light indicates whether or not your case receives power. However, it does not indicate whether or not your disk is being properly recognised by your computer. Prior to receiving any quote from us, leave it disconnected instead of testing it with a fourth cable. Obtain a quote first via phone call or through our web site form. Then post it to us just as it stands, in its enclosure with its cable and power supply, or drop it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). You'll find out during the complimentary evaluation which item failed prior to any price being quoted to you.

Should I take the drive out of its case before sending it?

You don't need to do so, and on several models it actually makes things worse rather than better. There are a number of LaCie models where parts of these cases are glued as opposed to attached via screws. Furthermore, a few of the bridges on both brands use encryption, such that the drive cannot read the volume unless the bridge accompanies it. First, get a quote by calling us or completing our quote form. Next, send everything to us in one package, complete with its cable and the power supply that belongs to it. A power supply going bad causes exactly the symptoms people identify as a dead disk. No pickup service is provided and we have no retail location open to walk-in customers in London; however, you can pack it securely and post it tracked and insured. Alternatively, you can drop it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).

Windows wants to initialise it. Does that mean it is blank?

No. Decline it, unplug the drive and set it aside until further notice. Many of these units were originally installed on a Macintosh and contain an HFS+ or APFS volume that Windows is unable to recognise. Thus, when you connect one to Windows it will treat the entire disk as empty and propose to create a new volume. At this point nothing has been deleted from your disk. When you agree to this you install a new partition table over the front portion of your disk, which essentially extends the duration of the recovery process rather than ending it. So, should someone have previously accepted this proposal, please inform us and we will plan the work around that.

What is the price, and how soon are the files back?

A single drive is priced as follows: £300 + VAT. When there are two drives (e.g. a LaCie 2big, a Rugged RAID, an Iomega StorCenter) pricing starts at £500 + VAT, because a second drive will need to have its image made and then a volume will need to be rebuilt for both. We hold neither of these prices back for phone calls; we publish them both. Looking at your drive costs you nothing, one fixed price is written down afterwards, and no chargeable activity takes place until we receive your approval of that price. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Recovery from a single drive typically takes three to four working days, and recovery from two drives typically takes longer. The cost to send the recovered data back to you via a parcel service is paid by us.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Drives on USB or Thunderbolt → Nothing detects the disk → The noises it is making → Every device we take →

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