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 is £300 + VAT; a two-bay LaCie 2big, a Rugged RAID or an Iomega StorCenter belongs in the £500 + VAT band and above. Looking costs nothing either way, and the price is settled on paper before a spanner moves. The pattern repeats: a bridge board no longer presenting the disk, a power supply that has quietly given out, a FireWire or USB-C socket that no longer holds, a partition table Windows offers to replace. None of it touches the recording surface. LaCie belongs to Seagate now and the Iomega line ended under EMC and Lenovo, so for most of these there is no maker left to go back to, which is a good part of why they arrive here. Drives come by post from Islington, Camden, Wandsworth, Southwark and Watford.

On most jobs: no data, no bill 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

Iomega and LaCie: what the symptom usually means.

Different fault? Try the finder →

What is going on	The usual reason for it	Where that leaves you
The light comes on and nothing appears on the desktop	A bridge board that has stopped presenting the disk, with the platters untouched behind it	Post it whole, with its power supply
It mounts, then drops off part way through a copy	A power supply that is failing, or a socket that no longer grips the plug	Stop copying and take the power off
A Rugged ticks, then goes quiet	A tired 2.5in disk with heads nearing the end	Leave it switched off now
A 2big shows one amber bay and still mounts	One member is out, and there is no protection left on the rest	Copy what matters off it today
Windows offers to initialise a disk that worked on a Mac	An HFS+ or APFS volume Windows cannot read, so it assumes the disk is empty	Say no, and leave that disk alone
It runs hot and keeps restarting	A failing power brick, which can take the drive's own board with it	Take the power off and keep it off

Packing it and posting it:pack it so that nothing can shift, then insure the parcel at the value of the files on it, not the price of the box, and send it tracked to our intake lab. The journey home is paid at this end. If you would sooner have an engineer go through the packing with you first, ring before you seal it. There is a full account of all of this on theguide to packing and posting.

Four families of drive, and what gives out first.

LaCie d2, 2big and the desktop drivesThe aluminium boxes that sit beside a monitor: a 3.5in disk, a bridge board and an external brick for power, with two disks in a 2big or a Rugged RAID and more again in a 5big. The disks themselves are ordinary; it is the brick and the board that go. Send it whole with its supply, and mark the bay order first where there is more than one disk.

LaCie Rugged and the portablesThe orange-sleeved 2.5in drives that live in a rucksack and give out from being carried rather than from age. USB-C on the recent ones, FireWire on the ones photographers have kept for a decade. A tick and then quiet means the head stack: a matched donor, filtered air, and a read at whatever pace the surface will allow.

Iomega eGo, Prestige and StorCenterThe bus-powered eGo portables, the Prestige desktops, and the StorCenter and Home Media network units with one or two disks in them. Iomega passed to EMC and then to Lenovo, and the range was discontinued, so there is no manufacturer left to send one back to — which is a large part of why they turn up here still holding a decade of somebody's files.

One drive, and why this page existsA film editor posted in a LaCie that powered up, showed a steady orange light and never once appeared in Disk Utility. Every symptom pointed at the drive. Out of its case, on a bench supply with the current watched, the disk read natively: the enclosure was what had failed. The footage was read back from an image of it. That is the shape of most work on this page, and it is why one of these gets copied rather than plugged in again.

From the box arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →

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

A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

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

The case and the disk, told apart

The disk leaves its shell and goes onto a write-blocked port, so that it can answer for itself instead of speaking through a board that has stopped working. That settles what a status light never can: is the fault the enclosure, or the drive? Where the enclosure is to blame the job becomes a straight copy, and the figure comes down accordingly.

Read away from the failed caseCase or disk, decided first

Imaged first, opened only where it must be

A disk that still turns is copied end to end before anything else is asked of it. Where the head stack has given up, the work moves under filtered air: the lid comes off, a donor of the same model and a near production run goes in, and the read then runs at whatever pace the surface allows. Everything after that happens on the copy, never on what you posted.

Donors matched on model and batchEverything runs on the image

The volume put back on the copy

Partition tables, HFS+, APFS, NTFS and exFAT all sit on the disk itself, so the case plays no part in putting any of it back, and on a two-bay unit the stripe or mirror description rides on the members the same way. The volume is raised read-only above the images, and folders are opened here — documents, photographs, project files, video — since a name on a listing is no promise that the file behind it opens.

Read back off the imageFolders opened before they travel

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine 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 gives out far more often than the disk — a bridge board, a power brick, a socket that no longer grips, and one of these will sit lit up with every sector behind it intact. It is the most frequent job we see on this page and also the cheapest, and the free look tells you which sort you have before any number is mentioned.
A Mac-formatted drive is not a blank drive — plug one into Windows and a fresh partition table is offered, because the machine truly cannot read HFS+ or APFS. Declining that offer is the most valuable thing an owner does here. Not a file has left the disk; the computer simply does not speak that dialect.
Some of these bridges encrypt — a number of LaCie and Iomega cases encrypt in hardware, so the disk on its own reads as noise even when the platters are perfect. Send the board with the drive and tell us about any password that was set. Where a hardware key went in the bin with the case, that is the end of it, and you hear so at the free look rather than later.
Put the power supply in the box — these drives run on their own bricks, and a brick going soft gives precisely the picture people read as a failed disk. Sending it along is free and saves us a day. Tell us too what the light was doing, whether the drive ever mounted, and how often it was plugged back in before it came here.

What cannot be done: a platter scored by a worn head has stopped holding what those tracks once held, and no price anywhere restores something that is no longer physically there. Where a disk has been initialised, or a partition rewritten so Windows would accept it, some of what was there is gone — set out for you as a list, before any money changes hands. A case that encrypts in hardware still needs its key, and only you can supply that. Storage is all this bench takes: no phones, no tablets. A single drive is £300 + VAT, a two-disk unit £500 + VAT and above, each set down on paper once the free look is done, and most jobs are not invoiced where the data does not come back.

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 in Westminster kept borehole records, scanned abandonment plans and site photographs on a two-bay DriveStation Duo, the pair configured as one striped volume. Power reached the unit, the fan turned and a code appeared; the network showed nothing and USB showed nothing. Out came both disks, each imaged before it was asked for anything more. One read straight through. The other held a worn band roughly a third of its length in, worked over in short runs across two nights, once everything easy had been secured. Above those images the stripe was reassembled and mounted read-only. Ninety-eight per cent came home, and the report names what did not.

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

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

Take the power off and post it just as it is
Put its own power supply in the box
Say what the status light was doing
Mark the bay order before pulling disks from a 2big

What sets us back

Trying a fifth cable to see whether it catches
Moving the bare disk into another enclosure to test it
Allowing Windows to initialise a disk it cannot read
Running recovery software at a drive that will not mount

Questions answered before you commit.

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

More often than not, no. On both of these brands an ordinary SATA disk sits in a case behind a bridge board, and it is that board or the power supply that gives out first. A light tells you the case has power; it says nothing about whether the disk is being presented to the computer. Leave it unplugged rather than trying a fourth cable, and post it as it stands. Which of the two has failed is settled at the free assessment, before any figure is named.

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

There is no need, and on several models it does more harm than good. Some LaCie cases are bonded rather than screwed together, and a few bridges on both brands encrypt what they write, so the board has to travel with the disk or the volume will not read at all. Send it whole, with the power supply that belongs to it, since a supply going soft gives exactly the symptoms people take for a failed disk. No collection is offered here and there is no public counter, so it travels by post: packed rigid, sent tracked, covered for what the files are worth.

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

No. Decline it, unplug the drive and set it aside. A great many of these were first set up on a Mac, leaving an HFS+ or APFS volume that Windows has no means of reading, so it treats the disk as empty and proposes to prepare one. Nothing has been erased at the moment that box appears. Accepting lays a fresh partition table across the front of the disk, which lengthens the job rather than ending it, so where somebody has already agreed to it, say so and the work is ordered around that.

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

One drive is £300 + VAT. Where there are two disks — a LaCie 2big, a Rugged RAID, an Iomega StorCenter — the band is £500 + VAT and upwards, because a second disk has to be imaged and a volume put back together above the pair. Neither figure is kept back for the telephone; both are published. Looking costs nothing, one fixed price is written down afterwards, and nothing chargeable happens until that price has your agreement. For most jobs, an empty result carries no invoice. Three to four working days is usual for one drive, rather longer with two, and the parcel home is paid at this end.

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.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the drive switched off.

0203 0868633

Get it assessed Sending it to Guildford

Drives, cards and entire machines

Whatever it is doing now

Footage, evidence and reports

What it costs, and what follows