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ADR / Media and machines / Maxtor hard drive recovery

Specialist · Maxtor disks, long out of production

Maxtor data recovery, London. An old mechanism still holding somebody's only copy. Leave it off until an engineer has looked.

Recovery pricing is £300 + VAT per disk. The "look", our review of the data contained on your disk, costs you nothing, and pricing information will be sent to you on paper before any chargeable work is done. Maxtor was acquired by Seagate in 2006 and ceased to be a manufacturer. Therefore, Maxtor devices coming into our lab are likely to be older mechanisms, including DiamondMax or MaXLine drives taken out of desktops and OneTouch, Basics or Personal Storage external units that have spent years in a cupboard between uses. There are two factors related to the age of the device. First, lubricants and bearings do not improve with time in storage and therefore the first time a Maxtor device is powered up after sitting idle for an extended period is likely to be the greatest risk factor for failure. Second, as all Maxtor manufacturing ended many years ago, new heads or boards cannot be purchased. This means that we must find a donor disk with a compatible head stack or board among the drives that already exist. Both factors lead us to recommend imaging the surface once, slowly and carefully, rather than repeatedly. Maxtors arrive at our facility from various locations throughout London, including Bromley, Croydon, Camden, Richmond and Hackney.

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

Maxtor: what the symptom usually means.

Different fault? Try the finder →
What is going onThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
Now completely motionlessA spindle standing still for years, or heads resting on a surface: typical behaviour for a cupboard driveDon't keep turning it on; get a quote first, then post it
Clicks approximately every few seconds, then quietThe head stack has failed; on a discontinued range, this also means finding a donorDisconnect the power source; get a quote first, then post it
The BIOS recognises the drive but Windows presents an initialisation optionFile system corruption rather than hard-disk failure; your files reside under the corrupted file systemNever accept that prompt
An external OneTouch fails to mountMore commonly than not, the bridge board or its supply has failed whilst the underlying disk remains perfectGet a quote first, then send us the whole case complete with its cable and adaptor
It incorrectly reports the disk size or provides no model nameFirmware: an old Maxtor's translator module or one of its service area modulesFirmware work, not a surface error
Copies for a period of time and then loses contact with the busWeak heads or failing sectors spreading across an ageing surfaceThere is little sense in repeatedly attempting a pass; a single careful pass is preferable
Packing it and posting it: first get a quote by phone or via the form; then carefully pack the unit so that nothing moves in transit, and post it tracked and insured to our Guildford intake laboratory. If preferred, you can drop it off there yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed). The return postage will be covered by ourselves. Would an engineer's assessment of the packing assist? Please ring first before sealing the unit in tape. The instructions detailing each stage involved in preparing and dispatching your unit can be viewed on the guide to packing and posting.

Where a Maxtor job actually stops.

DiamondMax and MaXLine internalsThese are the internal drives: on the older units these were based upon a PATA interface; the latest units used early versions of SATA; and on the PATA units there is a jumper block on the rear (master/slave/cable-select) which details how the disk was originally configured. Do not adjust that jumper, as on some machines it is the only record of this and the information may be lost. Bare drives travel perfectly well, and the machine they came out of does not need to travel with them.
OneTouch, Basics and the bridge behind themMaxtor's external models house an ordinary PATA disk inside a housing with a bridge board that translates USB/FireWire signals into something compatible with the disk within. Bridges break; power supplies break; and from an exterior viewpoint either one appears identical to a broken disk. Sending the entire case along with its cable and adaptor ensures that bridges can be distinguished from disks without having to open anything.
Donors, and a line nobody makes nowHead stacks and boards for Maxtor units are sourced from other Maxtor units and selected according to family/model/firmware revision, and the supply only ever shrinks. Boards typically contain ROM-based adaptive values specific to one mechanism, therefore if a replacement board is fitted as received it produces noise; the chip must be transferred from the original board. This explains why each read operation is planned out prior to opening the unit at all.
Never done hereNo repair utility is ever operated directly on your disk; no initialisation occurs; no file-system writes occur and no effort is undertaken to provide you with a functioning unit. Each of these represents a write; as such, each write reduces the options available to recover your data. Your Maxtor is read once and placed in storage; rebuilding is performed against an image of your Maxtor, and if any incorrect decisions are taken during your data recovery, this costs an afternoon of our time and none of your data.

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

A copy made before anything else

Prior to reading any file from your disk, a full image of your disk is created behind a write blocker. Difficult areas are processed in small blocks and left until all the easier areas are securely down, since an old mechanism has only a certain number of operational hours remaining in it and those hours are spent on completing the copy rather than on browsing through your files. There is no writing to the disk you posted at any time.

An image of each member firstYour disks are read, never written
03

A single read across an ageing surface

If the mechanism has totally failed, then a donor is located on a family, model and firmware revision basis and fitted solely for survival during the read operation. A spindle that will not turn may be released from standstill; a head stack may be replaced; the ROM from your own board may be transferred to a rebuilt board. Each of these steps exists solely in order to allow one complete pass over the platters, and the mechanism is retired when this pass has been completed.

The image, not the driveKept read-only
04

Your files, lifted from the copy

Once an image of your data has been secured, the file system is recreated on the image and your data is then read out of the image. In cases where structural damage prevents recreation of the file system, photographs and documents are retrieved via their signatures instead, thus returning your data without folder names. Items that came back incomplete are named as such, item by item, instead of being returned to you to argue with us about them next week.

Files lifted off the copyWhatever did not read is named
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

  • Age is more commonly than anything else the cause: a Maxtor that won't start has usually just become less mobile over time. Lubricants settle; spindles resist; heads sit down on surfaces. None of these causes any damage to what is stored beneath them, and none will be improved by repeatedly attempting to turn it back on again.
  • A discontinued product means a limited supply of spare parts: every donor unit that will exist for your part number already does. Finding an exact match based upon family, model number and firmware revision can take some time. That is why a job such as this will get one serious try instead of a string of hopeful ones.
  • The initialise prompt is really the biggest danger: where the BIOS shows a Maxtor and Windows asks to initialise the disk, the disk is present and the file system is unreadable. Accepting writes fresh empty structures on top of the references to your files. Decline it, and unplug the drive.
  • An external is two devices in one box: the OneTouch, Basics and Personal Storage boxes contain a bridge board between the port and a standard PATA disk inside, and from outside a failed bridge looks just like a disk that has failed. Get a quote first, either by phone or using the form, then send the entire enclosure along with its cable and adaptor, tell us which socket it was connected to, and at our end both components are looked at separately prior to opening.

The things that decide a Maxtor job: what percentage of the disk still reads; whether the mechanicals turn at all; whether a donor from that product line can be found; how many times it has been powered on since it stopped operating; and whether anyone has already opened it. Turn a Maxtor off immediately upon hearing any unusual noises, obtain a quote first, either via phone or through the form, then post it or drop it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed), and your options remain open as far as they go. Do not leave it running or put it through recovery software over the weekend: these significantly limit your options, although whatever is readable is still reported back to you while no charges have occurred. Storage recovery is all that is performed at this lab, therefore neither phones nor tablets are handled. Each individual disk costs £300 + VAT, written down once your free look has ended, and on most jobs you only pay if we recover your data.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3407JOB LOGGED ✓

A halted rebuild, and a SQL database that refused to attach

Batch and QA records at a Croydon food manufacturing facility resided on a six-bay server that had quietly operated one member short since the summer. When an amber light came up on a second carrier, a replacement disk was installed, and the rebuild began. Unfortunately, the rebuild halted mid-stream. The virtual disk then went offline, and upon the next restart the job database identified itself as SUSPECT. The server was unplugged later that day, and each individual drive arrived with its bay number still written on its carrier. The two weak drives were imaged prior to imaging the remaining drives; one of them required four passes. All remaining drives read clean from start to finish. What the controller had recorded about the set was read from the images created during recovery, and a volume was built over these images, with the .mdf and .ldf files copied off it. Each database was attached and tested here before anything went home.

The pair of weaker disks imaged ahead of the rest2 databases mounted from the clones

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Turn it off immediately upon hearing anything you have not heard previously
  • Get a price quote first, then send the external device as a complete unit, including its cable and power supply
  • Tell us how long it has sat idle before this
  • Inform us of any software that has previously run on it

What sets us back

  • Repeatedly attempting to switch it on in the hope it will catch
  • Accepting the initialise option presented by Windows
  • Bolting on a donor board from another Maxtor
  • Running repair tools across a disk whose surface is failing

Questions answered before you commit.

My Maxtor is twenty years old. Is anything still on it?

Usually, yes. Magnetic media does not decay in the manner that people would expect, thus disks that have been stored away in a cupboard since Seagate acquired Maxtor in 2006 will typically retain the information originally recorded onto them. The danger lies not with the recording. It is with spinning up: lubricants settle, bearings become rigid and heads come to rest against surfaces they were never intended to contact. Therefore the first time the disk is powered up after sitting idle for an extended duration is the most hazardous minute in its lifespan. Get a quote first, by phone or with the form, and then send the disk prior to that minute occurring, not after it occurs, by post or by dropping it off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed), and allow a technician to perform the initial read using specialised equipment designed specifically for such operations.

Maxtor is discontinued. Can donor parts still be found?

They can, but their availability decreases and that impacts how a job is run. Nobody manufactures mechanisms for Maxtors any more since Seagate bought Maxtor, so any head stack or board that is needed will have to be taken from another Maxtor drive that already exists, of the same family, model and firmware revision. We maintain donor stock for the DiamondMax and MaXLine families here and add to it every time we acquire additional drives that meet these requirements. This also limits the disk to one careful read rather than several hopeful ones, since in the event multiple attempts are necessary, the parts that could potentially be used for subsequent attempts may not even exist.

Should I send the whole external, or just the disk?

Get a price quote first via phone or by filling in the form, then send a OneTouch, Basics or Personal Storage device intact (cable and power supply included). An external enclosure of this age contains two separate devices inside the enclosure: a bridge board that converts USB or FireWire connections to PATA connections, and a disk situated behind the bridge board. Either component can fail, and prior to opening, both components must be identified separately. An internal DiamondMax or MaXLine drive is handled differently: remove it from the machine and post only the bare drive (with the jumper set as it was when you pulled it from the machine). Either type can also be dropped off at our Guildford intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).

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

A single disk is priced at £300 + VAT (a price shown on this web page rather than reserved for the phone). The free look precedes the one pricing figure, which is put on paper and holds: nothing chargeable begins until you have accepted it, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. A donor job takes longer than simply reading clean data, because an identical drive must first be located, and which sort of job yours is gets settled prior to agreeing on any further steps.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Disks taken out of a NAS box → When a RAID 5 rebuild fails → After a ransomware incident → 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