Devices · laptop and desktop PCs
A machine that will not start and a disk that has failed are separate problems, and the first is much the commoner: screens, mainboards and power circuits go at their own pace, leaving the storage untouched. Laptops and desktops reach the bench from all over Maidenhead, and removable or soldered down, it is the data we are after.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The symptom | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| HP: SMART Hard Disk Error (301) — Hard Disk 1 | The firmware refuses to boot a disk its own SMART data condemns | Treat it as terminal; image now |
| HP: Boot Device Not Found (3F0) | No bootable device is seen | A dropped connection, or a disk that has died |
| Dell: Error Code 2000-0142 | Dell's ePSA has failed the disk; heads, most often | Do not repeat the test |
| Dell: Error Code 2000-0146 | The drive's error log has been filling for some time | The failure is not new |
| ThinkPad: 2100 — Detection error on HDD0 (Main HDD) | Nothing answers on that channel: a loose lead, or a dead drive | Take the image first; check cables after |
| Disk read error — press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart | The boot sector is damaged, or the disk cannot be read | Rebooting will not help |
| Reboot and Select proper Boot Device | The firmware sees no boot device | Find the fault before reinstalling |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
If the drive is removable it is taken out and the rest of the machine put to one side; if the NAND is soldered to the board, the board itself becomes the job and the chips are read in place.
A failed disk joins the ordinary hard drive or SSD queue. One that is sound but stranded in a broken machine needs an image and little else.
User profiles, desktops, documents and mail stores come back arranged as they were, on new media, and you approve the listing before a charge is raised.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
What arrives here bears this out: when a manufacturer's own diagnostic points at the storage, the storage has genuinely failed in the great majority of cases, and a loose lead is the rarity. Past that point the disk is treated like any other, and what our hard drive and SSD pages set out applies here too.
Its disk had started to click, and the laptop itself was past repair. A donor head stack went in, the image came off slowly, and inside three days she had five years of marking, reports and lesson plans back.
Where the disk simply unclips, send that on its own: postage is cheaper and there is far less to go wrong in transit, and most repair shops will take one out while you wait. If the storage is soldered to the mainboard, or you are unsure which it is, send the machine entire.
In most cases they are. A laptop is far more often finished off by its screen, its mainboard or its power circuit than by its storage, and lifting a sound disk out of a dead machine is among the safest work here.
Nothing changes so long as the password or recovery key comes with it, and BitLocker cases reach the bench every week. Without the key the volume stays sealed exactly as Microsoft intended, so check your Microsoft account before posting.
Often a good deal of it. An installation overwrites some regions of the disk and never touches others, and everything done on the machine now reduces what is left, so put it aside.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.