Specialist cases · drive repair
All repairs done on this bench have but one goal in mind: getting data off before the mechanism completely fails. Electronics are rebuilt and the firmware corrected because this opens the door, and donor heads are installed because they will continue working well enough for one complete read pass over the platters. None of this work is intended to last. What comes back to Maidenhead is the original data content placed upon new media.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The symptom | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Does it click? Is that fixable? | Failed head stack: a single donor head set can provide one clean run of the platters and then the drive is done. | A recovery project, not a repair. |
| No sign of power, silent | Most commonly shorted TVS diodes or failed PCBs (the electronics are genuinely fixable) | Fix the electronics first, then image the drive. |
| Displays 0 GB or displays the wrong model ID | Usually a bad translator or service area module, which can be fixed. | Rebuild the firmware first, then back up the data. |
| The socket broke off from my portable drive | Port and bridge repair is a true repair to the device, and on WD portable devices the bridge also contains the encryption data. | Get a quote first, then send the unit as a complete unit (enclosure, cable, any power supply) |
| A store tells you the problem has been 'resolved' | What did they replace exactly? If they swapped in a blank disk to replace yours, there is zero chance of recovering anything from that disk. | Be sure to confirm this before letting your guard down. |
| Can't another PCB just be swapped in? | No way: the ROM on that board holds adaptive data measured for the single drive it was originally paired with. So if the new PCB has never been touched or modified, it will simply read a bunch of nonsensical garbage. | And that ROM needs to be moved to the new board too. |
Nothing is chargeable until you say yes. Every item gets a case number of its own immediately upon receipt, an engineer determines what has failed, and you get a clear picture of which files have a real possibility of being recovered. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down and does not cost anything.
'Broken' refers to three separate areas of expertise: electronic systems, firmware systems and mechanical systems. The free assessment determines which area your issue falls into, and exactly what a repair would involve.
Moving your original ROM onto a refurbished board, repairing faulty firmware modules, using donor parts for broken mechanical components: each stage leads towards a single successful operation to recover the data.
The recovered files are verified, itemised and copied to new storage media. Your disk was never more than a vessel. Should your disk remain functional for light use after the recovery process, you will be informed as such, and you will be informed just as plainly when it is not.
You don't get charged anything until you've confirmed and authorised that everything is fine after seeing the entire list of what was recovered. Any recovered items are returned via brand-new storage media and the postage costs for these are covered by us. We do not consider a project complete here until we receive confirmation that you have been able to successfully access and review every item you received back.
Set down in writing, and we stand behind it: boards and firmware can be properly fixed. Heads and motors are only expected to last until the copy process is completed. Once the surface of a platter has been scored, no lab in the world can read past that damage, regardless of the claims made in advertising. The age of a drive does not affect any of these issues, and drives from the IBM, HGST, Hitachi and Fujitsu years still reach us. If a company offers to restore a failed disk to working order, compare their offer against their own terms and see how much of it survives.
In Maidenhead a student was returned their laptop and it worked fine, but they had been given a new, completely blank disk. The student's old disk had been placed in a drawer as dead, and it was still clicking away. Donor heads were installed into the old disk, and two days later every essay and photo taken from it had been copied onto the new disk fitted by the shop.
The electrical components and firmware can be: boards can be repaired or rebuilt, and corrupted service area modules can be restored. Hard drive heads, however, are another matter: transplanted heads have limited use and should only be used once, for one pass when transferring data from a failed drive, after which the drive is retired, not returned. In either case, both methods result in a copy of your data being made onto new storage media.
A repair's goal is to fix the device; a recovery's goal is to extract the information from the damaged device, accepting that the device is spent. Therefore, if there has been a true failure in a machine, it is impossible to recover a functional unit; the only feasible method is recovery of the data on the damaged unit. That is why a supposedly 'repaired' machine can come back from a shop running like new but containing none of your data.
Only rarely, and not alone. Each circuit board will have an integrated ROM containing adaptive parameters that were measured in respect of that particular drive, therefore the chip will need to be desoldered from your board and installed on the replacement board prior to being able to read from it. This is bench soldering.
The cost of replacement disks is relatively low, which makes this a poor comparison. When you pay for data recovery, you're paying for the content: the data recovered onto working hardware. If you paid to restore your damaged disk, you've bought a part you should never rely upon.
Every additional power-up asks for even more of a drive that is already starting to fail. First open a case with us, and let the free diagnosis tell you how much remains.