Specialist cases · drive repair
Every repair at this bench has a single purpose behind it: reaching the contents before the mechanism gives out for good. Electronics are rebuilt and firmware corrected because that is what opens the door; donor heads are fitted because they hold up long enough for one full pass across the platters. None of it is meant to last. What returns to Maidenhead is the contents, on new media.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The symptom | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| It clicks. Can that be mended? | The head stack has failed; a donor set holds up for one clean pass, then the drive is finished | A recovery job, not a repair |
| Silent, and showing no power | Most often a shorted TVS diode or failed PCB — electronics, and genuinely mendable | Mend the electronics, then image |
| Shows 0GB, or identifies itself as another model | A corrupted translator or service-area module, which can be put right | Correct the firmware, then copy |
| The socket has snapped off my portable drive | Port and bridge work, a genuine repair; on WD portables the bridge holds the encryption too | Send it whole, enclosure included |
| A shop says it has been 'fixed' | Ask precisely what was replaced; a blank disk fitted in place of yours returns nothing | Confirm before relaxing |
| Why not swap in a donor PCB? | The ROM on that board holds adaptives measured for one drive alone, so an untouched donor reads nonsense | The ROM must move across too |
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.
'Broken' covers three different trades: electronics, firmware and mechanics. The free assessment settles which one you have, and what a repair would actually involve.
Your own ROM moved onto a rebuilt board, firmware modules corrected, donor parts where the mechanics have gone: every step directed at one unbroken pass.
What comes back to you is verified, listed and written to new media. The disk itself was only ever the container. Should yours be fit for light duty afterwards you will be told as much, and told just as plainly when it is not.
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.
Set down in writing, and stood by: boards and firmware can be properly repaired. Heads and motors are only ever asked to survive the copy. Once a platter surface has been scored, no laboratory anywhere can read past it, whatever the advertising claims. Age changes none of this, and drives from the IBM, HGST, Hitachi and Fujitsu years still arrive here. When a company promises a failed disk back in working order, read that promise against its own terms and see how much of it survives.
A student in Maidenhead was handed back a laptop that ran perfectly, on a new and entirely empty disk. The original, written off as dead, had been sitting in a drawer, still clicking. Donor heads went in, and two days later every essay and photograph was waiting on the replacement drive the shop had fitted.
The electronics and the firmware can: a board is rebuilt, a corrupted service-area module put back in order. Moving parts are another matter, because transplanted heads are expected to last one pass across the platters, after which the drive is retired, not returned. Both end with a copy on new media.
One aims to restore a working device; the other aims at the contents and accepts the device is spent. After a real failure only the second is achievable, which is why a machine returns from a 'repair' running well on a disk holding none of your work.
Only rarely, and never on its own. Each board carries a small ROM holding adaptive values measured for that one mechanism, so the chip has to be desoldered from yours and fitted to the replacement before anything reads correctly. That is bench soldering.
Replacement disks are inexpensive, so that is the wrong comparison. What you buy when you pay for a recovery is the contents, delivered onto sound hardware. Paying to bring a failed disk back into service buys a component you would be unwise to depend on.
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.