Cause of loss · erased or vanished data
Everything turns on what the file was sitting on. Delete from a mechanical disk and only the directory entry is struck out; the clusters keep their contents until new writes arrive. A modern SSD does not wait to be asked — it begins erasing the cells behind the deleted file on its own account, often within seconds. Both cases are set out below, and the first question asked of a Maidenhead job is which of the two you have.
Describe the fault to an engineer
0800 6890668
| The signs | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| The file has gone and the bin is empty | The delete bypassed the bin: removable media, Shift+Delete, or a file above the size cap | Put nothing new on that disk |
| Larger than the bin allows | Windows removed it outright, with no bin stage | Its contents normally remain in place |
| Gone from a memory card or thumb drive | There is no bin on removable media; the entry is struck out immediately | Take it out and stop there |
| Everything vanished after a sync | OneDrive or a similar client mirrored a deletion made elsewhere | Check the provider's own web bin first |
| An everyday folder, suddenly empty | A deletion, a sync conflict, or another profile | Power it down before looking further |
| Data deleted off an SSD | Windows issues TRIM, and the controller erases those blocks, frequently within seconds | Pull the power now |
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.
A machine left running writes constantly on its own initiative: thumbnails, browser cache, update packages. Any of it can land on the sectors holding your files, so the disk comes out and is imaged before anything else.
Where the file table survives, names, dates and folder structure all come back with the data. Where it does not, files are lifted out of the image by the byte patterns each format begins with.
A file count tells you very little, so what comes back is opened and the items you named as important are confirmed present.
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.
One keypress, two entirely different clocks: on a mechanical disk the deleted data remains precisely where it sat, sometimes for years, until fresh writes take the space. Introduce TRIM — a Seagate BarraCuda SSD, a WD Blue — and the same cells are typically cleared within minutes, often within seconds. Identical action, opposite result. It is why the first question here concerns the hardware, not the filename.
A single keystroke took a year of bookkeeping off an office machine, bin and all. The disk was imaged the same afternoon, the file table rebuilt from the image, and the folder came back with its names and dates as they had been.
On a mechanical disk, usually, provided nothing new has landed on top. On an SSD running TRIM, frequently not: the controller's garbage collection can clear those blocks within seconds. The storage decides this, not the deletion.
The Recycle Bin is skipped, but on a hard disk the contents remain exactly where an ordinary delete would have left them. The bin was never the thing protecting them.
There is none. Windows treats a deletion on removable media as final at the moment you confirm it, with no intermediate stage. The contents generally persist in the flash regardless, which is the level we read at.
An SSD tidies up after itself. TRIM tells the controller which blocks are no longer wanted, and it erases them in the background to keep later writes fast. Nothing signals this to you, which is why an SSD deletion is measured in hours.
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.