Data Recovery Case File · Portable Drives · Motor Failure

Two platters, one dead motor: migrating a MiniStation's disks — and why we wouldn't give a ballpark

The customer arrived pre-diagnosed: another company had assessed his 1TB Buffalo MiniStation, concluded a spindle-motor failure plus a small element of data corruption, expected most data recoverable — and he'd decided, for his own reasons, not to proceed with them. Seals intact, drive unopened, he asked us for a ballpark cost. He got our assessment free, our price fixed, and an explanation of why those are the only two numbers we deal in.

The enquiry

“I've had it evaluated by another company — their conclusion was an internal mechanical failure of some part of the motor, and a small element of data corruption, with the vast majority of data expected recoverable. It has not been opened and the seals are intact. While your evaluation might differ, I'd be grateful for a ballpark cost.”

Our assessment — and where it agreed

Free re-assessment confirmed the other lab's mechanical verdict: the spindle would not turn, heads parked and platters pristine above a bearing that had quietly seized — the same fault family as a drive elsewhere in these case files that fell from a chair, arrived at here by nothing more dramatic than wear. Where this drive raised the stakes was its construction: two platters, not one. A single-platter migration has no geometry to preserve; a two-platter drive stores data in cylinders that pass through the stack, and the platters' rotational relationship to each other is part of the recording. Separate them, or let one rotate a fraction against the other, and every head lands on data that no longer lines up. So the procedure is defined by one discipline: the platters move as a unit — clamped in registration with dedicated migration tooling, lifted together, seated together onto the donor chassis's healthy motor — their mutual alignment never surrendered for an instant between the dead drive and the living one.

The rebuilt drive spun true and came ready. Imaging on the TaskForce 2 ran clean and near-complete, and the "small element of corruption" the first lab had predicted turned out to be exactly that — a filesystem inconsistency from the drive's final stumbles, reconciled from redundant structures in Data Extractor on the image, never on the patient. The verified volume went home on new media.

About that ballpark

We understood the request — everyone shopping a recovery wants a number to hold — but a ballpark on physical work is a guess wearing a price tag, and it misleads in both directions: quoted wide it scares people off recoverable drives, quoted narrow it mutates later into the very "surprise costs" people fear. What replaces it costs the customer nothing: assessment free, diagnosis in writing, then one fixed figure for the actual fault — motor migration, in this case — that does not move afterwards. He'd effectively already paid the price of vagueness once, in the effort of seeking a second opinion; the second opinion's job was to end the uncertainty, not extend it.

Outcome

The vast majority the first lab predicted, delivered in full measure — their diagnosis vindicated, his caution rewarded, the seals broken only once and only here. For anyone holding a similar verdict from elsewhere: a written diagnosis travels. Bring it, and let the second assessment be free too.

Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.