The spindle had frozen solid - a platter transplant in the clean area got it spinning to be imaged.
A home user's Gateway desktop drive had stopped spinning entirely, giving only a faint hum when powered. On it were the usual irreplaceables — documents and family photos. A drive that hums but won't turn has almost always suffered a seized spindle motor: the bearings the platters spin on have effectively frozen. No amount of retrying or tapping will free it, and leaving it powered while it strains only risks the heads, so the drive came in untouched.
In our clean-air environment we confirmed the spindle would not turn — a seized motor rather than a head or electronics fault. This is one of the more involved mechanical repairs, because a frozen motor cannot simply be replaced in place: the platters themselves have to be moved to a working drive, and that has to be done without disturbing their precise alignment.
We transplanted the entire platter stack into a matched donor drive with a healthy motor, using specialist tooling to keep the platters in perfect alignment as they moved — even a slight misalignment makes the data unreadable. With the platters spinning again in the donor body, we imaged the rebuilt drive on a DeepSpar Disk Imager to keep the load gentle on a freshly-rebuilt mechanism, with the PC3000 on hand for firmware. A platter transplant is delicate, exacting work, and a small loss is normal even when it goes well.
From the image we rebuilt the file system and confirmed the user's documents and photos opened correctly before writing them onto modern media.
We recovered around 96% of the drive and returned the user's documents and photos, seven working days on. As with any single-drive setup, the episode underlines the value of a second copy — a seized motor gives no warning, and the only protection against it is having the data in more than one place.
DeepSpar DDI · PC3000 — imaging and recovery carried out in-house. Every job is imaged before any recovery work begins, and the original media is never written to.
Send us your device for a free diagnostic, and tell us a little about what happened — an engineer will review it and confirm your exact quote in writing before any work begins.
Recovering your data starts with getting the device to us. Pack it safely, add your contact details, and send it over — after we run a free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work begins.
Posting it in? We recommend a tracked, insured service. Prefer to drop it off? You’re welcome Monday–Friday, 9am–5:30pm — please still package the device as above.
If you need more information on our data recovery service, fill out the form with more detail about your issue and an engineer will review it and give you a custom quote.
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Yes — from failed drives recovered in the clean-air environment to logical faults such as a corrupt partition table rebuilt from an image. We never write to the original drive.
From £300 plus VAT, no fix, no fee on most jobs, with a fixed quote before any work.
Do not format it, and stop using the PC. The data is usually intact; formatting or continued use is what risks losing it.
Start with an instant online quote, or call and talk it through with us first. You'll have a clear, fixed price before any work begins.