A head crash had taken the drive offline, with no backup behind it. Here's exactly how it came back.
A retired teacher in Fishponds brought in a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda that had been clicking for a day before it disappeared from Windows altogether. On it were fifteen years of family photos, scans of old documents and home video of the children growing up — none of it backed up anywhere. That steady, rhythmic clicking is one of the most recognisable sounds in this trade: it is the read/write heads failing to find their servo track and resetting again and again, and every power-on drags those failing heads back across the platters. Our first piece of advice, before she had even left the shop, was to stop switching it on.
On the bench the diagnosis was quickly confirmed: the drive had suffered a head crash, with one head in the stack down and the platter surface beneath it showing the early signs of damage. A drive in that condition cannot simply be imaged — the failed heads have to be replaced first, or they read nothing and risk scoring the platters further. All of that work is carried out in our in-house clean-air environment, where the platters can be exposed without dust settling on the surfaces and causing fresh damage.
We sourced a matched donor drive and transplanted a compatible head stack, pairing it by firmware revision and preamplifier type so the new heads read the platters correctly. With the mechanics stabilised, imaging was done on a DeepSpar Disk Imager — the tool we reach for first on any head-damaged drive. Rather than reading the disk straight through, it works head by head, maps out the weak and unstable zones and returns to them in later passes, and keeps tight control of spin-up, power and command timeouts so a fragile drive is never pushed to the point of total failure. We deliberately left the damaged surface until last, capturing every healthy head in full before asking the weakest one to do any work. Where we needed to reach the drive's firmware and service area, the PC3000 handled it.
Once the image was as complete as the media allowed, we rebuilt the file system from the copy — never the original — and checked it by opening a representative spread of the recovered photos and video to confirm they were whole and not corrupt. The recovered data was then written to a fresh drive ready to plug in and use.
We imaged a little over 99% of the drive and returned effectively every photo, scan and video the family cared about, six working days after it arrived. The one lesson we passed on: a clicking drive is failing mechanically, so the safest thing you can do is power it down and bring it in — and once recovered, keep a second copy somewhere, because hard drives only ever fail once.
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 — clicking, dropped, dead and firmware-fault drives are our most common job. We replace failed heads in our clean-air environment and image on a DeepSpar with the PC3000, working only from a copy.
Hard drive recovery is from £300 plus VAT, with no fix, no fee on most jobs. You get a fixed written quote before any work begins.
No. Every power-on of a clicking or failing drive risks more damage. Switch it off and bring it in, or post it to us.
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.