Data recovery case files

Every case below began as a genuine enquiry to our laboratory. Names and identifying details are removed; the faults, the diagnostics and the recovery procedures are documented as our engineers work them, using the equipment named on each page.

Apple Mac

• Case 008: MacBook data recovery: a MacBook Pro that won't turn on — and that Apple couldn't help with
• Case 030: The rescue that needed rescuing: an overwritten Time Machine drive, a dd command, and the original disk that saved everything
• Case 048: The beachball, decoded: a 2015 iMac dying in slow motion — and the missing Safari its owner thought we'd never believe

Desktop Drives

• Case 002: Hard drive PCB swap not working: a Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000, a matching donor board, and a lost ROM chip
• Case 003: Clicking hard drive recovery: a 1TB Seagate Barracuda that overheated — then survived four internet remedies
• Case 010: Dropped hard drive, clicking: the 500GB Barracuda an IT company was right to send us
• Case 013: A snapped SATA connector on a drive already failing: 2TB Seagate, XFS, and a race run in the right order
• Case 015: "Disk unknown, not initialized": the WD Black that CHKDSK fixed on Tuesday and finished on Wednesday
• Case 018: Click of death without a cause: a Seagate ST4000DM004 that failed sitting still
• Case 022: Still under warranty, still losing your data: a clicking 1TB Barracuda and the choice nobody warns you about
• Case 026: "Just the documents, pics and videos": a salvaged 1TB WD, an unwitnessed knock, and an honest answer about scope
• Case 028: Two drives, opposite fates: the quick-formatted Antarctica archive and the drive that scratched
• Case 042: A 7200.11 walks into the lab: the most famous firmware bug in drive history, and the discipline of checking for it first
• Case 043: The drive that blocked its own backup: months of frozen copy attempts, decoded too late

Desktop Drives & USB

• Case 012: One visit, two patients: a 4TB drive missing from the BIOS, and a USB stick bent in its port

Desktop Externals

• Case 024: It only tipped over: a 2TB Toshiba external, a lifetime of photos, and the smallest fall that counts

Electrical Damage

• Case 016: One power event, three casualties: electrical triage on two hard drives and a Samsung SSD

Encryption

• Case 019: BitLocker without the recovery key: the 10TB drive that would only ask for the one thing its owner didn't have

Enterprise

• Case 033: Four layers deep: recovering two rack QNAP arrays that stalled "onlining" mid-migration

External Drives

• Case 037: Error 49153: the copy that stopped mid-sentence — and the 4TB Seagate that wouldn't mount again

Memory Cards

• Case 011: SD card recovery: a wedding on a card that failed mid-transfer
• Case 020: "You need to format the disk": a working photographer's 128GB card, 17,000 photos, and a paywall full of previews
• Case 032: The drone card that died with the originals aboard: chip-level recovery from a DJI microSD
• Case 045: The 64GB card that swore it was 32MB: recovering a proposal from a controller in denial
• Case 046: Formatted, then used for a year: what's honestly recoverable when the overwriting has already happened
• Case 050: Formatted twice, recovered whole: the card that proves it's the writing after, not the formatting, that decides

NAS & Desktop

• Case 041: The NAS in a box: a clicking Seagate from an Iomega Home Media, a Linux toolkit, and a year of "is it worth it?"

NAS & External

• Case 005: WD My Cloud recovery: the wrong power supply, a 4TB Red that won't spin, and a board repair done properly

NAS & RAID

• Case 004: Synology NAS drive not detected: a WD Red Pro reporting 0GB — and the RAID 1 mirror that mattered more
• Case 006: Synology data recovery after a new DSM install: two 8TB IronWolf Pros, one missing migration prompt
• Case 007: Deadbolt ransomware on two QNAP NAS units: an honest account of a ransomware recovery
• Case 027: RAID 5, volume removed: the expansion that erased the map to twenty-four terabytes
• Case 039: "Firmware update required": the Buffalo LinkStation prompt this owner was right to refuse

Portable Drives

• Case 001: 4TB WD My Passport beeping on connection — hardware-encrypted, heads replaced, data recovered through native USB
• Case 009: External hard drive slow, freezing, bad sectors: a 4TB WD after the most dangerous week of its life
• Case 017: The drive on the shelf: a dropped My Passport, an "uninitialised" prompt refused, and a recovery years deferred
• Case 021: The second opinion: decoding another lab's diagnosis of a failed WD My Passport
• Case 023: The silent one: a My Passport that fell, lit up, and never made another sound
• Case 025: The drive that worked at one angle: a fractured USB port, rebuilt under the microscope, and a thesis on deadline
• Case 029: When the clicking stops: a My Passport for Mac that got quieter as it got worse
• Case 034: "More an inconvenience than a necessity": a clicking Passport, years of research, and the quiet customers we worry about most
• Case 040: Two platters, one dead motor: migrating a MiniStation's disks — and why we wouldn't give a ballpark
• Case 047: It left home working: a My Passport, two car journeys, and a fault with no witnesses
• Case 049: "Local Disk": the drive that lost its name — annotated by way of its owner's own CHKDSK log

Portable SSD

• Case 038: Present but not accounted for: a 4TB Samsung T7 that introduced itself and offered nothing

SSD

• Case 031: The SSD that took the whole computer hostage: burst-imaging a failing Samsung 850 EVO

SSD / NVMe

• Case 036: The case we didn't take: a Samsung 970 EVO Plus, a faulty translator, and what no lab should promise

USB Flash

• Case 035: Rained on, powered, and left too long: recovering a dead SanDisk USB stick — and answering the three questions everyone asks
• Case 044: A term on a lanyard: the SanDisk stick that still had one "corrupted" left in it

Water Damage

• Case 014: The sink case: an 8TB G-RAID, an external, and half an iMac Fusion Drive — 24 hours underwater

Facing something similar? Call Bristol Data Recovery on 0117 332 1137 for a free assessment and fixed quote.