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 061: The safety net with a hard drive in it: recovering a failing Time Capsule and rebuilding the backups inside
• Case 089: A backup made under fire: the rescue copy that half-worked, and the dying drive that still held the truth

Business Servers

• Case 062: Everything recovered except the folder that mattered: SQL backups stranded on a dead OS drive

Desktop Drives

• Case 060: Three boards, one smell of smoke: the Hitachi whose heads couldn't be judged until its ROM came home
• Case 070: Five impressive lines, one ordinary job: another firm's itemised quote, translated
• Case 071: It died when he turned it off: the always-on Barracuda that couldn't survive its first rest in years
• Case 072: Seven hours and rising: the CHKDSK estimate that was really a diagnosis — and the man who cancelled it in time
• Case 074: Three new partitions over one old volume: recovering 800GB of research data from a repartitioned IronWolf
• Case 077: Cloned before the cliff: a dying data drive copied to new media while "currently not dead" still applied
• Case 079: A few hundred entries nobody read: the Windows log that chronicled this drive's decline in advance
• Case 080: "Healthy," RAW, and asking for a format: the 4TB that commuted between the PC and the TV once too often
• Case 091: Three drives, two already operated on: the triage we run when the surgery happened before we did
• Case 100: Three terabytes reporting four gigabytes: a famous drive's familiar exit, caught mid-backup

Desktop Externals

• Case 058: The recovery that was a power supply: a silent 6TB My Book, diagnosed cheaply, handled properly anyway
• Case 065: The enquiry written like an RFQ: a 5TB Backup Plus recovered, and our process set out as asked

Desktop RAID

• Case 084: Half of every video: why his "successfully recovered" footage wouldn't play — and the reassembly that fixed it

Encryption

• Case 068: Half plaintext, half cipher, all stranded: a BitLocker decryption that stalled on a drive that was failing all along

Enterprise RAID

• Case 098: Two failures past one drive of tolerance: a twelve-disk RAID 5 reassembled from its own metadata

Home Servers

• Case 078: "My simple brain suggests the MBR needs rebuilding": half right, and the half that mattered was the other one

Laptop Drives

• Case 066: Windows said a file was missing. The drive meant it couldn't fetch anything at all.
• Case 073: The map without the territory: a TestDisk listing in full, a dual-boot drive reading nothing

Liquid Damage

• Case 082: The coffee, the verdict, and the suspicion: a pre-school's "dead" drive recovered after all

Logical Recovery

• Case 096: Everything after the ceremony, gone: what a restart really deleted — and the folder structure that explains the spooky pattern

Memory Cards

• Case 055: In working, out invisible: the microSD that didn't survive the photo kiosk
• Case 097: Stopped at 80%: returning to a card another lab couldn't finish

NAS & RAID

• Case 063: "I don't want to risk formatting the good drive": a QNAP rebuild, paused at exactly the right moment
• Case 094: The appliance died; the drives didn't: two mirrored volumes rescued from an end-of-life NAS

NVMe SSD

• Case 087: The drive the PC refused to boot with: a budget NVMe's half-life, and the modding archive inside it

Portable Drives

• Case 053: Four stages of a failing Passport: the best-documented enquiry in this archive, annotated
• Case 054: Off the bed, onto the floor: the most ordinary drive failure there is, taken seriously anyway
• Case 056: Seen until asked: the Passport that vanished the moment its own maker's software tried to test it
• Case 059: The hard drive that became a CD: a dropped, password-protected Passport and the phantom disc that confuses everyone
• Case 064: Now you see it: the Passport whose drive letter came and went — and the copy nobody should attempt through the gap
• Case 067: Three or four attempts, then the wisest sentence in the archive: a dropped Passport, preserved by its owner's restraint
• Case 069: One drive, two locks: the identical-donor board swap that was never going to open a My Passport
• Case 075: A day per gigabyte: the drive that would eventually mount — and the four months of copying it was offering
• Case 081: Two terabytes, mostly re-downloadable: the recovery conversation that made the job smaller on purpose
• Case 085: The whine at three beats a second: a drive's failed start-ups, transcribed by a careful ear
• Case 090: New, careful, and dead anyway: an answer for everyone whose drive failed without deserving it
• Case 093: Passed the quick test, passed the extended test, read nothing: a diagnostic paradox explained
• Case 095: Deadlines don't wait for head swaps: an express recovery, delivered shoot by shoot
• Case 099: Four PASSes and a FAIL: another lab's report, translated for its owner — and priced like for like

Ransomware

• Case 088: Six drives of hostage files: the decryption question, answered the way it deserves

SSD

• Case 052: 0 bytes of 0 bytes: an 870 EVO's sudden lockout, an identical twin on the desk, and the swap that must not be tried
• Case 083: Correct name, correct size, SMART OK, nothing readable: the SSD failure that can actually be fixed

Secure Erasure

• Case 086: The opposite of recovery: a father's MacBook, fixed enough to give away and wiped beyond any archive like this one

Servers & RAID

• Case 051: Five healthy drives, one dead array: a RAID 5 recovered from images the customer made himself

TV & CCTV Recorders

• Case 057: The recorder's drive: recovering recordings that will only ever play in one machine

Thermal Damage

• Case 092: Smoke on standby: a swollen battery, a cooked laptop, and the drive that came through it

USB Flash

• Case 076: The stick as lever: a laptop's fall, a torn-off connector, and thirty gigabytes of schoolwork behind the break

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