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.

Action Cameras

• Case 108: Cut mid-sentence: a camera's power failure, a card in disgrace, and the clip that was never allowed to end

Apple Mac

• Case 139: The circle with a line through it: an iMac's no-entry sign, translated — and 3TB brought out from behind it
• Case 141: "Unknown" where a whole system used to be: a bootable APFS clone, damaged mid-boot and recovered from its own history

Apple Silicon

• Case 109: The Mac with nowhere to remove the drive from: backing up a dead M1 MacBook before its repair could erase it

Appliance Drives

• Case 131: The media player's drive: why Windows was always going to ask for a format — and why Linux refusing was the real news

Backup Failures

• Case 128: Two dead devices, one set of files, one very good question: "which would be easier to recover from?"

Desktop Drives

• Case 102: No scorch marks, no smell, three dead drives: the surge damage you can't see
• Case 113: "Just quote for all of it": the family computer's drive, and the arithmetic of not guessing
• Case 116: The file that wouldn't die was the drive announcing it would: an 8TB decline read backwards from one stubborn delete
• Case 119: Cold, it worked — briefly: the temperature-dependent drive, and the myth this page exists to retire
• Case 120: The drive that blows the whistle on itself: power supplies cutting out, decoded
• Case 124: Concentric circles, photographed: the customer who opened his drive, saw the truth, and asked exactly the right question

Desktop Externals

• Case 123: One warning, one shutdown: the knocked-over My Book that met the most decisive customer in this archive
• Case 135: Eight years remaining: the progress bar as a diagnostic instrument, and the drive that stopped moving after the lid came off

Dropped Drives

• Case 112: The loop with three acts: what a dropped drive is doing between the spin-up and the silence

Encryption

• Case 101: Nine years of saved keys, and none of them fit: where a BitLocker recovery key really lives when you never made one

Enterprise SSD

• Case 136: Terabytes to "100% free" in one failed unmount: an enterprise recovery run on the customer's own clone

Enterprise Systems

• Case 137: The files came back; the documents didn't: a SharePoint document store, recovered at the layer where it actually lives

Fire Damage

• Case 105: Out of the fire: a work laptop's drive, salvaged in the right order

Laptop Drives

• Case 121: Plumbing repairs over a flooding basement: a competent boot-repair campaign, and why none of it could work
• Case 132: Saved "all I could" — except the files that mattered most: a declining drive, handled discreetly

Linux & Servers

• Case 129: rm at the wrong level: the deleted mount folder, the three drives beneath it, and what the journal still knew

Logical Forensics

• Case 122: The case of the hollow files: vanished contents, intact folders, and a timestamp that named the culprit

Memory Cards

• Case 104: The professional's card: a dead CF from a Canon 5D, and the construction quirk that made its recovery cleaner
• Case 107: It failed while he was saving it: the copy that didn't break the card — it found the break
• Case 133: When the software company sends you to the lab: a wrong-sized SD card and the boundary consumer tools can't cross
• Case 140: Thirty-two videos, all named in advance: a corrupted microSD recovered against the owner's own checklist
• Case 148: Corrupted, scanned, dead: reading a card's decline honestly — and absolving the software, mostly
• Case 149: The bank card is innocent: what actually kills microSD cards in wallets — and the recovery of one

NAS

• Case 103: The superblock that "couldn't be found" was never where he was looking: a knocked-over My Cloud, decoded for its Linux-literate owner

NAS & RAID

• Case 106: "Access it via Linux, or repair the installation": a Synology support ticket's two options, weighed and one executed
• Case 117: "You're not kicking me as hard as I'm kicking myself": a RAID 0 member dies to 0 bytes, and its owner's diagnosis earns a grade
• Case 144: Three formats, one mirror: the arithmetic of repeated quick formats — and the config question the drives answered themselves

Portable Drives

• Case 110: Twelve attempts, twenty seconds, silence: the retry budget, counted out loud
• Case 111: Three symptoms in single file: reading a failing drive by the order its warnings arrived
• Case 115: Unallocated is not erased: the two-word Windows verdict that terrifies families unnecessarily
• Case 118: He looked it up, and he was right: a beeping drive, stuck heads, and the difference between good research and bad surgery
• Case 138: All the names, none of the contents: what it means when recovery software delivers empty files
• Case 143: Stuck at 56%, every single time: a second-hand drive, one giant archive, and the arithmetic of inherited wear

Professional Photography

• Case 150: Nine minutes at the heart of a wedding: a card's mid-ceremony failure, and the entrance brought back

SSD

• Case 134: One hot component, correctly found: an SSD board repair, an image, and a clone that booted first time

Software RAID

• Case 127: The pool that crashed its own manager: Storage Spaces, ReFS, and a recovery done where nothing could freeze

Trust & Process

• Case 145: The customer who interviewed us: four due-diligence questions, answered for everyone — then a clicking drive brought home

USB Flash

• Case 126: Torn off at the pads: a broken-necked USB stick, an identity-theft-aware owner, and a repair done under his eye
• Case 142: Seen but unreadable: a hobbyist triage graded A — and the one wall it was always going to meet
• Case 146: Wounded twice, or so it seemed: a corrupted stick, a rescue cut off at the knees, and the only copy in existence
• Case 147: Memory that literally fades: a shelved design archive, a stick full of weakened charge, and the patient read that brought it back

Vintage Drives

• Case 114: The metal ball, the sealed box, and the right place to stop: a vintage Barracuda read one last time

Water Damage

• Case 130: Dry it and try it: the water-accident sequence everyone's instinct writes — and the bench work that unwrites it

Working Drives

• Case 125: "I work from my hard drive": a LaCie that sounded perfect, mounted nowhere, and carried a wedding that wasn't edited yet

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