A power surge killed the electronics, not the disk. Repairing the board and moving its unique ROM got it spinning again.
After a thunderstorm sent a surge through the mains, a graphic studio in Clifton found their 2 TB WD Blue completely silent — no spin, no clicking, nothing at all when powered. Total silence is actually a hopeful sign in this trade: it almost always means the electronics took the hit while the mechanics underneath are untouched. The drive's circuit board sits in the firing line of any power event precisely so that it, rather than the disk inside, absorbs the damage.
A close inspection of the printed circuit board confirmed it: one of the board's protection components had blown, sacrificing itself to divert the surge away from the rest of the drive. The motor and heads had been spared. The job, then, was to restore power to a healthy drive — but on a modern Western Digital that is not as simple as bolting on a replacement board.
Each modern WD board carries an adaptive ROM chip holding calibration data unique to that exact drive; fit a donor board without transferring it and the drive either won't spin up correctly or reads its own platters wrongly. We repaired the failed board and moved the original drive's ROM across to it, so the electronics matched the mechanics they were driving. The drive powered up first time. From there it imaged cleanly on the PC3000, with the DeepSpar on hand had any weak sectors appeared — they didn't.
The image came off without a single bad sector and the file system mounted exactly as it had been left. We confirmed the studio's project files and assets opened correctly, then returned everything on a fresh drive.
The studio's entire project archive was back four working days after the storm. The episode is a good argument for a surge-protected supply on anything important — and for not assuming a dead-silent drive is a lost cause, because more often than not the data is perfectly intact behind a failed board.
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.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0117 332 1137.
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.