Case Studies · 90 real recoveries

Jobs we've brought back.

Over twenty-five years on the bench, documented. Search by device, by fault, or by where the customer was — every entry below is a real recovery: what failed, what we found, and exactly what came back.

90 documented recoveries
13 device types
17 fault types
4.9★ rated
Showing 90 of 90 case studies
Device

Hard Drive

3 cases
Hard Drive100% recovered

Fifteen years of family photos off a clicking Seagate

Seagate Barracuda 2 TB · head crash, platter 2
Retired teacher · Fishponds, Bristol

It had been clicking for a day before it disappeared from Windows entirely. That rhythmic click is the heads failing to find their servo track and resetting, so the first thing we did was tell her to stop powering it on — every spin-up drags failing heads across the platters. On the bench we found one head down on the second surface. We fitted a matched donor head stack, then imaged the drive slowly, head by head, saving the weakest surface for last. All fifteen years of photos, scans and home video came back, returned on a fresh drive.

6 days14,200 filesHard Drive →
Hard DriveFull recovery

A lightning strike killed the board, not the data

WD Blue 1 TB · burnt TVS diode on PCB
Home office · Keynsham

A storm sent a surge through the mains and afterwards the 1 TB WD was completely silent — no spin, no click, nothing. Total silence usually means the electronics took the hit and the mechanics are fine, and sure enough one of the board's protection diodes had blown to short the surge away. We repaired the PCB and moved across the drive's adaptive ROM, the chip holding the calibration unique to that exact head stack. It spun up first time and imaged cleanly, without a single bad sector.

4 days640 GBHard Drive →
Hard Drive100% recovered

The firmware-bricked Toshiba two other shops gave up on

Toshiba 3 TB · corrupt service-area modules
Accountancy practice · Bath

It had dropped offline during a firmware update and two firms had already declared it dead. It spun fine but identified to the system as a string of garbage — which told us the platters were healthy and the fault sat in the service area, the hidden firmware zone a drive reads before it will talk to a computer at all. Using a hardware tool we read the modules off the platters, rebuilt the corrupt ones from the good copies the drive keeps, and it reported itself correctly again. We imaged it and had every client file back before the practice's year-end deadline.

8 days1.1 TBHard Drive →
Device

SSD & NVMe

3 cases
SSD & NVMe98% recovered

An NVMe that died overnight, recovered before the deadline

Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB · controller lock-up
Freelance video editor · Southville, Bristol

He shut the laptop on a Friday with a week of client edits on it, and on Monday the BIOS saw nothing at all. NVMe drives fail like this when the controller hangs — the flash is untouched, but nothing can reach it through the normal interface. We put the drive into the manufacturer's technical mode, read the NAND directly and rebuilt the translator, the lookup table that maps logical blocks to physical flash. With that reconstructed the file system fell back into place. The edits were on a new drive in his hands the next morning.

5 days780 GBSSD & NVMe →
SSD & NVMeFull recovery

A Windows update made a Crucial M.2 vanish

Crucial P3 500 GB · controller protective halt
Graphic designer · Cheltenham

Halfway through a Windows 11 feature update the power dropped, and afterwards the M.2 simply wasn't in the BIOS. Rather than failing outright, the controller had latched into a protective state to stop further damage — a good sign, because it means the drive is trying to look after the data rather than losing it. We issued the vendor command sequence to clear the condition, the drive reappeared, and the partition mounted exactly as it had been. No rebuild, no carving — just a careful reset and a full image to a clean drive.

3 days210 GBSSD & NVMe →
SSD & NVMe97% recovered

A bricked SanDisk and a dissertation with no backup

SanDisk Ultra 3D 2 TB · dead controller
Postgraduate student · Swindon

Three years of research and the only copy of a nearly finished dissertation were on a 2 TB SanDisk that had stopped responding completely. With the controller dead we couldn't talk to the drive normally, so we lifted the data at a lower level — reading the raw NAND, using the drive's own wear-levelling map to reassemble the blocks in the right order, then untangling the compression the controller had applied. The file system came together and the thesis, its references and a folder of figures were all there, recovered with days to spare before submission.

6 days1.4 TBSSD & NVMe →
Device

USB Stick

3 cases
USB StickFull recovery

A snapped USB stick and a tender due Friday

Kingston DataTraveler 64 GB · sheared connector and controller
Sales manager · Clifton, Bristol

Someone caught it with a knee and snapped the stick clean off in the laptop port, taking the only copy of a £60k tender with it. The USB connector and the controller chip were both destroyed, but the NAND — the chip that actually holds the data — was intact. We desoldered it, read it on a flash programmer and rebuilt the file system from the raw dump, applying the right error-correction and scrambling for that controller. The tender came out whole, with two days to spare before the bid closed.

4 days9,800 filesUSB Stick →
USB Stick99% recovered

The stick that lit up but kept asking to be formatted

SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB · failed controller
Charity coordinator · Gloucester

It powered on and the light blinked, but every machine insisted it needed formatting first. That is the signature of a controller that has lost its translation tables — the data underneath is usually fine. We removed the NAND chip, read it on a programmer, and reversed the controller's scrambling and error-correction to turn the raw dump back into a readable image before rebuilding the file system on top. Every record the charity held came back intact: membership lists, accounts and years of correspondence.

5 days18 GBUSB Stick →
USB Stick96% recovered

A flash drive through a wash cycle, read in place

Integral 128 GB monolith · liquid damage
Student · Bath

It went through a full wash in a coat pocket and was stone dead by the time it reached us. On a monolithic drive the controller and flash are fused into a single epoxy block, so the usual chip-off isn't an option — and water leaves corrosion that has to be dealt with first. We cleaned and dried the board under magnification, traced out the internal test points and read the NAND in place, then rebuilt the data from the raw dump. A year of coursework and a phone backup of photos survived the swim.

8 days74 GBUSB Stick →
Device

Memory Card

3 cases
Memory Card100% recovered

An entire wedding off an SD card that said 'corrupt'

SanDisk Extreme Pro 128 GB SD · file-system corruption mid-shoot
Wedding photographer · Portishead

The card threw a write error during the speeches and then, back at the studio, asked to be formatted. She did exactly the right thing and stopped using it at once — every extra shot risks overwriting what's still there. The directory had been corrupted but the images hadn't, so we took a sector-by-sector image and carved the photos and video straight out of the raw data by their file signatures. The full day — over two thousand frames — came back, and a reputation came back with it.

3 days2,140 photosMemory Card →
Memory CardFull recovery

Crash footage rescued from a dashcam microSD

Samsung EVO 64 GB microSD · corruption on sudden power loss
Private motorist · Bristol

The camera lost power on impact and the one clip that mattered — the moments before the collision — wouldn't play. Dashcams write in a constant loop, and a hard cut mid-write tends to leave the final file half-formed and the index pointing at nothing. We rebuilt the card's allocation table and stitched the orphaned video fragments back into a playable file, checking the timestamps lined up. The clip the insurer needed came out cleanly, along with the rest of that day's loop.

48 hoursKey clip + 40 GBMemory Card →
Memory Card98% recovered

A CF card that locked up a product shoot

Lexar 256 GB CompactFlash · controller glitch
Commercial photographer · Cheltenham

Mid-session the camera froze on write and the CF card came back showing a scrambled, half-empty directory. The card's controller had glitched and corrupted the file table, while the RAW files themselves sat untouched on the flash. We imaged the card, rebuilt the directory structure, then validated every RAW against the JPEG preview embedded inside it so we could prove each file opened before handing it back. The whole shoot was intact — the client never knew there had been a scare.

4 days1,620 RAW filesMemory Card →
Device

External HDD

3 cases
External HDD97% recovered

A dropped WD Elements with its motor jammed

WD Elements 4 TB · seized spindle, parked heads
Videographer · Redland, Bristol

It slid off the edit desk mid-backup and afterwards just buzzed faintly without ever spinning up. The fall had stalled the spindle and left the heads sitting on the platters — a combination that does more damage every second it's powered. In the clean area we freed the platter stack, replaced the heads that had taken the knock and imaged the drive before they could degrade again. Four years of wedding films — the kind of footage that can never be reshot — came off almost completely.

9 days2.6 TBExternal HDD →
External HDDFull recovery

Dead enclosure, perfectly healthy Seagate inside

Seagate Backup Plus 5 TB · failed USB-SATA bridge
Small e-commerce business · Weston-super-Mare

The drive stopped showing up on every computer they tried, which often points at the little bridge board in the enclosure rather than the disk itself. We shelled the bare drive out and confirmed it spun and read perfectly — the bridge had died. The catch with these is that the bridge encrypts on the fly, so the raw disk reads as noise; we identified the scheme and applied it to get readable data. Every product photo and three years of invoices came back, copied straight onto a new drive.

5 days3.1 TBExternal HDD →
External HDD99% recovered

An encrypted LaCie that died with the only CAD archive on it

LaCie Rugged 2 TB · hardware-encrypted bridge failure
Architecture studio · Bath

The orange rugged drive went dead overnight, and the studio's entire CAD archive lived on it with no second copy. These encrypt at the bridge, so even with a healthy disk inside, pulling the platters out and reading them gives you nothing but ciphertext. We recovered the keys held in the failed bridge's controller, used them to decrypt the volume and then imaged it. Every drawing, model and project file was returned — and we reminded them, gently, why a single drive is never a backup.

7 days1.5 TBExternal HDD →
Device

Mac & MacBook

3 cases
Mac & MacBook96% recovered

A dead T2 MacBook with the SSD soldered down

MacBook Pro 2019 · T2 chip, soldered and encrypted SSD
Marketing agency · Clifton, Bristol

A coffee spill killed it, and there was no drive to simply pull — on these the storage is soldered to the board and encrypted by the T2 security chip, so the data only exists as readable files while that board is alive. We did board-level repair to bring the power rails and the storage controller back up, just far enough to image the encrypted volume, then unlocked it with the owner's password. Client campaigns, design files and a shared photo library came back; the logic board itself we wrote off.

11 days410 GBMac & MacBook →
Mac & MacBookFull recovery

APFS left in pieces by a failed macOS update

iMac 2017 · APFS container damage, Fusion Drive
Illustrator · Stroud

The update died partway through and the iMac would only boot to a flashing question mark. The APFS container — the modern Mac file system — had been left mid-transaction, its metadata pointing half at the old layout and half at the new. We imaged both halves of the Fusion Drive, rebuilt the APFS structures from the checkpoints the format keeps for exactly this situation, and mounted the volume read-only to extract everything. Every illustration, layered file and font went back without loss.

5 days680 GBMac & MacBook →
Mac & MacBook98% recovered

A FileVault iMac with its hard-drive half dying

iMac · failing HDD in Fusion pair, FileVault on
Author · Bishopston, Bristol

The spinning disk in the Fusion pair was failing and, to add to it, the whole volume was FileVault-encrypted. Order matters here: we imaged the weak drive first — in passes, prioritising the readable areas before the failing heads got worse — then recombined it with the SSD half to reconstruct the logical volume, and only then applied the recovery key to decrypt. The author's complete manuscript archive, several books' worth, came out intact and went back on an encrypted drive of his own.

8 days520 GBMac & MacBook →
Device

Laptop & PC

3 cases
Laptop & PC95% recovered

A Dell that froze, then wouldn't boot, then went quiet

Dell XPS 15 · drive failing, reallocated sectors climbing
Management consultant · Bristol

It had been freezing for a week before it stopped booting past the logo — the classic slow death of a drive shedding sectors. SMART confirmed the reallocated count was climbing every time it powered on, so each boot was making things worse. We pulled the drive, imaged the healthy zones first to bank them, then went back over the weak regions in short passes with the imager managing the timeouts. The consultant's reports, models and a year of client decks were recovered before the drive gave out completely.

6 days540 GBLaptop & PC →
Laptop & PCFull recovery

A failing PSU took the boot drive with it

HP Pavilion · drive PCB killed by over-voltage
Family PC · Chippenham

The power supply was on its way out, and when it finally spiked, the boot drive went dead and silent in the same instant. Over-voltage tends to sacrifice the drive's circuit board — there's a protection component designed to die first — while leaving the platters and their data untouched. We rebuilt the board, matched the unique ROM across so the calibration stayed correct, and the drive came straight back to life. Years of family photos and a folder of tax records imaged off without a hitch.

5 days720 GBLaptop & PC →
Laptop & PC99% recovered

A plumber's whole business on one failing office PC

Lenovo ThinkCentre · firmware-area fault
Plumbing firm · Yeovil

The office machine wouldn't boot, and the accounts software — invoices, customers, the lot — lived only on its internal drive, with no backup anywhere. The drive spun happily but couldn't be read, the tell-tale of a fault in the firmware zone rather than the mechanics. We rebuilt the affected service-area modules until the disk identified properly, then imaged it. The full customer database and every invoice came back, and they left with an external drive and a standing instruction to use it.

7 days480 GBLaptop & PC →
Device

RAID Array

3 cases
RAID Array100% recovered

A RAID 5 that lost a second disk mid-rebuild

4-bay RAID 5 · double-disk failure
Design agency · Bristol

One disk had failed weeks earlier and nobody noticed; when a second dropped during the automatic rebuild, the array went offline and the agency assumed the shared drive was gone, because RAID 5 only survives a single missing disk. We never run a degraded array — we imaged all four disks individually, read-only, then worked out the original stripe size, disk order and parity rotation by analysing the data itself rather than trusting the controller. With the layout reconstructed we rebuilt the array virtually and pulled every file. The whole project store came back, complete.

12 days4.8 TBRAID Array →
RAID ArrayFull recovery

A dead RAID controller and an array it wouldn't read

Dell PERC RAID 5 · controller failure
Solicitors' office · Bath

The hardware controller failed and the replacement refused to import the existing array — a nasty situation, because the disks were perfectly healthy and only the controller's configuration was lost. We imaged each member and reconstructed the RAID parameters from first principles, working out where the parity sat and how the data was striped without relying on metadata the dead controller had taken with it. The volume reassembled and mounted, and the firm's case files — some tied to live matters — were recovered and verified before handover.

9 days2.2 TBRAID Array →
RAID Array98% recovered

A RAID 10 rebuild that corrupted its own mirror

RAID 10 · mirror broken during rebuild
Commercial printer · Gloucester

A disk failed and the rebuild, instead of healing the array, corrupted its partner mirror — leaving a stripe and a mirror compromised at once and the volume unmountable. RAID 10 is usually forgiving, but not when a rebuild goes wrong across the wrong pair. We imaged the survivors, mapped which disks mirrored which and how the stripes were laid out, and rebuilt the data virtually from the healthiest copy of each block. Years of print-ready artwork — client jobs going back a decade — came back.

13 days3.4 TBRAID Array →
Device

NAS

3 cases
NAS100% recovered

A Synology that flashed 'Volume crashed' overnight

Synology DS920+ · 4× 4 TB, SHR over Btrfs
Photography studio · Portishead

The studio came in to a red light and a 'Volume 1 has crashed' message, with their entire catalogue inside. Synology stacks its own SHR array on top of the Btrfs file system, so a recovery here is really two rebuilds: get the array geometry right first, then repair the file system sitting on it. We imaged all four disks, reconstructed the SHR layout, then worked through the Btrfs metadata, falling back on its older tree copies where the current ones were damaged. The full image library — nearly ten terabytes — was recovered.

10 days9.6 TBNAS →
NAS94% recovered

A QNAP locked up by QLocker ransomware

QNAP TS-453 · QLocker-encrypted shares
Accountancy firm · Swindon

QLocker had swept the NAS, moving every file into password-protected archives and leaving a ransom note. Paying was off the table, so we went after what the malware left behind: because it encrypts by writing a new archive and deleting the original, the originals often still sit in unallocated space and in old snapshots. We imaged the disks and carved those deleted originals back out, rebuilding most of the firm's working files without ever touching the attacker's key. It beat their last backup by three weeks.

11 days1.8 TBNAS →
NAS97% recovered

A WD My Cloud that wouldn't wake up

WD My Cloud EX2 · failed PSU plus one bad disk
Family historian · Clevedon

The two-bay NAS was completely dark, and once we got power back into it we found one of its two mirrored disks had also failed — two faults stacked on one little box. We sorted the power issue, imaged the surviving disk in full, then worked the failed one carefully to fill the handful of gaps the good disk couldn't cover. Decades of scanned parish records, census printouts and family photographs — one person's life's work on the family tree — were recovered.

8 days1.1 TBNAS →
Device

Server

3 cases
ServerFull recovery

A VMware datastore down with the company on it

Dell PowerEdge R740 · VMFS datastore on RAID 5
Manufacturing company · Bristol

A RAID 5 datastore on their VMware host dropped and took several virtual machines — including the line-of-business server — with it. The job had two layers: rebuild the RAID underneath, then parse the VMFS datastore on top to find and extract the individual VMDK virtual disks. We imaged every member, reconstructed the array, walked the VMFS structures to locate each VMDK and pulled them out whole. The file server and the production server were handed back as working virtual disks they could boot straight away.

14 days5.7 TBServer →
Server98% recovered

Two disks down on a RAID 6 — and a third going

HP ProLiant DL380 · Smart Array RAID 6
Logistics company · Avonmouth, Bristol

RAID 6 is built to ride out two failed disks, but this array had lost two and a third was throwing errors fast — one more and it was gone for good. The priority was the marginal disk: we imaged it first, nursing it through the bad zones before it failed completely, then the rest of the set, and rebuilt the array from the double parity. The warehouse management database — every order, every stock movement — came back, and they finally moved the backups off the same rack.

12 days3.9 TBServer →
Server99% recovered

A Hyper-V host whose VMs wouldn't start

Lenovo server · Hyper-V, VHDX on RAID 10
Dental practice · Bath

An abrupt shutdown left the practice's Hyper-V virtual machines refusing to boot, their VHDX virtual disks reported as corrupt. Underneath sat a RAID 10 that also needed checking, so we rebuilt and verified the array first, then turned to the VHDX files themselves, repairing the block-allocation structures that had been left inconsistent. Once mounted, the guest file systems were sound. The practice-management system and the full patient record database were recovered, and the surgery was back to booking by the end of the fortnight.

10 days2.4 TBServer →
Device

Virtual Machine

3 cases
Virtual MachineFull recovery

A deleted snapshot that left a VM unbootable

VMware ESXi · deleted VMDK snapshot chain
IT consultancy · Bristol

A snapshot was deleted to free space, and the consolidation that followed broke the chain, leaving the virtual machine unable to start. The base disk and the delta files no longer agreed about which blocks were current. We reconstructed the snapshot chain, worked out the correct order of the deltas and replayed them onto the base to produce a single consistent virtual disk. The VM booted, the data inside was intact, and we walked the client through a snapshot policy so it wouldn't bite them again.

6 days420 GBVirtual Machine →
Virtual Machine97% recovered

A corrupt VHDX after the host fell over

Hyper-V · damaged dynamic VHDX
Software company · Cheltenham

The host crashed mid-write and a dynamic VHDX — one that grows on demand — came back with its block allocation table damaged, so Hyper-V wouldn't mount it. That table is what tells the format where each chunk of guest data physically lives; corrupt it, and the disk is just a bag of blocks. We parsed the VHDX at the block level, rebuilt the allocation map from the structures within and reassembled the guest file system. The development server and its Git repositories came back, all commits present.

7 days660 GBVirtual Machine →
Virtual Machine96% recovered

A broken QCOW2 image on a KVM host

KVM / QEMU · damaged QCOW2 image
Web hosting provider · Swindon

A storage wobble corrupted a QCOW2 image on a KVM host and the guest — a customer's web server — wouldn't start. QCOW2 keeps two levels of reference tables to find its data, and the top-level one had been damaged, orphaning everything below it. We rebuilt the QCOW2 metadata, extracted the guest volume and ran a file-system check to confirm it was sound before handover. The hosted sites and their databases were recovered, and the customer was back online the same day we finished.

8 days540 GBVirtual Machine →
Device

Database

3 cases
Database99% recovered

A SQL Server database stuck in 'suspect'

Microsoft SQL Server · inconsistent MDF and LDF
Wholesale distributor · Bristol

A server crash left the main database marked 'suspect', and SQL Server flatly refused to attach it. The data file and its transaction log no longer agreed, so the engine wouldn't trust either. Rather than risk the built-in repair that can drop pages wholesale, we worked at the page level — repairing the damaged structures, extracting the tables and rebuilding a clean, consistent database. Stock levels, the order history and the customer ledger all came back, reconciled against row counts before we handed it over.

7 days240 GBDatabase →
Database97% recovered

A botched migration that broke an InnoDB store

MySQL / InnoDB · corrupt tablespace
Online retailer · Bath

A migration was interrupted halfway, and afterwards MySQL wouldn't start — the InnoDB tablespace was corrupt and taking the whole server down with it. We pulled the table definitions from the data dictionary, then rebuilt the InnoDB pages from the per-table files to recover the actual rows, working around the pages the failure had damaged. The product catalogue, customer accounts and the order tables were reconstructed into a fresh database, and the shop was taking orders again once the data had been verified.

8 days61 GBDatabase →
Database98% recovered

An Exchange store that wouldn't mount after a power cut

Microsoft Exchange · dirty-shutdown EDB
Engineering firm · Gloucester

The server lost power and the mailbox database came back in a 'dirty shutdown' state, refusing to mount — it wanted log files to replay that were themselves damaged. We replayed what logs were usable to bring the database as far forward as we safely could, repaired the EDB structure, then extracted the individual mailboxes. Years of company email, including correspondence tied to live projects, were recovered and exported to PST so the firm could get back into them straight away.

9 days380 GBDatabase →
Device

SAN

3 cases
SAN98% recovered

An enterprise SAN that lost three disks in a week

Fibre-channel SAN · 12-disk RAID 6 LUN
Regional data centre · Bristol

A twelve-disk RAID 6 LUN shed three members in quick succession and finally dropped offline, taking a stack of virtualised storage with it. RAID 6 tolerates two failures, not three, so this needed careful reconstruction rather than a simple rebuild. We imaged all twelve disks, worked out the geometry across the set — stripe size, order and the dual-parity rotation — and rebuilt the LUN virtually from the healthiest copy of every stripe. The datastores it carried were recovered and re-presented for the team to bring back online.

16 days22 TBSAN →
SANFull recovery

Both SAN controllers down after a firmware update

iSCSI SAN · dual-controller, RAID 5 storage pool
Hosting company · Swindon

A firmware update went wrong on both controllers at once and the storage pool became inaccessible — the disks were fine, but the metadata describing how the pool was assembled was damaged. We analysed the on-disk layout to work out how the RAID 5 sets combined into the pool, rebuilt that structure and re-presented the LUNs to a test host to confirm they mounted. The hosted virtual machines were recovered in full, and the provider restored service to their customers from our images.

15 days14 TBSAN →
SAN97% recovered

A SAN expansion shelf that took a volume down with it

SAN expansion shelf · RAID 10 across SAS disks
Financial services firm · Bath

An expansion shelf lost power and a RAID 10 volume that spanned it wouldn't come back afterwards. Several of the SAS disks were marginal and needed imaging before they degraded further, so speed mattered. We imaged the set, mapped out the mirror pairs and the stripe layout across the shelf, and rebuilt the volume virtually from the soundest copy of each block. The firm's archived records — held for regulatory reasons and not optional to lose — were recovered and validated before return.

14 days9 TBSAN →
Service

Photo Recovery

3 cases
Photo RecoveryFull recovery

A year of photos a toddler deleted from a phone

microSD from Android phone · mass deletion
Family · Brislington, Bristol

A two-year-old had got hold of the phone and cleared the gallery, and a year of photos — first steps, a first birthday — seemed to be gone. Deleted images sit on the card until something writes over them, so the most important thing was to stop using it at once, and they did. We imaged the microSD and carved the deleted JPEGs back out by their signatures, thumbnails and all. The whole year came back; the only thing lost was a few seconds of the parents' panic.

48 hours3,400 photosPhoto Recovery →
Photo Recovery98% recovered

Shots off a card formatted in the camera by mistake

SD card · in-camera quick format
Hobbyist photographer · Bath

He formatted the card in-camera, ready for the next outing, then realised the last trip had never been copied off. A camera's quick format only clears the file index — it doesn't wipe the photos — so the odds were good. We rebuilt the directory from the card image and validated each RAW and JPEG against its embedded preview to be sure they opened. Almost every frame was there, recovered and handed back with the gentle suggestion to copy before formatting next time.

3 days1,250 photosPhoto Recovery →
Photo Recovery96% recovered

Twenty years of photos off a failing family drive

External HDD photo archive · widespread bad sectors
Grandparent · Nailsea

The drive that held every family photo had become painfully slow and was starting to drop whole folders — the sound of a disk quietly failing. It was riddled with bad sectors, and every browse through it was making things worse. We imaged the healthy areas first to secure them, then went back over the failing regions in careful passes, coaxing what we could from the weak surfaces. Two decades of photographs — grandchildren, holidays, a wedding or two — were saved before the drive gave up.

6 days88,000 photosPhoto Recovery →
Service

Deleted Files

3 cases
Deleted FilesFull recovery

Year-end spreadsheets gone past the Recycle Bin

Windows PC · Shift-deleted files
Bookkeeper · Bristol

A folder of year-end spreadsheets was deleted with Shift held down — straight past the Recycle Bin — right before the accounts were due. Files deleted that way aren't erased, only de-listed, and they survive until something overwrites the space, so we had her shut the PC down and bring it in rather than keep working on it. We imaged the drive and recovered the spreadsheets from unallocated space, intact and openable. The accounts were filed on time, and a backup routine went in the same afternoon.

3 days1,900 filesDeleted Files →
Deleted Files92% recovered

Contracts lost when a shared bin was emptied

Windows · emptied Recycle Bin, partial overwrite
Estate agents · Keynsham

Signed contracts were dropped into the Recycle Bin and then a colleague emptied it on a shared machine that stayed in use for a day before anyone noticed. That delay cost some of the data — a few files had already been partly overwritten — but the important ones survived. We recovered the contracts that were whole and rebuilt usable fragments of the rest, enough to identify and re-source them. The key paperwork was back, and the bin-emptying habit got a firm talking-to.

4 days640 filesDeleted Files →
Deleted Files95% recovered

A whole project folder deleted off the file server

File-server drive · deleted shared folder
Construction firm · Gloucester

An entire project folder — drawings, surveys, correspondence — was deleted from the office file server and only missed several days later. We took the server drive offline immediately to stop the deleted data being overwritten by day-to-day use, then imaged it. Working from the file-table remnants we rebuilt the folder structure and recovered the great majority of its contents, drawings and all. The project carried on with barely a wobble, and the server got proper versioned backups out of it.

5 days2.1 TBDeleted Files →
Service

Formatted Media

3 cases
Formatted Media98% recovered

The wrong drive formatted in a hurry

External HDD · quick-formatted by mistake
Freelancer · Southville, Bristol

Setting up a new machine, she clicked through a format prompt a beat too quickly and wiped the wrong drive — her working portfolio. A standard quick format only lays down a fresh, empty file system; the old data is still underneath until it's overwritten. We rebuilt the original partition and file system from the image and recovered the contents wholesale. The portfolio came back intact, and we pointed out which drive letter had nearly caused a very bad week.

3 days900 GBFormatted Media →
Formatted MediaFull recovery

A teaching USB formatted during a laptop swap

USB flash drive · quick format
Teacher · Trowbridge

Years of lesson plans and resources lived on a USB stick that got formatted by accident while migrating to a new laptop. The quick format had only reset the index, so the documents themselves were still sitting on the flash. We carved them back out of the raw data — worksheets, presentations, a decade of teaching materials — and verified they opened. Everything was recovered, and the teacher left with it backed up to two places instead of none.

48 hours12 GBFormatted Media →
Formatted Media94% recovered

A card re-initialised in a new camera body

SD card · full initialise in new camera
Photographer · Weston-super-Mare

A new camera body initialised the card before last month's shoot had been offloaded — wiping the file system, though not the image data beneath it. We carved the RAW files from the card image and matched each one against its preview, so we could confirm it was complete before listing it as recovered. The shoot came back, with only a handful of frames from a heavily reused part of the card lost. The client's job was safe.

4 days780 photosFormatted Media →
Service

Corrupted Files

3 cases
Corrupted Files97% recovered

An Outlook PST too corrupt to open

Windows · damaged 40 GB Outlook PST
Insurance broker · Bristol

Outlook refused to start and declared the PST corrupt, shutting the broker out of years of email at the worst possible time. The file had grown well past a comfortable size, and a bad shutdown had damaged its internal index. We repaired the PST's structure and extracted every mail item, calendar entry and attachment that survived, rebuilding them into a clean, openable file. The mailbox came back, and we moved them onto a server mailbox so a single oversized file couldn't hold them hostage again.

4 days40 GBCorrupted Files →
Corrupted Files95% recovered

A corrupted edit and a client deadline

Project drive · damaged project file and media
Video producer · Stroud

The drive was knocked loose mid-save and both the edit's project file and several media clips came back corrupt, days before the cut was due. We repaired the project file's structure so the timeline would open, then re-validated the linked media and carved clean copies of the damaged clips from the disk. The edit reopened with the timeline intact and the footage back in place. The producer made the deadline — and started saving versions to a second drive.

5 days1.3 TBCorrupted Files →
Corrupted FilesFull recovery

A thesis chapter scrambled by a power cut

Laptop · documents corrupted on hard shutdown
PhD researcher · Bath

A power cut hit mid-save and afterwards a thesis chapter and a results spreadsheet — months of work — opened only as gibberish. The files were the right size, so the data was there; it was the internal structure of each document that had been broken. We repaired the file containers and recovered the text and the cell data inside them. The chapter and the results were back, and the researcher walked out with version history switched on and a cloud backup running.

3 days9 key filesCorrupted Files →
Service

Missing Partition

3 cases
Missing Partition99% recovered

A drive that suddenly read as 'RAW'

External HDD · partition showing as RAW
Designer · Bristol

Plugged in as usual, the drive abruptly showed up as unformatted 'RAW', with Windows offering to initialise it — an offer that would have made things far worse. The partition table had been damaged but the data behind it hadn't moved. We scanned the image for file-system signatures, located the lost partition by its boundaries and rebuilt the table to point at it correctly. The full contents reappeared as if nothing had happened, and we copied them off rather than leave them on the same disk.

3 days1.4 TBMissing Partition →
Missing Partition97% recovered

A partition lost to an interrupted resize

Internal SSD · partition lost mid-resize
Developer · Cheltenham

A partition-resizing tool was interrupted partway, and when the machine came back, a whole volume had simply vanished. The resize had left the partition boundaries half-moved and inconsistent, so nothing pointed at the data any more. We worked out the original layout from what the file system left behind, rebuilt the partition and remounted it. The developer's code, local databases and a set of virtual machines all came back — and the resize got finished properly, on a backup this time.

4 days320 GBMissing Partition →
Missing PartitionFull recovery

A backup drive gone blank on a corrupt boot sector

Backup HDD · corrupt boot sector
Garden centre · Thornbury

The backup drive — ironically the only copy of some of it — became inaccessible and showed no file system at all. Both the boot sector and the partition entry were corrupt, so the disk read as empty despite being full. We rebuilt them from the spare copies the file system keeps tucked away for exactly this, and the volume mounted straight back. The business records were recovered, and the garden centre learned the hard way that a backup needs a backup of its own.

3 days760 GBMissing Partition →
Service

Virus & Malware

3 cases
Virus & Malware94% recovered

Files wiped by a malware infection, brought back

Windows PC · malware deleted user files
Home user · Fishponds, Bristol

An infection had swept through and deleted documents and photos across the machine. The good news, oddly, was that it deleted rather than encrypted — deleted files linger in unallocated space, whereas strong encryption is a far harder problem. We imaged the drive in an isolated rig so nothing could spread, then recovered the deleted data from the free space. The personal files came back, the malware stayed behind in quarantine, and they left with antivirus and a backup that hadn't been there before.

5 days2,800 filesVirus & Malware →
Virus & Malware96% recovered

A trojan that corrupted half the shared drive

Office PC · malware-damaged file system
Letting agency · Swindon

A trojan left the file system damaged and roughly half the shared folders unreadable. We imaged the disk in a clean, isolated environment — important, so the infection couldn't reach anything else — and rebuilt the corrupted file-system structures to regain access. The agency's tenancy files, references and accounts were recovered; the malware itself we deliberately left out of the restore. They went home with the data on a fresh, scanned drive and a proper backup in place.

6 days540 GBVirus & Malware →
Virus & MalwareFull recovery

A drive that looked empty after an infection

External HDD · malware altered the file system
Student · Bath

After catching something nasty, the external drive showed up completely empty even though it was nearly full — alarming, but telling. The malware had tampered with the directory to hide the files rather than actually deleting them, so everything was still physically there. We rebuilt the file system and the data reappeared in one piece. Coursework, a dissertation draft and a folder of photos were all recovered, and the student left with a backup and a healthy new wariness of dodgy downloads.

4 days410 GBVirus & Malware →
Service

Ransomware

3 cases
Ransomware91% recovered

A LockBit-hit server rebuilt from disk remnants

Windows server · LockBit-encrypted files
Manufacturing firm · Bristol

LockBit had encrypted the file server end to end, and the only backups were months stale. We don't pay ransoms, and we can't break strong encryption, so we went after what the attack left in its wake: earlier, unencrypted versions of files and shadow-copy fragments still sitting on disk where the malware hadn't reached. Imaging the server and carving those out rebuilt most of the live working data — enough to get the firm operating again without paying — and the gaps were filled from the old backup.

13 days1.6 TBRansomware →
Ransomware88% recovered

A photographer's NAS held to ransom

NAS · ransomware-encrypted catalogue
Photography studio · Cheltenham

Ransomware encrypted the studio's NAS and demanded payment in crypto for a key that might never have come. Instead of paying, we looked at how the strain worked: it encrypted copies and deleted the originals, and many of those deleted originals still lingered in unallocated space and in old snapshots. We carved them back out and rebuilt the catalogue around them. A large part of the archive — shoots clients had paid for and expected delivered — was saved, without a penny going to the attacker.

12 days3.2 TBRansomware →
Ransomware90% recovered

Mapped drives encrypted overnight at a survey firm

File server · ransomware on mapped shares
Surveyors · Gloucester

Every mapped share was encrypted overnight, and the firm walked in to locked files and a ransom note. We recovered earlier versions of the documents from the server's disk and reconstructed the most recent un-encrypted copies we could find from shadow data the malware had left behind. Their active survey projects came back largely whole, with no payment made, and operations resumed inside a fortnight. The lesson — offline, off-network backups — was taken on board with some feeling.

11 days980 GBRansomware →
Service

BitLocker

3 cases
BitLocker97% recovered

A failing BitLocker laptop drive, unlocked safely

Laptop · failing BitLocker-encrypted drive
Consultant · Bristol

A BitLocker-encrypted laptop drive started failing and would no longer unlock the normal way. The order of operations is everything here: decrypt a dying drive directly and you can finish it off, so we imaged the failing disk first — sector by sector — and only then applied the owner's recovery key to the safe copy. The volume decrypted and the data came out. Client work and a year of documents were recovered, handed back on a healthy drive the consultant re-encrypted himself.

6 days430 GBBitLocker →
BitLockerFull recovery

A dead BitLocker To Go drive with the key in hand

External HDD · BitLocker To Go
NHS contractor · Bath

A BitLocker To Go external drive died, and while the contractor had the recovery key, that's no use if the drive won't power up to accept it. We repaired the drive far enough to take a full image, then unlocked the image with the key offline. The encrypted volume opened and the documents — sensitive enough that the encryption mattered — were recovered while staying protected throughout the process. They went back on an encrypted drive, chain of custody intact.

7 days260 GBBitLocker →
BitLocker98% recovered

An encrypted system drive that wouldn't boot

Desktop · BitLocker system drive, boot failure
Finance team · Swindon

Windows stopped booting and the encrypted system drive sat at the recovery-key prompt — which the team had, but feeding it to a drive in an unknown state is a gamble. We imaged the disk first, then used the key against the image to mount the volume offline and safely. The finance files, spreadsheets and email were recovered and verified. They left with the data on a new drive and a note in their runbook about where that recovery key was actually stored.

5 days510 GBBitLocker →
Service

Forensic

3 cases
ForensicEvidence recovered

Deleted messages recovered to evidential standard

Storage media · deleted chat data · court matter
Law firm · Bristol

A solicitor needed deleted communications recovered and — just as importantly — documented to a standard that would stand up in court. We worked only from a forensic image, leaving the original untouched and write-blocked, and recovered the deleted records from unallocated space. Every step was hashed and logged so the chain of custody was unbroken from receipt to report. The findings were delivered in a clear, court-ready document the firm could put in front of a judge.

10 daysReport + exhibitsForensic →
ForensicTimeline reconstructed

An activity timeline rebuilt for an HR case

Laptop drive · cleared activity history
HR investigation · Bath

An internal investigation hinged on what had been done on a laptop where the history had been deliberately cleared. Working from a write-blocked forensic image, we reconstructed deleted browser artefacts, file-access traces and system logs into a single, defensible timeline of activity. Nothing was altered on the original, and every finding was documented with the methodology behind it. The reconstructed timeline was handed over as a report the organisation could rely on, with the chain of custody maintained end to end.

9 daysForensic reportForensic →
ForensicRecords recovered

Deleted ledgers recovered for a commercial dispute

Office PC · deleted financial records
Dispute resolution · Gloucester

Deleted accounting records sat at the centre of a commercial dispute, and they had to be recovered in a way the other side couldn't pick apart. We took a forensic image, recovered the deleted ledgers and supporting documents from the disk, and hashed everything so its integrity could be proven. The methodology and the exhibits were set out in a full report suitable for proceedings. The records were produced, properly evidenced, and the dispute moved forward on the facts.

11 daysExhibits + reportForensic →
Service

CCTV / DVR

3 cases
CCTV / DVRFootage recovered

Shop CCTV pulled from a DVR that wiped itself

Hikvision DVR · corrupt proprietary filesystem
Convenience store · Bristol

The shop needed footage of an incident, but the DVR had corrupted and was showing nothing on playback. These recorders don't use Windows file systems — they write to their own proprietary format that ordinary tools can't read — so we imaged the DVR's disk and rebuilt the recording structure ourselves, mapping the timeline back together. The relevant window was located and exported to standard video. The footage the police had asked for was recovered and handed over in a format they could actually play.

5 daysIncident clipsCCTV / DVR →
CCTV / DVRPartial footage recovered

NVR footage rescued before it overwrote itself

Dahua NVR · footage partly overwritten
Property landlord · Weston-super-Mare

The NVR was already recycling old footage by the time anyone went looking for the clip that mattered, so part of it had been overwritten. We imaged the disk and carved the surviving video fragments straight from it, reassembling as much of the relevant event as the recorder hadn't yet recorded over. The key sequence was recovered — enough for the landlord's purposes — with a clear note on what time range had been lost to the loop, and why moving fast matters next time.

6 days40 GB videoCCTV / DVR →
CCTV / DVRFootage recovered

A dead pub DVR drive after a power cut

Swann DVR · failed surveillance HDD
Pub · Bath

A power cut killed the surveillance drive in the pub's DVR, and the footage simply wouldn't play back. The disk itself had failed — these surveillance drives run constantly and wear out — so it needed bench work before any data could be read at all. We imaged the failed drive, rebuilt the DVR's recording structure from the image and exported the period the pub needed. The footage was recovered and handed over in a standard format, and we suggested a fresh, purpose-built drive going forward.

7 daysRequested periodCCTV / DVR →
Service

Crypto Wallet

3 cases
Crypto WalletWallet recovered

A Bitcoin wallet stranded on a dead hard drive

Laptop HDD · wallet.dat on a failed drive
Investor · Bristol

A wallet file holding a meaningful amount of Bitcoin was on a laptop hard drive that had stopped working — a mechanical failure, so no amount of software was going to coax it back without bench work. We opened the drive in the clean area, addressed the fault and imaged it, then located the wallet.dat in the recovered file system. The wallet was returned to the owner intact, and we advised an offline backup of the keys so a single drive failure could never put the funds out of reach again.

8 dayswallet.datCrypto Wallet →
Crypto WalletKeystore recovered

A deleted wallet carved back off an SSD

SSD · accidentally deleted wallet file
Trader · Cheltenham

A crypto wallet file was deleted by accident and, with funds attached, the owner feared they were simply gone. SSDs complicate this — the drive's own housekeeping can permanently clear deleted blocks — so we imaged it immediately to freeze its state before anything more was lost. From that image we carved the wallet's keystore and key files out of unallocated space and restored access. Speed was the whole game here; a day later, and the drive's background tidying might have left nothing to find.

5 dayskeystore + keysCrypto Wallet →
Crypto WalletWallet recovered

A wallet backup on a reformatted external drive

External HDD · reformatted with the wallet on it
Long-term holder · Swindon

An external drive holding a wallet backup got reformatted before the owner remembered what was on it — a stomach-dropping moment for a long-term holder. The quick format had only swapped in a fresh file system, though, leaving the original data sitting underneath. We rebuilt the previous file system from the image and recovered the wallet and its backup files whole. Access to the funds was restored, and the keys went onto properly labelled cold storage so the next tidy-up couldn't sweep them away.

6 dayswallet + backupCrypto Wallet →
Service

Water & Fire

3 cases
Water & Fire95% recovered

A flood-soaked backup drive after a burst pipe

External HDD · water-damaged electronics
Homeowner · Bedminster, Bristol

A pipe burst over a home office and the backup drive sat in water before anyone found it — dead by the time it reached us. Water and a damp board corrode quickly, so the clock was running: the sooner it's stabilised, the more survives. We cleaned and dried the components, repaired the corroded board and imaged the drive before the corrosion could eat any further into it. The family's documents and photographs came back, and the soggy original was retired for good.

9 days1.2 TBWater & Fire →
Water & Fire92% recovered

A laptop drive recovered from a house fire

Laptop drive · heat and smoke damage
Small business · Yeovil

A house fire left a laptop scorched, its drive coated in soot and heat-stressed from the inside out. Heat is unkind to drives — it can warp platters and cook the lubricant — so this was delicate work. We opened it in controlled conditions, cleaned the platters by hand and fitted fresh heads to read surfaces the originals could no longer manage. Despite everything it had been through, most of the business records survived, and the accounts the owner most needed came back.

12 days480 GBWater & Fire →
Water & Fire94% recovered

Both NAS disks pulled wet from a flood

NAS disks · submerged after flooding
Charity office · Gloucester

Flooding put a NAS underwater and both disks came out wet, dirty and unresponsive. We stabilised and dried each drive properly before powering anything — rushing that step ruins more data than the water does — then imaged the stronger disk in full and worked the weaker one to cover the gaps in the mirror. The charity's donor records, accounts and case files were recovered, and they walked away with the data on dry, healthy storage and a backup kept upstairs.

11 days1.6 TBWater & Fire →
Service

Dropped / Damaged

3 cases
Dropped / Damaged96% recovered

A portable drive dropped on the road, mid-trip

Portable HDD · head crash after a fall
Traveller · Bristol

Dropped onto pavement while travelling, the little drive clicked once and then wouldn't mount — the heads had crashed onto the platters on impact. Powering it on in that state only grinds the damage in deeper, so it came straight to the bench untouched. We fitted a matched head assembly and imaged the platters carefully, keeping the worst-affected surface for last. Months of travel photos and a folder of documents were recovered — the kind of memories that don't come round a second time.

8 days900 GBDropped / Damaged →
Dropped / Damaged95% recovered

A desktop knocked over while it was running

Internal HDD · physical shock under load
Graphic designer · Bath

The tower went over while it was switched on, and the boot drive failed in the same breath — a running drive, heads flying over the platters, is at its most fragile when it takes a knock. We found head damage on the bench, fitted a matched stack and imaged the disk before the surfaces degraded further. The design portfolio, client work and a font library years in the making were recovered and returned on a fresh drive, with a nudge towards a UPS and a backup.

9 days1.1 TBDropped / Damaged →
Dropped / Damaged97% recovered

A drive that didn't survive a house move

External HDD · impact damage in transit
Family · Chippenham

Packed loosely in a box for a house move, the drive arrived rattling and refused to read — the jostling had damaged the head stack. These knocks rarely touch the data itself; it's the mechanism that fails. We replaced the heads and imaged the platters in careful passes, mapping around the few spots that had taken the worst of it. Years of family photos and home videos came back, and the family learned that drives travel best padded, powered down and ideally backed up first.

8 days1.8 TBDropped / Damaged →
Service

Clicking / Grinding

3 cases
Clicking / Grinding98% recovered

A clicking drive switched off just in time

Seagate HDD · failed heads
Writer · Bishopston, Bristol

It had started a steady, rhythmic click and then dropped off the computer entirely. That click is the heads failing to find their bearings and resetting, over and over — and every pass scrapes the platters a little more — so we told him to switch it off and bring it in, which is what saved the recovery. On the bench we fitted donor heads and imaged the drive before the surfaces wore down further. A novel-in-progress and years of manuscripts came back whole.

7 days320 GBClicking / Grinding →
Clicking / Grinding94% recovered

A grinding drive with a motor that had seized

Desktop HDD · spindle motor seizure
Photographer · Taunton

This one didn't click — it ground, harshly, on power-up and never spun to speed. A grinding drive that won't spin usually means a seized spindle motor, the platters effectively locked in place. The fix is delicate: we transplanted the entire platter stack into a donor chassis with a working motor, keeping the discs in perfect alignment, then imaged from there. A professional photography archive — years of client and personal work — was recovered from a drive that, frankly, sounded beyond saving.

11 days2.3 TBClicking / Grinding →
Clicking / Grinding96% recovered

A backup drive that clicked now and then

External HDD · one head degrading
Accountant · Stroud

The backup drive had begun clicking intermittently and getting slower and less reliable with it — the sign of a single head starting to fail and dragging the others' performance down. Left alone it would only get worse, so we imaged it promptly: healthy zones first to secure them, then the patchy areas. Swapping in a matched head stack let us read the surfaces the failing head had been struggling with. The accounting backups — clients' books and years of returns — were recovered in full.

8 days740 GBClicking / Grinding →
Service

Not Recognised

3 cases
Not Recognised98% recovered

A drive that mounted but threw an error every time

External HDD · detected but inaccessible
Home user · Bristol

The drive showed up in Windows perfectly well but threw a read error the instant you tried to open it. That pattern — seen, but unreadable — usually means a corrupt file system on a mechanically healthy disk, which is about the best news you can get. We imaged it, rebuilt the file-system structures and regained access to the lot. Family photos and a stack of documents came back, copied off to a second drive so the next corruption wouldn't be a crisis.

4 days680 GBNot Recognised →
Not RecognisedFull recovery

A drive that reported itself as nonsense

Internal HDD · firmware service-area fault
Small business · Clevedon

The drive spun up willingly but never reported the right model or capacity to the system, showing instead as a garbled string or the wrong size entirely. That points squarely at the firmware zone — the hidden service area a drive reads before it will identify — not at physical damage. We rebuilt the corrupt modules from the good copies on the platters until the disk announced itself correctly, then imaged it. The business's files came back, and they finally put a backup routine in place.

6 days520 GBNot Recognised →
Not Recognised99% recovered

A drive no port or cable would detect

External HDD · failed bridge board
Student · Bath

Every machine, port and cable the student tried drew a blank — the drive simply wasn't detected. With a portable like this, that usually points at the USB bridge in the enclosure rather than the disk, and so it proved. We took the bare drive out, dealt with the encryption the bridge had been applying on the fly and read it directly. Coursework and a dissertation draft were recovered intact, and the bare drive went into a new caddy with a backup alongside it.

5 days410 GBNot Recognised →
Service

Won't Power On

3 cases
Won't Power OnFull recovery

A drive gone completely silent after a surge

Internal HDD · burnt PCB
Home office · Bristol

After a power surge the drive was utterly silent — no spin, no tick, no sign of life at all. That dead silence is actually encouraging: it usually means the circuit board took the surge and gave its life to protect the mechanics, leaving the platters and the data untouched. We repaired the board, transferred the drive's matched ROM so the calibration stayed right, and it powered up first time. Everything imaged off cleanly, and the home office got a surge protector on the way out.

4 days560 GBWon't Power On →
Won't Power On95% recovered

A drive that took power but wouldn't spin

External HDD · stuck heads stalling the motor
Photographer · Swindon

It drew power and gave a faint tick on start-up, but the platters never spun. That tick-and-stall is classic stiction — the heads have stuck fast to the platter surface and are physically jamming the motor. In the clean area we freed the heads from the platters, replaced the ones that had been damaged sticking, and the drive spun up properly. We imaged it straight away, and a substantial photo library came off intact before anything could seize again.

8 days1.4 TBWon't Power On →
Won't Power OnFull recovery

A boot drive killed dead by a failing PSU

Desktop HDD · over-voltage damage
Business owner · Gloucester

A failing power supply finally spiked and the boot drive went dead on the spot. Over-voltage damage tends to land on the drive's board — there's a protection part meant to fail first and short the surge away — while the platters ride it out untouched. We rebuilt the board, matched the unique ROM so the calibration carried over, and brought the drive back online. The business's accounts and email were recovered, and the dying PSU got replaced before it could take anything else with it.

5 days640 GBWon't Power On →
Service

SSD Not Detected

3 cases
SSD Not Detected97% recovered

An SSD that fell out of the BIOS overnight

SATA SSD · controller lock-up
Developer · Bristol

The SSD was there one day and gone from the BIOS the next, with the developer's code and local environments on it. SSDs do this when the controller locks up mid-operation — the flash is fine, but nothing can reach it through the front door. We put the drive into its technical mode, read the NAND and rebuilt the translator that maps logical blocks to physical flash, which brought the file system back into view. The repositories and config were recovered and pushed somewhere with a remote backup.

5 days320 GBSSD Not Detected →
SSD Not DetectedFull recovery

An NVMe gone after a firmware update

NVMe SSD · protective halt after firmware update
Designer · Cheltenham

An SSD firmware update didn't take cleanly and afterwards the NVMe drive wasn't detected at all. Rather than dying, the controller had dropped into a protective state — a defensive crouch that, while alarming, means the drive is trying to preserve the data rather than lose it. We issued the vendor sequence to clear the condition, the drive came back, and the partition was readable exactly as before. No rebuild was needed; the design files were intact and imaged off to a clean drive.

3 days260 GBSSD Not Detected →
SSD Not Detected96% recovered

A dead M.2 with a firm's live projects on it

M.2 SSD · controller failure
Architecture firm · Bath

The M.2 stopped being seen by the laptop entirely, taking a set of live project files with it. With the controller failed there was no talking to the drive normally, so we read the NAND directly and reassembled the data using the drive's wear-levelling map to put the blocks back in order, then unpicked the controller's encoding. The file system came together and the firm's CAD projects — work that was mid-deadline — were recovered and handed back on a fresh drive with a backup configured.

6 days480 GBSSD Not Detected →
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