A dropped Fujitsu LifeBook whose drive had begun clicking and then dropped off the system entirely — a set of client case files sitting behind the fault.
A dropped Fujitsu LifeBook whose drive had begun clicking and then dropped off the system entirely — a set of client case files sitting behind the fault.
On our equipment the drive showed climbing reallocated and pending sector counts and long delays over parts of the disk — ageing heads toiling across a tiring surface. There was no single catastrophic failure, just a drive wearing out, which is one of the more deceptive situations because the drive keeps half-working right up until it doesn't.
We imaged it on a DeepSpar Disk Imager, capturing the healthy regions first to secure them and coming back to the difficult areas in controlled passes rather than forcing a weak surface until it failed. The imager's grip on read retries and timeouts is what keeps a tired drive alive long enough to give up most of its data; the PC3000 took the drive's defect management where its own had broken down. The image built up steadily over several passes.
From the completed image we rebuilt the file system and checked the active case files and the great majority of everything else opened correctly, then wrote it all to fresh media.
We recovered the drive's data over seven working days, the time reflecting the careful, staged imaging an ageing drive needs. For a practice holding client files, the lesson is a standing one: business records should be backed up automatically, because the working drive in an old laptop is precisely the kind of single point of failure that eventually gives way.
DeepSpar DDI · 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.
Getting your data back begins with getting the device to us. Pack it up safely, pop your contact details inside, and send it over — once we’ve run the free diagnostic, we’ll confirm your exact price in writing before any work starts.
Posting it? A tracked, insured service is what we’d recommend. Rather drop it in? You’re welcome Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm — just package the device up as above first.
Want a bit more detail first? Fill in the form with more about your issue and an engineer will review it and send you a custom quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0191 406 1051.
Usually, yes. A dead laptop is often a motherboard fault sitting over a perfectly healthy drive — we take the drive out and image it on the PC3000, or recover a failed drive in our clean-air environment.
From £300 plus VAT, with no fix, no fee on most jobs and a fixed written quote before any work.
For most laptops the drive can be removed and sent on its own — a local computer shop will do it in minutes. Where the storage is soldered to the board, or you'd rather not open it up, send the whole laptop and we'll take care of removal and testing.
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.