Data Recovery Case File · Solid State & Flash · The Right Move, Made Without Knowing

The Failed Drive Is Untouched, and That Is Everything

His enquiry describes a sequence that reads as ordinary and contains the single most important decision anybody makes in this situation. A boot drive that failed: "I have replaced it with a new drive and reinstalled the system, as I had two other drives. I just want to see how much it would be to try and recover what was left on the dead drive." He bought a new drive rather than reinstalling onto the old one. Most people do the opposite — and reinstalling over a failed drive is the difference between a recoverable case and a lost one, so this is worth saying plainly before anything technical.

The decode: why the decision mattered, and what was actually on it

What reinstalling onto the same drive would have done: a system installation writes across the volume — new partition structures, a new filesystem, tens of gigabytes of system files, and then updates and caches on top. It also, on solid-state media, issues discard commands that cause the controller to erase blocks it has been told are free. So a reinstall onto a failed drive replaces exactly the structures a recovery rebuilds from and clears exactly the space the old data occupied. It is the most destructive single thing an owner can do while trying to be constructive — and it is what most people do, because the machine needs to work and the drive is right there.

Why his version is the good one: the failed drive is preserved in precisely the state it failed in. Nothing has been written to it, nothing has been repaired, no tool has attempted to make it usable. That is the best possible starting point and it costs nothing to have arranged — it just requires buying a drive instead of reusing one.

What the fault probably is: a solid-state boot drive that stops being usable has usually had its controller fail to complete initialisation, or its translation layer — the internal map converting logical addresses to physical flash locations — become inconsistent. Manufacturers build technological and safe modes into their controllers for exactly this, allowing the firmware area to be assessed, damaged modules repaired and addressing restored. That is the route, and it is tried before anything else.

The question worth answering before commissioning anything: what was actually on it. He mentions two other drives, which means his documents and media are very likely safe already — and it is worth establishing exactly what lived on the boot drive rather than assuming it was only the system. The things people forget are consistent: the desktop and downloads folders, which are on the system drive regardless of where everything else lives; browser profiles, holding bookmarks, saved logins and history; mail data, if a desktop mail application was used, since that is one large database on the system drive; application data, including licence files, settings and saved game or project states; and anything saved with a default location rather than a chosen one.

Why that matters commercially: if the answer is "nothing but the operating system," this is a short conversation and no recovery is needed. Establishing that first is free and is the right order.

On the bench

The original drive was assessed unmodified, having been preserved in its failed state by the owner's decision to fit a replacement rather than reinstall over it. Vendor technological and safe modes were attempted through the PC-3000 portfolio's SSD support, with the firmware area and translation layer assessed and damaged modules repaired until the drive addressed its media. Imaging followed on restored addressing. The user-profile locations were enumerated for the owner before commitment, since the boot drive may hold nothing worth recovering.

The outcome

The failed drive assessed in its original state, addressing restored in vendor modes and the profile locations enumerated before anything was committed. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; where a chip has to be removed, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The decode, for anyone whose boot drive has failed: fitting a new drive rather than reinstalling onto the old one is the decision that decides everything, and it costs the price of a drive. A reinstall writes new structures across the volume and, on solid-state media, has the controller erase the space your old data occupied. Then check what was actually on it — desktop and downloads, browser profiles, mail databases and application settings all live there.

Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.