A fall jammed the spindle and dropped the heads onto the platters — freed and imaged before more damage could be done.
An Iomega external drive was knocked off a desk and afterwards would only buzz briefly, never spinning up. The fall had done two things at once: it seized the spindle motor and left the heads resting down on the platters. That combination is about the worst spot a drive can be in, and it deteriorates every second the drive stays powered, so the owner did exactly the right thing by stopping at once and bringing it in.
We shelled the bare drive out of its external enclosure — the USB interface was beside the point here, the fault being purely mechanical — and opened it in our clean-air environment. The platter stack wouldn't turn freely and the heads had taken a knock in the impact. Both the seizure and the head damage had to be resolved before the drive could read a thing.
In the clean area we freed the platter stack and fitted a matched donor head set, pairing it carefully to the drive so the new heads tracked the platters correctly. A drive rebuilt after a mechanical seizure is delicate and unpredictable, so imaging went onto a DeepSpar Disk Imager — keeping the load light, holding power and timeouts in check, and capturing the strongest surfaces first before asking anything of the areas the impact had touched. The PC3000 was available for firmware access throughout.
From the image we rebuilt the file system and checked the photos, documents and music opened correctly before writing them to fresh media.
We imaged about 95% of the drive and returned the great majority of the files, seven working days on. A dropped drive that buzzes or won't spin should never be powered up again in the hope it revives — every attempt does more damage. Switched off and brought straight in, as this one was, gives the best possible chance.
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.
Yes. We take the bare drive out of its enclosure and recover it directly, handling head damage in the clean-air environment and any hardware encryption from the enclosure's bridge.
From £300 plus VAT, no fix, no fee on most jobs, with a fixed quote up front.
Stop powering it. A dropped drive that clicks or will not spin is damaged mechanically, so bring it in rather than retrying it.
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.