The platters were perfect — the fault sat in the hidden firmware area a drive reads before it will talk to a PC.
A Samsung Spinpoint that had vanished from the BIOS after its service area suffered a firmware corruption.
Connected to our equipment the drive responded but reported an invalid identity — the tell-tale mark of a service-area problem rather than a head or platter fault. This is firmware-level territory, entirely separate from the data area the user ever sees, and not something a normal computer can reach or repair.
The tool for this work is the PC3000. We reached the drive's service area directly, read out its individual firmware modules and pinned down the ones that had corrupted. Drives keep backup copies of their critical modules for exactly this scenario, so we reconstructed the damaged modules from the good copies and the drive's own micro-code, then re-initialised it. It immediately reported its correct model and full capacity and became readable again. From there we took a full image of the now-cooperative drive.
With the firmware repaired the drive imaged without a single bad sector. We rebuilt the file system from the image and opened a spread of the image files and catalogues to confirm everything was whole before writing it to fresh media.
Every image file and catalogue came back intact, four working days from start to finish. A service-area fault looks alarming — a healthy-sounding drive the computer flatly won't recognise — but the data is almost always sitting there untouched, waiting for the firmware to be put right.
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 — 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 alongside the PC3000, always working from a copy.
Hard drive recovery starts at £300 plus VAT, with no fix, no fee on most jobs. You get a fixed written quote before any work starts.
No. Every power-on of a clicking or failing drive risks fresh 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.