1 The problem
The drive fell from a desk while it was connected. Afterwards it clicked, was not detected by the computer and the owner stopped using it straight away, which protected the data.
It held years of family photos and the files of a small business.
2 What we found
A free evaluation showed a repeating clicking sound and no detection in the BIOS. Inside the clean room we found that the read/write heads were damaged and one platter had light surface marks.
The electronics and firmware were healthy, so a donor-head replacement was the right approach.
3 How we recovered it
- 1Free pickup and evaluation with a clear estimate
- 2Clean-room opening and matching donor heads selected
- 3Head-stack replacement and careful first read
- 4Sector-by-sector clone onto a healthy drive
- 5File-system rebuild and folder-by-folder verification
- 6Data handed over on a new drive
4 The result
The important photos, documents and accounting files were recovered and checked with the owner before delivery. The original drive was never written to during the process.