Devices · internal hard disks
Four things on a hard drive give out: the heads, the motor, the board and the firmware. Every dead disk here failed at one of them. How much comes back depends on what happens next. Switch it off and let the bench take over.
Run the problem past an engineer
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| What appears | What's behind it | First move |
|---|---|---|
| You need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it | RAW in Windows says the file table has broken, not that the files underneath have | Disconnect it and refuse the format |
| Data error (cyclic redundancy check) | A read failed its checksum, which nearly always means bad sectors | Cancel the copy and image it properly |
| The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error | The drive has stopped answering reliably | Switch off, write down the model |
| Windows detected a hard disk problem | SMART is forecasting the end of the drive | Get the files off today, or image it |
| 0x800701E3 — a fatal device hardware error | The hardware gives out part-way through a transfer | Stop retrying; this is lab work |
| S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD at power-on | The drive's own start-up check has failed | Never boot off that disk again |
| The BIOS shows 0GB, or a mangled model name | Firmware or translator damage — the disk has lost track of itself | Lab firmware work only |
Every item gets its own case number on the day it lands here. An engineer traces the fault, gives you a plain assessment of what is realistically recoverable, and puts one fixed price in writing. The diagnosis is free, you are under no obligation, and chargeable work starts only when you say go.
The disk goes onto a hardware imager designed to ease data out of weak areas rather than batter them. Nothing else starts until a clean copy of it is sitting on our own storage.
Dead heads are replaced from a matched donor stack, a jammed spindle is freed, and a burnt board is repaired with the ROM off your own drive.
All of that happens on the image. The file system goes back together there, and you see the full list of what came out before a penny is owed.
You get the full list of recovered files first, and nothing is charged until you approve it. Data goes back on fresh media, return postage paid, and the job stays open on our side until you confirm every file opens at your end.
So how often do disks actually fail? One large open dataset exists, and it is Backblaze's Drive Stats. Its 2025 figure works out at 1.36% annualised across a fleet north of 344,000 datacentre drives, better than the 1.57% logged a year earlier. Drives at home or in an office get an easier ride and fail less often, though they usually give far less warning first.
The platters had not moved in weeks and two heads were gone. Donor heads went in; 96% came off on the first imaging pass, and every ledger file, invoice and photo went back verified.
Rarely. Clicking says the heads can no longer read; it says nothing about what's on the platters. Matched donor heads and patient, low-speed imaging get most of the data off most of these drives. It's the repeated power-ons that do harm, not the sound itself.
Usually yes — tell us straight what was done to it. Where a drive has been opened outside a lab, the quote waits until the platters have been inspected, and harm already caused can take the job out of no-fix-no-fee.
Diagnosis is free, and nothing chargeable begins until a fixed price is on paper in front of you. Logical faults sit at the lower end of the scale; work that needs donor parts fitted costs more. The number always comes before the work.
Yes. IDE, early SATA and SAS drives turn up here regularly. Age alters which tools we reach for, nothing more.
Switch a failing device on again and you lose a little more. Open a case before you do — the diagnosis is free, whatever it finds.