Here is a list of some of the most common faults we get asked to perform data recovery for:
“I want to recover excel file from a defunct hard drive”.
“This is my auxiliary drive with ALL family data Seemingly Hard disk head fault. PC boots fine. Win XP runs slowly, identifies hardware but does not read any formatted data or active partition”.
“Freecom portable external Usb hard drive 400Gb capacity – had wrong adaptor plugged into it – will not work – took to local computer repairer – they could not get it to be detected by any PCs they had – data is very important as it contains many photos and research material”.
“Hard drive spinning but inaccessible, HD trashing, damaged disk”.
“I have a Thecus nas which holds about 1.5tb of music data / photos etc on a raid 5 system. ( 5 x discs 500gb each ) . Unfortunately one of the discs which was a western digital failed and I replaced the disc and the raid rebuilt no problem. Disc 5 was faulty but discs 1,2,3, and 4 were perfectly ok. However after a day’s use it has completely gone. It may have had system file done on it as it said it was read only but all folders and data seem to have disappeared. I know the discs aren’t faulty and the data should be intact as nothing should have been written to them. All discs can be labelled as 1 to 5”.
“I require data recovery performed on a replaced hard drive unit if it is possible. it failed to function and so was replaced, however there is important info on there that I need asap”.
“A very old MFM hard drive Seagate ST-251 has a FAT 16/Dos compatible format on it. Spins ok but unable to get data off it. Very flaky sometimes my old DOS system can read it but not able to copy data off it. 4 partitions on it”.
“On power up laptop fails to recognise the hard disc and fails to boot up. clunking sound can be heard”.
“I have a Powerbook G4 which crashed on upgrade to 10 OS X 10.4.11. It now won’t boot nor can I mount the drive in target disc mode. I’d like a quote on recovery”.
“Maxtor 200GB external Firewire HD – dropped from desk – no longer recognised by windows. Could you help?”.
“I have broken my Usb stick, the pins have come away for the board and I have all my final year data on it in need your help ASAP if you can”.
“My external hard drive is not being recognised by my laptop, how much for data recovery please? I have a 250 gb Packard Bell save and store 3500..external hard drive..I really need to get my family photos/movies….your help appreciated”.
“Can recover data from Maxdata 120GB HDD?. The discs are not rotating. Can you recover the data?. How do you delivered recovered data?”.
“Hard Disk engines can’t run and has pressure on it so the engine axis has bended No damage on the hard disk media. I need to recover a file from the hard disk The file size is between 4-6 MB”.
“Can I please have a cost to recover from a damaged hard drive from a dropped personal laptop. It’s a Fujitsu MHV2080AT, made 2006—05”.
“My computer is a Dell and my hard drive has got an error and we can’t get access to get all my information. We are based in Edinburgh, can you let me know what your charges are and if you would be able to recover the items and how long this usually takes?”.
“I have Maxtor 120GB HDD which is not working. The disc is not spinning (maybe the motor). Can you recover the data? If you can recover the data how do you send it back to me.”
“We have a 500GB LaCie d2 HD U2&F4&F8 EXTR II 7200rpm 8MB EK.
We’ve sent it back to LaCie and they’ve said:
Occasional blue flashing light from the unit. No sound (by way of HD noise). Does not mount on desktop and is not visible using Disk Utility. Have tried replacement cables and using all the different interfaces- USB, Firewire 400 – no difference. Bought 27/11/06. Controller replaced. Drive tested with HDTunes. Interface Board ports flashed and tested (all ports) Power tested (on/Off), LED, button, fan checked Quick bad block test Quick format (Prod format tool, made on all disks)”.
“Hi, I have an ‘un-mountable boot volume’ blue screen error on my Dell Inspiron laptop when I boot up. I have visited the Microsoft page from another computer and doing its suggestions for this error, but without joy. I have also tried booting it from the CD drive via BIOS. This machine was on its way out as it was a work laptop that I have since upgraded, but need to extract data from it – in particular, over 5000 iTunes that took ages to upload!! I would really appreciate your help, with a prompt response (I’m losing sleep over this!) and quote.”
“I need my data recovering off a 40GB 2.5″ IDE laptop hard drive. I have been led to believe the hard drive will not start up and therefore I need a specialist to recover my data.”
“Raid 5 – 4 disk array. Perc 4di controller. Controller not recognizing 2 drives. First was not recognising 1, now 2. Do you think you could help?”
“The Logic Board in my ImacG5 has broken. I need to access some Iphotos, I-movies and word and excel files as I forgot to back them up. Apples local repair centre tried to recover but has failed. Are you able to provide this service with a drop off in Edinburgh.”
“I’d like to get a quote for recovering data from an 80GB laptop hard drive damaged in a water spill. Many thanks.”
I accidentally reformatted C drive when reinstalled Windows XP. I thought I had lost all of the data and photos stored. I loaded some software and reconnected the internet connection and used a couple of times. I have since heard that data can sometimes be recovered after reformatting but that the Laptop should not be used as it overwrites files. I am looking to recover a series of family holiday photos. Do you think it will still be possible?”
“Hard drive is seen in BIOS but cannot see data in windows. How much will it cost to recover my pictures folder?”
“I have a hard drive form a dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, my laptop stopped working and I got the Hard drive replaced by dell who gave me 7 days to recover my data of the old hard drive and send back. How long do you take?”
“Dropped HDD caddy whilst unit was running.”
“Samsung hard drive has failed. Unable to recovery data through various means I have tried.”
“120gb Data from a Seagate hard drive that has crashed during a Mac OS Leopard installation (error – invalid nodes) un mountable.”
“WD USB disk WD1200B008-RNU will not spin up – starts to spin, 10 clicks, spins down again. Contains personal photos and music, not business data.”
“Samsung HD400LD Data disk failure (clicks then stops).”
“Got a Seagate 500 GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA Internal Hard Drive ST3500641AS.
with repetitive clicking noise. If I use it as internal, machine does not boot (freezes) and as external (USB), HDD starts doing ~1sec repetitive clicking.”
“I have a IDE hard drive that I’ve lost some data while I was trying to merge 2 partitions, I haven’t written to that partition since it happen, I’ve tried a number of programs but they tend not to recover as it was with all files in the correct folders, I trying to recover size on disk 14.9 GB, 80,692 files & 15,591 in folders, have you got a program that I can purchase that will recover my files.”
“I have a Hitachi 80GB Internal IDE HDD. It dropped on the floor and no longer operates. I believe the needle nose is also damaged which is preventing data from being read. I have opened it up in an attempt to swap the disc into another HDD casing but didn’t have any luck.”
“My internal laptop Hard disk just crashed. It said “Un-mountable”. I just want to recover several pictures from it (1 GB)”
“Seagate barracuda 320gb reading head broken needs a HDA transplant?.”
“WD 80Gb, not readable, searching light displays and freezes system.”
“My system is not detecting my hard drive.”
“Our computer crashed and we had to have the hard drive replaced. We have the old hard drive and we would like to try to have the data recovered specially the accounts.”
“My 500gb Seagate HD can’t be accessed via my desktop. When I use the disk utility the drive can be recognised but OSX cant repair or mount.”
“CMOS does not register drive. Laptop will not recognise HDD. HDD is a Seagate Momentus 40GB Model:ST94011A. Approx. 9GB left of free space. The only information I want to recover are Photos.”
“I performed a system recovery on my compaq Presario following possible virus problems and machine running slowly. Complete restore performed from DVD. All data files first backed up to second drive (this one!) mostly in RAR format. During the restore the machine seemed to partition and BOTH hard drives (the original and the backup) and copied the windows operating system files to the original drive. What I have left is a 120Gb drive (original drive) with an NTFS partition of 108.35Gb and a FAT32 partition of 3.43GB. The 320GB backup drive now has an NTFS partition of 13.67GB, a FAT32 partition of 3.42GB and an unallocated space of 280.98GB. The drive was previously a single NTFS partition.
The data I need recovering is in RAR format split into 12 volumes of approx 4.7Gb each. There are many other files on the disk and these would be nice to recover, however most of these are just copies of installation files.
Please tell me you can help…”
“I’m after a quote if possible for recovery of an internal Maxtor 40Gb hard drive. Up until yesterday the drive was functioning as normal, then started making a strange noise similar to a corrupt cd trying to load, like spinning in bursts ( or trying to) . Basically I have a lot of print / web work as well as some music production files I’d rather not lose. Would it be possible to get a rough quote of the sort of cost I would be looking at to have the files recovered ( if they can be) and returned on DVD.”
“My hard drive won’t spin at all, it just gets very hot real fast. How much would it cost to recover my data? It is a 200gig Maxtor HDD.”
“Diagnosis results have shown that the read write heads have failed. The disk has been opened and no visible platter damage can be seen as a result of this failure.”
“PC power supply failed and now HDD is not recognised in BIOS of replacement PC. Irreplaceable photo’s of kids when they were babies is required to be recovered from the C:/ partition of Maxtor 40GB HDD.”
“Western Digital Caviar SE SATA hard drive on my home PC has died with a Blue Screen “Un mountable Boot Volume” error. Possibly caused by a power outage, but had been running slow for some time. Runs XP Home edition. 250Gb drive with masses of family photos, docs, music etc. Ran chkdsk to no avail.”
“Controller card on hard drive has burned out and hard drive will not spin up.”
“60gb Hard drive on a dell laptop using windows XP, local computer shop can spin the drive but not retrieve anything. got the blue screen of death and would not boot up thereafter. Need my documents, my pictures, my music, outlook files.”
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