Failing drives, lost files? Written by the engineers that recover all this stuff daily (in-house), here are the straight talking guides on failed drives and what not to do before you make it worse!
The one thing you should do with a clicking/failing drive is stop using it and call us. Turning on a bad drive is usually what makes the data unrecoverable and unretrievable.
Clicking, vanishing, dying, dead: the most common symptoms for a failing hard drive, and what to do about them.
Clicking, not recognised, RAW, dropped: what does each mean and what do you need to do?
A “click of death”: what it really means and how to save your precious data.
Not recognised/RAW/formatting error: causes and fixes without harming your precious data.
The warning signs (act now!) before your hard drive gives out
What does “dead” really mean? The data usually is fine (and how to get it back)
When is it safe to do it yourself (DIY) on your own computer system, and how to recover deleted files without making things worse?
Higher-stakes recovery: failed array/solid-state drives explained in plain English.
Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsung & SanDisk: what to do when yours fails (the makes we see most often).
Clicking internal, external and NAS Seagate drives; or dead ones, and those that don’t show up at all.
What is wrong with a Hitachi that doesn’t detect? Often it’s a firmware problem, not a bad drive. And the software you think will fix the clicking one isn’t going to work either.
WD external drives: they’re encrypted. How do we recover your data?
Laptop and desktop drives, and Canvio drives: these usually die from mechanical failures.
870 EVO, 980 PRO, T7 portables (etc.): bricked, worn out, or they won’t even be detected.
Portable SSDs, flash drives & SD cards: all of these things fail too.
The gauge, fuse, failure no percentage predicts.
First listen for the noise. Then read the 3 sector counters that will tell you the truth.
How Ledger style devices protect keys, and what happens if your device breaks?
One BIOS check splits benign causes from bench cases.
Windows’ pre-made master key for BitLocker, and the only real limitation on using it.
An explanation of how an architecture with paired mirrors is compared fairly in terms of number of failures, and the method used to calculate failures.
The point at which an Apple Genius is unable to assist further; as well as what actually gets erased during a macOS Recovery process.
Sequence of events over the next 30 minutes. Freeze. Raid the cloud bins. Carve.
Test of four questions. Tools that do actually work.
Three-step rescue process. Format trap to refuse.
The tool will be determined by where your files are located. This is the honest short list of tools and the TRIM truth as well.
Nearly all cases can be attributed to four reasons, and a ten minute solution that can save your photos.
A lab’s findings: Honest positives for the software; free tier truths; and when not to use this software for scanning.
Reading about this will only get you so far. Contact us with some details, or contact us by phone and we’ll provide you a factual answer and perform a complimentary diagnostic (in most cases you only pay if we recover your data).