Each drive we receive into the lab will follow the exact same process on the same set of workbenches. That’s exactly what this page is: an individualised walk-through of the equipment at each station (what it is, how it works, etc.) and how they determine if a recovery will be successful or not.
From intake and write-blocking, to hardware imaging, to firmware work, and then the bench for any needed mechanical repair, all jobs will visit the necessary stations and bypass the ones that are unnecessary.
The first station protects you from us.
We are serious about protecting your data. Each and every device is logged and connected to a write blocker immediately upon arrival. Thereafter all tools will interact with clones. What this means is that once the original has been write-blocked, nothing (not even a slip) can potentially cause harm to your device.
This station is the largest difference between working in a lab versus using a laptop with recovery software.
A normal computer views each and every drive as if it were completely healthy. They have long time-outs, they retry endlessly, they run many background reads continuously; and ultimately, they end the life of a weak device. Our DeepSpar imager starts the process of reading sectors with its own rules. It uses millisecond time-out values rather than minute-long values. It bypasses bad areas until they are all done, then goes back to those bad areas. If the drive freezes up during an image, it also provides a safe power-cycle. Our Atola Insight supports forensically sound operations including creating hash verified images that show mathematically, the original media was never altered.
It is just as important in what order you read as it is to actually read: your most important files are taken off the drive first, so even when a drive fails during imaging you’ll get your most important files.
For drives that do everything perfectly except actually show something.
Each internal hard disk has an independent operating system inside of it, containing service area modules which contain the translator, defect lists, and head maps required to convert the physical spinning disk platters into usable storage media. When these become corrupted you obtain “ghost drive”: identified as 0 GB, reports incorrect model name, or spins silently without responding to any read requests. The PC-3000 speaks the engineering language of each hard disk manufacturer individually (Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Samsung, etc.) and allows us to repair those modules, disable a dead head in the map, and restore the drive to such a state that station two may now be able to image it. No utility in Windows may communicate with this layer of hard disk media; that’s not salesmanship, that’s architecture!
Where drives get opened, and why what is on the shelf matters just as much as skill.
We perform the head swaps and platter work on the bench, because a 7,200 rpm platter sees even a single dust particle like gravel on the motorway. Behind that bench sit the donor shelves: rows of drives purchased only for their parts alone, catalogued by model family, manufacturing site and firmware revision. A transplant will only take place with a close match; therefore, having the correct donor already in stock often determines whether your recovery can be completed this week or must wait upon the world’s parts markets.
Solid state failures have their own kit at that same bench: NAND readers for recovering data directly from memory chips when controllers die, and monolith type work required by single piece cards & sticks. But however raw data leaves, it gets reconstructed, verified file by file, then returns back to you. Want to see all of these applied to real failure cases? The case files are the lab’s working diary.
Never. The station by station tour provided above represents the full journey your device will take (intake to return), entirely performed by our engineers, in house. This is an absolute policy and not just another marketing line.
Because it does what nothing cheaper can. A firmware platform of the PC-3000’s class costs five figures plus the years of training required to be able to use it effectively. Hardware imaging units are produced in small quantities for a small trade. A donor library is thousands of pounds worth of drives purchased solely for their components. The equipment is why hard cases are recoverable at all.
You are welcome at Castlemead any weekday from 9am to 5:30pm to hand over a device and discuss your job with one of our engineers. We perform all recovery work in-house by our own engineers and never contract to a third party.
Station one costs you absolutely nothing: free diagnostic within 48 hours, then a written quote before any recovery begins.