In-depth write-ups of real recoveries and investigations — the diagnosis, the tools and exactly how each job was brought back. Most drives are imaged on our PC3000 and DeepSpar systems before any recovery begins.
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000, model HDS721075KLA330, 3.5" SATA
A Hitachi Deskstar 750GB stopped powering up, so its owner fitted a matching donor PCB — and lost the original 8-pin ROM chip in the process.
Seagate Barracuda 3.5" SATA, 1TB, two partitions (system + data)
A 1TB Seagate Barracuda began clicking loudly after overheating, then stopped mounting altogether.
Seagate Barracuda 3.5" SATA, 500GB, approximately ten years in service
An IT support firm was handed a decade-old dropped Seagate Barracuda, clicking and unrecoverable by software.
Seagate Barracuda 2TB, ST2000DM001, 3.5" SATA
A 2TB Seagate Barracuda was already logging SMART errors when its SATA connector snapped during rescue attempts.
WD Black 1TB, WD1003FZEX, 3.5" SATA (secondary storage drive)
This sequence is so common we could set our watch by it: a single folder throws "corrupted or unreadable", CHKDSK runs and apparently cures it.
Seagate Barracuda 4TB, ST4000DM004, 3.5" SATA (SMR generation)
A 4TB Seagate Barracuda that had never been moved, dropped or mistreated began clicking in a loop and vanished from the BIOS.
Seagate Barracuda 1TB, 3.5" SATA internal (storage drive; OS on…
Over one weekend a 1TB Seagate went from a single click to clicking until the PC froze. It was still under warranty — which is exactly the trap.
Two drives arrived together: one quick-formatted with 4TB of Antarctica photography and untouched for a year, one dropped and audibly scratching.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, 1TB, 3.5" SATA (bare drive, used for backups)
A bare Seagate 7200.11 — the most famous firmware generation in hard drive history — arrived clicking on spin-up and cycling down again.
Seagate 2TB, 3.5" SATA (data drive, ~70% full)
For months, every backup attempt froze the machine — so the backups never happened.
Hitachi Deskstar 1TB, HDT721010SLA360, 3.5" SATA
After a power fault — and smoke from the original board — a determined owner bought two donor drives and a new PCB himself.
Seagate Barracuda 1TB, 3.5" SATA, continuously powered in an external…
A 1TB Barracuda lived in a dock, continuously powered, for years — and the first time it was disconnected, it never spun again.
Seagate Barracuda 2TB, 3.5" SATA (secondary media/storage drive)
An end-of-life Barracuda froze mid-rescue-copy, and Windows answered the reboot by launching CHKDSK — whose stage-one estimate read seven hours and rising.
Seagate IronWolf 8TB, ST8000VN004, 3.5" SATA — physically healthy
A university physics department's 8TB IronWolf was repartitioned in error.
Seagate 2TB, 3.5" SATA (2013), internal data drive
A 2013 desktop drive slowed to a crawl, vanished on a couple of reboots, and held an email archive nothing else had a copy of.
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB, 3.5" SATA, internal file storage…
Before this 3TB drive hung Disk Management and defeated a USB adapter, Windows had quietly logged a few hundred bad-block warnings.
Western Digital 4TB, external, ~80% full (photo storage + TV media duty)
A 4TB drive that shuttled between a PC and a television began taking ages to appear, then declared itself RAW and demanded a format.
The enquiry admitted everything up front: two of the three failed drives had already undergone DIY platter transfers into donor cases, outside any cleanroom.
Seagate 1TB portable, working storage for unedited wedding shoots (Mac…
A wedding photographer restarted her slow MacBook with the storage drive still attached.
Seagate ST3000DM001, 3TB, 3.5" SATA — internal PC storage, backup…
She was partway through backing it up when the drive gave out — an ST3000DM001, a model whose failure rates became public record.
3 × Western Digital 10TB, 3.5" SATA — removed ("shucked") from…
All three of his 10TB drives stopped spinning after a surge, yet the boards showed nothing — no scorch, no smell, no darkened traces.
Western Digital 2TB (WD20EZAZ), 3.5" SATA — family PC storage, ~1.5TB…
He'd backed the drive up in the past, but couldn't say what had changed since — so rather than guess at the gap, he asked us to quote for everything.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, 200GB, 3.5" SATA (in a third-party external…
Working yesterday; today, a mechanical noise he could only describe as a metal ball dropping.
Seagate 2TB external (Maxtor-branded enclosure), 2.5" USB
After a short drop from his bag, the drive's light came on but the disk wouldn't spin — just a beeping sound.
Western Digital Green 2TB (WD20EZRX, 2014), 3.5" SATA, via USB dock
He'd discovered it himself: cool the drive and files were briefly accessible; let it warm to room temperature and it clicked into silence.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 500GB, 3.5" SATA (external duty,…
The drive ran unusually hot, was switched off to cool — and never started again.
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB, 7200rpm, 3.5" SATA (two-platter,…
After his drive failed with clicking sounds, he removed the lid, found concentric scratches near the top platter's edge, photographed them.
1TB 3.5" hard drive from a Linux-based HDD media player (10 years'…
For a decade he'd filled his media player over the network; when it stopped working, Windows demanded a format and even Linux refused the mount.
Seagate 1TB portable; 427GB in use — academic research: documents and…
Her troubleshooting had produced a result more unnerving than simple failure. The 1TB Seagate froze both a Mac and a Windows PC the moment either tried.
Second-hand external USB hard drive (age and service history unknown…
He was given a used external drive, moved his photos onto it as one big archive, deleted the originals.
Kingston 512GB USB 3.0 stick — sole copy of the contents during a…
Uploading two files at once corrupted his 512GB stick; recovery software found everything by name.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB, 3.5" SATA — from a mains-powered…
Enclosure and power supply died together; a replacement supply blinked under overload; the extracted drive shut down a tower PC's PSU instantly.
2TB 2.5" SATA hard drive — user-installed in a PS4; save data not…
The graphics glitched, the console shut down, and the 2TB drive inside never spun again — with years of save games existing nowhere else.
Seagate Barracuda 320GB, 3.5" IDE/PATA (mid-2000s) — from an external…
Handed to him by a friend, already out of its enclosure, completely dead — a 320GB IDE-era Barracuda from the ribbon-cable age.
Seagate Barracuda Compute 8TB, 3.5" SATA (2019) — archive of…
He was copying the collection to another disk when the drive failed — years of archived television, some of it rare.
Seagate Personal Cloud 3TB — single-bay network storage appliance;…
Moved for some home rewiring, the single-bay network drive fell from a small table.
Western Digital 4TB SATA (external duty) — family photo and video…
The family photo drive slowed, hung on folders, and then CHKDSK produced an error few ever see explained: no space left to replace bad sectors.
3 × Seagate BarraCuda 5TB, 3.5" SATA — a small company's storage;…
A small company's three 5TB drives defeated their local IT technician, who gave an honest verdict — irretrievable.
External 3.5" hard drive, several years in service
The drive connected and disconnected a minute later, so he opened it at home, found the heads out of their parked position, and carefully moved them back.
Debian PC — 1TB system drive (ext4 root, resized live from 931GB →…
This case came from a Linux user fluent enough to narrate his own accident precisely — which makes it the ideal specimen of two mistakes that snare even.
Hitachi Deskstar 160GB, 3.5" IDE — board component burnt by a failing…
An old IDE-to-SATA adapter burnt a visible component on his Deskstar's board.
Seagate 500GB 2.5" mobile hard drive — field survey data for…
A road surveying firm's portable drive failed with a substantial body of client survey data aboard.
Two failed externals, including a WD 1TB — invisible in Finder; the WD…
For months a popup insisted a printer maker's monitoring framework would damage her computer — multiplying when dismissed.
Western Digital My Passport, 2.5" portable, USB 3.0
A hardware-encrypted 4TB WD My Passport began beeping and disappeared from the computer after a year of backups.
Western Digital portable external, WD40NDZW, 2.5" USB-native
A 4TB WD external developed slow file access and stalling transfers — early bad-sector symptoms.
WD My Passport 1TB, 2.5" USB portable
Most impact cases reach us within days, wrapped in panic. This one arrived wrapped in years.
WD My Passport 1TB, 2.5" USB portable
A customer forwarded us another company's diagnosis of his failed WD My Passport — firmware faults, bad sectors, heads apparently intact.
WD My Passport 500GB, WD5000BMVW, 2.5" USB-native (hardware-encrypting…
A WD My Passport fell from a chair and went perfectly silent — LED on, no spin, no click, nothing.
Toshiba StorE Alu 2S, 2TB, 3.5" desktop external (mains-powered),…
A 2TB Toshiba desktop external tipped from upright onto its side while running — no dramatic fall, just a tip.
WD My Passport 4TB, 2.5" USB-native portable
A 4TB My Passport holding a doctorate's final experimental data would only flicker to life when held at exactly the right angle.
WD My Passport for Mac 4TB, 2.5" USB-native, HFS+ formatted
A 4TB My Passport for Mac spent a year on a desk, never dropped, then quietly stopped mounting. It clicked for a while — then even the clicking stopped.
WD My Passport 2TB, 2.5" USB portable (used with a Mac)
Some enquiries undersell themselves. This customer dropped off a clicking, unmountable 2TB My Passport containing years of research.
WD My Passport for Mac, 4TB, 2.5" USB-native, HFS+ formatted
A 4TB My Passport worked for years on a desk, made two car journeys to a parent's house and back — and never mounted again. Nobody saw anything happen.
WD My Passport 1TB, 2.5" USB portable
This enquiry arrived with evidence attached: the customer had pasted his CHKDSK output, mid-run, into the message — stages, timings.
WD My Passport Ultra 1TB (internal drive WD10SDZW; USB-C integrated on…
Slow transfers, a cancelled recovery scan, a CRC error, then total disappearance: one customer documented his Passport's decline in four numbered stages.
WD My Passport 320GB, 2.5" USB portable
The most ordinary accident in data recovery: a My Passport slid off the bed, and afterwards spun briefly with a clicking sound and was never detected again.
WD My Passport Ultra 500GB, 2.5" USB portable
A My Passport spun up, showed its light, even appeared in WD's own utility — until any test was selected, at which point it vanished.
WD My Book 6TB desktop external (mains-powered; hardware-encrypting…
A 6TB My Book went from needing several attempts to spin up to total silence.
WD My Passport 1TB, 2.5" USB-native, WD Security password protection…
After a half-metre fall onto carpet, a password-protected My Passport appeared in Windows only as a CD drive with 0 bytes.
WD My Passport 500GB (2011, WD5000BMVW), 2.5" USB-native,…
Overnight and without incident, a 2011 Passport went from working to a ghost.
Seagate Backup Plus external, USB 3.0; internal drive Seagate…
An IT firm's enquiry read like a procurement request: device details, fault summary, and direct questions about process, logistics and turnaround.
WD My Passport Ultra, 2.5" USB portable
Most enquiries describe symptoms. This one also described a decision, and it's the decision this page is named for.
WD My Passport, 2.5" USB-native (hardware-encrypting family)
Faced with a failed My Passport, its owner did the classic forum fix — swapped the board from an identical drive.
Seagate 4TB external USB (portable), ~2TB in use
A 4TB Seagate started making quiet, rapid beeping noises and vanished from the OS — with two terabytes of mostly Steam games aboard.
LaCie 6TB desktop external — two drives, striped as one volume; 4…
After a power outage killed his 6TB LaCie, the owner recovered everything with consumer software.
WD My Passport for Mac 2TB, ~1 year old, carefully kept
Some enquiries need a diagnosis; this one also needed an answer to its last line. A 2TB My Passport for Mac, bought new barely a year earlier.
WD My Passport 1TB (2014), 2.5" USB portable
This customer's troubleshooting was methodical to a fault — and it produced a result that would confuse anyone.
WD My Passport 4TB, 2.5" USB; >3TB of professional RAW/JPEG…
Over 3TB of camera RAW and JPEG files, client deadlines counting down, and a 4TB My Passport clicking at her MacBook.
Western Digital WD10TMVW 1TB — a My Passport AV variant, built for…
The customer forwarded another company's formal evaluation of his Passport AV drive — a checklist of PASS lines and one decisive FAIL.
WD My Passport 2TB, 2.5" USB portable
He counted: whirr, click, twelve attempts in about twenty seconds, then silence — and sensibly stopped testing.
WD My Passport (older generation), 2.5" USB portable; family video…
He was helping his mum, and his troubleshooting log was better than most professionals': her old My Passport, heavy with family videos.
WD My Passport Ultra 2TB, 2.5" USB portable; the family photo archive
The enquiry came from a son-in-law doing the family's technical worrying: his father-in-law's 2TB My Passport Ultra — the home of all the family photos.
WD My Book Essential (desktop external, hardware-encrypting bridge);…
His knocked-over My Book briefly worked, then logged a single bad-block event — and he powered it off on the spot.
LaCie 4TB portable (USB), Mac workflow; primary working storage for a…
She worked from the drive daily; it sounded completely normal, blinked its light, and appeared on no Mac anywhere.
2.5" external hard drive (USB portable)
A few seconds underwater, a quick case-opening, hours of hairdryer, and then the test connection.
WD My Passport for Mac 2TB, 2.5" USB portable
His troubleshooting had produced a neat paradox worth a page of its own. The 2TB My Passport for Mac — working perfectly until it wasn't.
WD My Passport Ultra 2TB, 2.5" USB — nearly full; audio and video…
A nearly full 2TB Passport turned RAW almost overnight, and its owner arrived with earned scepticism.
Seagate 4TB external hard drive — clicking and spinning down;…
The first lab's report was professional — clicking drive, clean-room examination, failed heads, the works — and only the price sent him looking.
WD My Passport, 2.5" USB portable — ~900GB+ free space reported;…
Her drive appeared in File Explorer, showed the right free space in Disk Management, even sat politely in the eject menu.
8TB external hard drive — long-term archive: ~7 years of photos,…
Setting up a new PC, he pointed the Windows installer at the big drive that held everything.
External hard drive — ~1.5TB of film, audio and image work; in use…
Mid-way through a troublesome program install, her external drive — 1.5TB of film, audio and images.
Seagate Backup Plus 4TB external — no drops, no damage; failed…
His Mac crashed, he hard-restarted it, and the 4TB external has beeped instead of mounting ever since — did the restart kill it?
WD My Book Essential 2TB — fell; now produces an abnormal noise;…
The enquiry's core was a document: the complete Disk Utility First Aid log, pasted verbatim.
Seagate Expansion 1TB external — heavily loaded with data
This enquiry arrived as a well-observed pair of symptom streams. Stream one, the computer's.
1TB external hard drive — personal file archive; macOS installer…
No room on the MacBook, so the update went to the external — which then briefly became the Mac.
Seagate Expansion 1TB external — final-phase doctoral research;…
The stakes arrived quantified: a PhD student, planning to submit "in the next month or so," had just lost the last eight weeks of research.
LaCie 8TB Thunderbolt desktop drive, ~9 years in service — video…
The drive in this enquiry had earned its retirement several times over: an 8TB LaCie Thunderbolt, around nine years old.
WD Black 4TB (3.5" SATA) · Seagate Barracuda 3TB (3.5" SATA) · Samsung…
A PSU tester mishap sent bad power through a running system and silenced a 4TB WD Black, a 3TB Seagate and a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO in one moment.
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB, 2.5" SATA SSD (system drive)
After a failure mid-Windows-update, a Samsung 850 EVO wouldn't just refuse to boot.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB, M.2 NVMe SSD
After a power cut, a Samsung 970 EVO Plus reported itself empty; another lab diagnosed a faulty translator module and admitted its tools couldn't reach.
Samsung Portable SSD T7, 4TB, USB-C, exFAT
A 4TB Samsung T7 enumerated by name on every computer, ran warm, and presented no storage at all.
Samsung 870 EVO 1TB, 2.5" SATA SSD (one of an identical pair)
Mid-use and without warning, a 1TB Samsung 870 EVO began reporting 0 bytes total capacity.
2.5" SATA SSD, ~1TB class, HFS+ (Mac-formatted); storage-only drive,…
Elsewhere in this archive sits an honest page about the SSDs nobody can currently open. This is its counterweight.
Fanxiang S501Q 2TB NVMe SSD (value-segment drive)
A 2TB budget NVMe held years of one modder's custom maps, scripts and source files — no backup.
Windows Storage Spaces pool: 2 × 2TB HDD + 2 × 60GB SSD; two virtual…
His tiered Storage Spaces pool — two hard drives, two SSDs, mirrored virtual disks on ReFS.
2.5" SATA SSD, 512GB — system drive of a reconditioned desktop;…
His PC had come out of sleep to "drive not found"; the 2.5″ 512GB SSD inside was dead to every host.
7.68TB enterprise SATA SSD (Micron 5400 Pro class), ext4, Linux…
An engineering company's Linux system lost a failed umount, and the multi-terabyte SSD came back looking factory-new.
Samsung T7 Shield 4TB portable SSD (USB-C NVMe class) — heavy…
After heavy use, his rugged 4TB portable SSD crashed and re-introduced itself as a 1GB device.
A 4TB WD storage drive vanished from Windows, Disk Management and the BIOS in one moment — spinning, but absent.
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 64GB USB flash drive
A SanDisk Cruzer Blade sat connected to a laptop through heavy rain, soaked for hours, and months later was dead to every PC.
SanDisk 32GB USB flash drive, carried on a lanyard in daily use
A student's 32GB SanDisk stick — a term's notes and coursework, carried daily on a lanyard.
USB memory stick, ~30GB of school coursework; classic construction…
The most common way USB sticks die violently: the laptop fell with the stick still inserted, and the connector tore loose from the circuit board.
Seagate Expansion Portable 4TB, 2.5" USB
A precise listener described his dead 4TB Seagate exactly: LED on, no spin-up, no vibration.
Kingston DataTraveler G4 16GB USB stick — Type-A connector torn off,…
The USB plug had been ripped clean off his Kingston stick, taking the solder pads with it.
SanDisk Ultra Flair 256GB USB 3.0 flash drive
The enquiry read like a repair log: connector damage noted, board extracted and cleaned, imaging attempted from Linux.
Toshiba 32GB USB stick — graphic-design archive (working files and…
The stick held years of her graphic design work — working files and finished pieces — then sat forgotten in a drawer.
SanDisk 64GB USB flash drive — contents held in an encrypted vault;…
The sequence in this enquiry contains a sentence that should stop every reader: after his encrypted 64GB SanDisk stick began demanding a format and several.
Kingston 16GB hardware-encrypted USB stick — work files; owner holds…
Stopping to help a stranger cost her the work stick in her pocket: dropped on the road at the scene, likely driven over, and now showing no light, no sound.
SanDisk USB stick — 19GB of wedding videography; the sole surviving…
Nineteen gigabytes of wedding video on a stick that transfers at a crawl, producing files that glitch in every player.
SD card (128GB class), used in a Nikon Z8; exFAT
A wedding filmed on a Nikon Z8 was mid-transfer when the SD card failed.
SD card, 128GB, used across multiple photography shoots
A young photographer's 128GB SD card — 17,000 JPEG and RAW files across many shoots.
MicroSD card from a DJI Mavic Air 2
A microSD from a DJI Mavic Air 2 demanded formatting, then stopped being detected at all.
SanDisk 64GB microSD (GoPro), verified genuine by the manufacturer…
A microSD holding one irreplaceable recording — a wedding proposal — began reporting itself as a 32MB card.
SanDisk 512GB SD card, in continuous professional use
A wedding photographer's 512GB card was formatted after a cloud backup silently failed — then shot on for another year.
SanDisk 64GB SD card (in-camera use)
Switching video modes, a camera prompted to format its SD card — and its owner said yes, twice, before realising. Every recovery app then failed him.
Samsung EVO 64GB microSDXC
A 64GB microSD went into a high-street photo printing kiosk working and came out invisible.
400GB microSD (from phone use); completely undetected by all devices
Second-attempt cases arrive carrying their history, and this one's was unusually informative: a 400GB microSD that had died without warning in a phone.
SanDisk 32GB CompactFlash (professional DSLR use, Canon 5D)
A professional CompactFlash card stopped mounting in every reader on every computer, and an organisation's own engineers couldn't reach its contents.
SanDisk Extreme 128GB SD card; hundreds of photographs
The copy started fine, then Windows announced the card didn't use a recognised file system and offered a format.
SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card (GoPro)
The camera powered down while it was still recording, and afterwards the card threw an SD error and vanished from the computer.
SanDisk 8GB SD card (compact camera)
His camera flagged corruption; his PC couldn't see the card at all — the reader showed a nonsense capacity instead.
Samsung 128GB microSD (genuine, ~3 years old, light use) —…
Windows demanded a format, the action camera denied a card existed at all.
microSD card (phone storage) — ~10GB of photos and videos
The microSD corrupted, he ran recovery software but didn't complete a recovery, and days later the card stopped registering on anything.
Kingston 32GB microSD (smartphone storage)
His microSD spent a week in a wallet pressed against a bank card, then never read again.
SanDisk 64GB SD card — professional wedding coverage, Sony A7 IV
Every trade has the case that distils it, and this archive closes its hundred-and-fiftieth entry on one.
4GB microSD card — primary storage of a family's phone across many…
A thousand songs, years of his kids growing up, the dog, every event worth filming.
PNY 128GB microSD — camcorder video; under half full; two prior…
His camcorder's 128GB microSD had been through a local shop and a national recovery lab; the lab's verdict was that no pinout existed for the device.
SD card — professional shoot; tens of gigabytes of RAW images for a…
The SD card came up faulty, the downloaded software found his images and returned a few.
PNY 8GB microSD — corrupt; provenance uncertain (believed to be from a…
Two weeks after his father died, he found a microSD he thought — but couldn't be certain — came from his old phone, with photos of his dad on it.
Western Digital WD10SPZX, 1TB 2.5" laptop drive (SMR), ~2 years in…
Blue screens about missing boot files, then a black screen, then a drive that made a second computer wait fifteen minutes before erroring out.
Western Digital WD10SPZX, 1TB 2.5" laptop drive (SMR); dual-boot…
A technically capable owner sent us his TestDisk output: the full partition map of his dual-boot 1TB laptop drive, perfectly listed.
A cup of coffee went over a not-for-profit pre-school's nearly-new laptop.
Laptop internal 2.5" hard drive, heat-exposed; clicking on…
The laptop wasn't even in use — sitting on standby beside its owner — when its lithium battery expanded and began emitting smoke.
2.5" laptop hard drive, extracted from a badly fire-damaged laptop;…
The laptop was badly fire-damaged; its owner extracted the drive and tried connecting it directly — nothing.
Toshiba 1TB, 2.5" SATA — internal system drive, Windows 10 laptop (~4…
This customer's enquiry doubled as a lab notebook. His four-year-old laptop's Toshiba drive had taken longer than normal to shut down.
2.5" laptop hard drive (veteran machine, retired after display…
The story arrived in three chapters. First, the crisis: an ageing laptop's screen failed — opaque, vertical lines — and its owner.
2TB 2.5" laptop hard drive; machine no longer boots; brief clicking on…
Alongside a clicking laptop drive, her enquiry brought the questions everyone should ask and few do.
2TB 2.5" laptop hard drive — removed after water ingress into a family…
The local shop did its job well: new SSD in, laptop working again, old water-exposed drive handed back.
1TB 2.5" laptop hard drive (Samsung-heritage Seagate) — from an end…
The enquiry came from a repair shop, not an end customer: a clicking 1TB laptop drive, unknown contents, and a request for a rough figure to pass on.
Toshiba MQ01ABF050 500GB, 2.5" SATA — ex-laptop drive in a USB…
Moving a laptop drive into an enclosure meant changing folder permissions on the new machine.
WD 1TB, WD10EARX (Green), 3.5" SATA, removed from a failed desktop
A 1TB WD outlived its desktop, worked long enough to raise hopes, then stopped appearing — possibly after rough handling nobody witnessed.
Western Digital 1TB (desktop-class drive in an external enclosure)
She described the whole loop precisely: the disk starts to spin, clicks several times, and eventually powers down and stops.
8TB desktop drive, three partitions (4TB + 2TB + 2TB); ~3TB in use;…
First a single file refused to delete; then the repair cycle changed nothing; then the drive slowed, went silent to Windows, and found a voice of its own.
Most enquiries bring one patient; this one brought two, and the smartest question in the archive.
3.5" desktop hard drive — impact-suspected fault (tower knocked during…
Another company assessed her drive years ago: 244GB recoverable, onto a new external drive. Life meant the recovery waited — six years, in fact.
Seagate 7200rpm 3.5" SATA desktop drive — failed silently years…
The sequence in this enquiry contains one of DIY recovery's great misunderstood moments, and its owner documented it perfectly.
3.5" desktop hard drive — original failure ~5 years prior (clicking,…
He'd researched properly — he knew the donor board needed the original drive's chip moved across — and he tried the soldering himself.
Western Digital 2TB, 3.5" SATA desktop drive
His 2TB drive vanished completely — not even Disk Management could see it — and checking Event Viewer afterwards, he found Windows had logged a S.M.A.R.T.
Apple MacBook Pro (pre-2016 generation, Apple "vintage" classification)
A MacBook Pro went dark during charging and never came back; Apple declined it as a vintage model.
SSD from a 2012 MacBook Pro (original system drive, filesystem…
A well-meant family rescue of a 2012 MacBook Pro ended with recovered files written over the Time Machine backup — and a dd command run on top.
Seagate 4TB USB external hard drive (used with a 2013 MacBook Pro)
Mid-copy, a loose cable jiggled and a 4TB Seagate external vanished from a MacBook Pro.
Apple iMac 21.5" (early 2015), internal hard drive, macOS
The enquiry apologised for its own strangest symptom. The iMac took an age to switch on, beachballed at every click, restarted itself unbidden.
Apple Time Capsule (A1470); internal Seagate Barracuda 2TB,…
The backup appliance itself failed: a Time Capsule slowed, threw macOS errors, and its extracted drive clicked under any read.
Sonnics-branded 1TB external, 2.5" USB; two partitions (personal files…
Sometimes, left plugged in for hours, one partition of this external would finally appear — and then copying crawled at roughly a day per gigabyte.
MacBook Pro 13" (mid-2010), internal 2.5" hard drive; machine no…
The opposite of every other job in this archive: a son, helping his elderly father put his affairs in order.
MacBook internal drive (SMART-failing, source) · Seagate Backup Plus…
With his MacBook throwing SMART errors and becoming unusable, the owner bought an external drive and raced to back everything up.
Apple MacBook Pro (M1, 2020) — completely unresponsive, no power, no…
His M1 MacBook Pro was completely dead, Apple's diagnosis pointed at the logic board, and the depot repair would likely cost him his data.
WD Elements 4TB desktop external; Mac use, APFS encrypted; priority:…
His encrypted 4TB drive struggled to spin up, software could see it but not mount it, and the backup he started estimated eight years to finish.
Seagate Barracuda 3TB, 3.5" SATA — internal drive from an iMac; drive…
The iMac powered on to a blank screen and a circle with a line through it — macOS's prohibitory symbol — and the 3TB drive inside was nearly full.
External 2.5" SSD, 1TB (~500GB used) — full bootable APFS clone of a…
This customer ran a backup strategy more considered than most businesses manage: a 1TB external SSD carrying a complete bootable clone of his Mac.
Time Machine external hard drive (primary patient); source iMac's…
Apple support called the iMac's drive dead; the Time Machine external then looked empty on another laptop.
Synology DS218play, 2-bay, RAID 1 (mirrored)
An office Synology DS218play was moved by hand while running; afterwards one WD Red Pro identified in the BIOS with a 0GB capacity and the NAS refused it.
WD My Cloud single-bay NAS; internal drive WD Red 4TB, WD40EFRX, 3.5"…
The wrong power adapter went into a WD My Cloud NAS, and afterwards the 4TB WD Red inside wouldn't spin in any enclosure.
Synology 2-bay NAS (replacement unit), mirrored two-drive volume
A replacement Synology was supposed to offer a migration option for two 8TB IronWolf Pro drives. Instead it initialised them as a new NAS.
QNAP 8-bay NAS; affected volume 4 × 6TB in RAID 5 (originally 3…
Expanding an 8-bay QNAP with four new drives, the owner accidentally removed the existing 4×6TB RAID 5 volume — the array intact, the data unreachable.
2 × QNAP rack storage arrays (each: head unit + 2 expansion shelves);…
Most of these case files fit on a bench. This one arrived on a trolley: two rack-mount QNAP arrays.
Buffalo LinkStation 220D, 2-bay, RAID 1 (mirrored), 2 × 1TB, several…
Several power cuts in a row, and after the last one his LinkStation 220D simply vanished from the network.
Buffalo MiniStation 1TB external; internal drive ST1000LM024 (2.5",…
Another lab had diagnosed a motor failure inside a Buffalo MiniStation and its owner, seals intact, asked us for a ballpark price.
Iomega Home Media single-bay NAS; internal drive Seagate Barracuda…
A clicking 2TB Seagate pulled from an Iomega Home Media NAS defeated its owner's Linux toolkit.
QNAP TS-453A, ~6 years in service; 2 × WD Red 4TB, mirrored
One drive in a six-year-old QNAP mirror went faulty. Its owner bought replacements, read the rebuild instructions, and stopped.
QNAP TS-451 4-bay NAS (chassis failed, vendor end-of-life); Volume 1:…
The four-bay NAS died; the manufacturer declared it end-of-life with no repair option.
WD My Cloud 2TB single-bay NAS; internal 3.5" drive; data volume ext4;…
This enquiry came from someone whose rescue attempt was, step for step, what a professional would try first from a desk.
Synology DS213air, 2 × WD Red 2TB, mirrored; unit and drives cleared…
Vendor support's diagnosis was thorough: hardware fine, the fault likely in the partitions or the DSM installation.
Buffalo LinkStation, 2 × Seagate Barracuda 3TB, striped (RAID 0)
This owner opened by acknowledging his LinkStation's two 3TB drives ran RAID 0 — "yes, I know, I can hear you shaking your head.
Two-bay NAS, 2 × 10TB drives configured as a mirror (RAID 1) —…
While trying to add storage he formatted his two-drive RAID — three times, by his own frank count — and wrote in already braced for the worst.
Two-bay RAID enclosure, 2 × 12TB NAS-class drives, striped (RAID 0) —…
The venue's head of sound and broadcast inherited the rig from a predecessor.
Synology DS423+ with a single Synology 16TB NAS drive — the unit's…
The unit fell while powered off; afterwards he tested the NAS with a clean drive (it worked), tried the 16TB disk in enclosures (nothing).
Two-bay Seagate NAS, 2 × 3TB SATA — EXT3-family Linux volumes; one…
The NAS turned sluggish; inspection found one drive nearly untouchable and its neighbour cooking beside it.
WD My Cloud Home — internal drive removed by owner; hardware healthy;…
The drive spins, enumerates, and is — as he correctly diagnosed — structurally fine: multiple Linux partitions.
G-Technology G-RAID 8TB (2 × 4TB, dual-drive enclosure) · external…
Three drives arrived after 24 hours underwater in a sink — deliberately put there by a third party.
Server RAID 5, 5 × 1TB 2.5" SATA members
Five healthy-looking drives, one failed RAID 5 volume — and a customer who'd imaged every member before calling anyone.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials; failed OS drive (system volume); data…
A business recovered everything from its dying Server 2012 machine — except the folder that mattered: the maintenance system's SQL backups.
Sony single-box home server; 2 × 500GB 3.5" SATA internal drives; work…
The enquiry ended with a self-deprecating diagnosis — "my simple brain suggests the MBR or FAT needs rebuilding".
Enterprise 36-bay chassis, Linux; hardware RAID controller; affected…
A 12 × 4TB hardware RAID 5 dropped two members and the server fell into emergency boot.
Ubuntu home microserver; 3 × 1TB HDD, each a separate ext3 data volume…
One accidental delete on an Ubuntu microserver removed the folder that three 1TB data drives lived under — taking the files on all three with it.
SharePoint farm with externalised document storage (third-party BLOB…
An IT team recovered 241GB of deleted document-store files with software and copied them back — and SharePoint still couldn't open a thing.
Outlook for Mac — profile corrupted during the Legacy-to-New automatic…
The scale of this enquiry was measured in decades. Switching from Legacy Outlook to the New Outlook for Mac experience.
QNAP TS-219P+ (2 × WD Red 4TB WD40EFRX, mirrored) and QNAP TS-419P II…
Two QNAP NAS units on one home network were hit by Deadbolt ransomware within days of each other.
WD 10TB external hard drive, BitLocker-encrypted (XTS-AES 256)
A 10TB BitLocker drive stopped accepting its password and would only ask for a 48-digit recovery key — which had been lost when the original PC was wiped.
WD Elements 1TB external, BitLocker-encrypted (password known)
Frustrated by how slowly his encrypted drive unlocked, the owner set BitLocker to decrypt it.
A business hit by ransomware rebuilt itself on a new host, then shipped us six SSDs of encrypted files with one question: how much to decrypt?
1TB PCIe NVMe SSD — Windows 10 system drive, BitLocker-encrypted
After a Windows update corrupted his boot files, a meticulous customer with nine years of saved BitLocker keys hit a prompt none of them fit.
Laptop SSD (work machine's original system drive, released to the user…
His work laptop's SSD failed and was replaced; the data — his schedules, assignments and personal records — existed nowhere else, locked by BitLocker.
Laptop NVMe SSD — BitLocker-encrypted (decrypted by the owner with his…
The laptop had been freezing at logon for weeks; the manufacturer's support tool decrypted BitLocker and restored a month-old system image.
Crucial MX500 1TB SSD — LUKS-encrypted XFS volume in an unRAID server;…
The encryption key was known, the setup was documented, and he asked directly whether we work no-recovery-no-fee.
Seagate Pipeline HD 1TB (ST31000424CS), 3.5" SATA, from a domestic…
The drive from a TV recorder failed with years of recordings on it — recordings encoded so they'd only ever play on that machine.
Dashcam SD card — two recording folders: one write-protected…
The PC couldn't play the dashcam's oddly-formatted videos, so he tried his Android phone.
NVR (network video recorder), continuous multi-camera recording;…
The recorder had done exactly what it was designed to do — overwrite footage older than 30 days.
Western Digital 320GB, WD3200AAJS, 3.5" SATA (in external use)
A customer forwarded another firm's five-line work specification for his 320GB WD.
Windows laptop drive; affected scope: one large user folder (~12GB)…
His forensics were excellent: files gone from one desktop folder, subfolders untouched, identical modified timestamps to the minute, no ransom note.
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