Almost every time a drive fails to spin (or start) is due to an electronic failure of the board and/or motor; not because you’ve lost some data. Our technicians repair the faulty board, transfer the firmware, and recover your documents here in our workshop.
If you repeatedly attempt to turn on a drive with an electrical fault this may burn out the motor and make the board faults worse than they already are. Also, do not install a new circuit board yourself for a replacement. Modern drives include calibration information stored on a read-only memory (ROM) chip which is specific to that particular drive. This must be copied as part of the process when replacing the board, or you could lose the drive forever. Turn it off and contact us.
In nearly every case where a drive has stopped working completely without producing any noise, this is caused by either a motor or electrical component fault. We commonly experience these problems, and successfully recover them.
Over the past two decades we have restored data from every single major drive manufacturer. So long as the information being recovered is stored on spinning platters we are likely able to assist with recovering your lost files.
Internal and external · 3.5" desktop and 2.5" laptop · SATA, SAS, IDE/PATA and SCSI · from 40 GB legacy drives to the latest 24 TB helium models.
When we recover data from a hard drive that “won’t turn on” we typically need to repair the electronic portion of the board first, get it turned on safely and properly, then recover your data. It’s critical that we do this in the correct order as a recovery failure can result in unrecoverable data loss.
Bring in or post us your bad drive. We will look at it and determine what part(s) caused the problem (the board, the motor or the power supply). Once we know the cause we’ll provide you with a written quote, usually within 48 hours.
With both internal and external drives we use high magnification equipment to examine the board to see if we can locate any shorts, blown diodes, burned-out components, etc... As well, with external drives, we remove the enclosure and test the bare drive directly to isolate the problem.
We replace those diodes/components that were damaged and/or burnt out or install a matching donor board from our parts stock. Since these boards are usually on hand we don’t have to wait weeks for another one to show up.
After installing the new board, we take the original ROM chip and transfer it onto the new board so that the drive recognises its own unique configuration/calibration settings and boots up as normal.
Once turned on, the sectors are cloned from the original hard disk drive to a stable media storage system while being patient with any problematic or weak areas.
We create copies of your files using the imaging process, compare those files to a list of the original files, and then provide your restored data on new media.
Your data will be backed-up onto an external hard drive, and shipped back to you, or you will be able to access your restored data via our free download service for up to 75 GB.
In-house matching boards, ROMs, motors & heads mean that many won’t power on hard disks can go directly into repair, without having to wait several weeks for a suitable donor disk.
Tell us about your drive and we will get back to you, usually within 30 minutes during the day.
We will be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0117 332 1137.
There are no hidden costs and/or pressures, simply a complimentary examination and a detailed written quotation prior to commencing any repair.
Recent examples of won’t-power-on recoveries (names removed for privacy protection, results verified) recently completed in house.
A shorted circuit board due to a blown TVS diode caused the failure. We used a matching donor PCB from stock. Then we transplanted the original ROM chip, then we successfully imaged the drive in one try.
Fault was that the USB interface had failed, and not the actual hard disk drive. So we removed the housing of the enclosure (the case) and directly attached the bare hard drive. It turned out the hard drive itself is working properly.
Failure occurred because of burnt motor controller components located on the printed circuit board. Therefore, we found another matching donor PCB, transferred all firmware as required to recover full use of the volume.
All reviews posted on this website are based upon real customer responses; none have been created by us.
No invented reviews here — every testimonial we publish is genuine. Ask us to arrange a reference for a job like yours on 0117 332 1137.
Send us your device for a no-obligation free diagnostic and let us know what went wrong. One of our engineers will inspect it and confirm your exact quote in writing prior to doing any work.
To get started with recovering your data, first get your device to us. Wrap it securely, write your contact details on a slip of paper inside the package, include a brief description of what happened and post it to us. After running a complimentary diagnostic we will write to you confirming the exact price prior to starting work.
Do you want to post the device to us? We highly recommend using a trackable postal service with insurance. Would you prefer to deliver it yourself? That’s fine too. Our office hours for accepting deliveries are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm. Please make sure to wrap the device as described previously.
Need some additional information regarding our data recovery services? Fill out the form and provide further detail about your problem and one of our engineers will review it and offer you a personalised quote.
We’ll be in touch shortly. For anything urgent, call 0117 332 1137.
A hard disk that does not power up at all (no motor spin; no clicking; nothing) will often be dead due to the destruction of a protection diode on the main circuit board caused by either a voltage spike and/or a reverse polarity connection to the connector. Modern drives are also repaired using “real” hands-on work (as opposed to simply swapping boards), as most of these boards contain a ROM chip containing drive specific calibration information. Therefore, you can only swap-out boards with each other, if you first transfer that calibration chip’s data/contents into the new board. In fact, many times a surge killed drive will be fully readable again after being restored. A recent example lives in our case files: a Western Digital brought down by a power surge, recovered through exactly this route.
Most often what you are asking about when a drive won’t power up.
In general, a failure of the electronic circuitry (e.g. a bad PCB, blown protection diodes, a burnt motor controller etc) as opposed to loss of data is the reason behind a non-starting drive. Generally, the disk(s) themselves that contain your files have survived the fault, this is why there is such a high success rate at recovering from non-working drives.
No. Repeatedly powering up a dead drive may well destroy the motor or further damage the circuit board. Switch the drive off and unplug it immediately and call us; the less energy the drive receives, the better our chances of successfully repairing/recovering your files.
In most instances, yes. We repair the failed board or replace it with a new one (matched to the original), install the firmware of the original drive onto the replacement board, then clone the data off the failed drive and build back your file system. Dead drives are common to have repaired by us.
We would always advise against replacing the failed board with a donor board yourself. Modern hard disks include unique calibration information stored in read-only memory (ROM) on the board. Simply swapping boards without also transferring this ROM will usually render your drive unusable and may even make the full recovery process far harder.
Often not. The failure of an external drive may be due to either the external power supply adapter or the USB-to-SATA bridge board that connects the drive to your computer rather than the actual drive. Many times we find that by removing the outer casing of the external drive and attaching just the internal drive to our testing equipment it is functioning properly.
Our base price for fixing a dead drive is £300 + VAT but we provide complimentary diagnostics reports on receipt of your drive so you know what options are available to you and how much each option costs. In addition to that, in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. However, in those few cases where we need to obtain replacement parts or where the motor has seized, we will charge separately for both parts & labour costs.
As a general rule, most won’t-power-on repairs take anywhere from 3 to 4 working days after receiving your approval for quotation and should normally complete our initial assessment report within 48 hours. Where possible, we can also provide priority service; please notify us when urgent.
All of the large manufacturers for hard drives are represented; these include Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, HGST, Hitachi, Maxtor, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum, Samsung, SanDisk, LaCie, G-Technology, Buffalo, Verbatim, ADATA, Transcend, Silicon Power, Iomega, UnionSine, ModusTech and Intenso, in both 3.5-inch desktop and 2.5-inch laptop and external form factors.
The item may be delivered to our office in Bristol (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm) where you will receive a complimentary diagnosis and a written quote prior to the initiation of any repairs, or sent by post insured. When sending by post please ensure that the device is well packaged, sealed, and includes all contact information for yourself within the packaging (name, address, telephone number and email address). This allows us to book the unit in for repair when we receive it.
A complimentary written diagnostic assessment; in most cases you only pay if we recover your data; and an inventory of 10,000 parts available for each repair. Begin recovering your data today!