The drive "has not been used for over 15years as it was dropped and badly damaged", and there are photographs and videos on it that its owner would still like back. He had already been somewhere that "quoted me a crazy price", which is why he was asking around. Time is not a fault; a drop is. Recorded data on a platter does not weaken with age, and a drive that has sat in a drawer since about 2011 is recovered on exactly the same terms as one that failed on Tuesday — on what the fall did to it, and nothing else. The only thing the years have changed is how hard it is to find a matching donor, which is our problem rather than his.
| Media | A laptop hard drive dropped and badly damaged over fifteen years ago, unused since, holding photographs and video the owner still wants. |
| Reported situation | Laptop hard drive · dropped and badly damaged more than fifteen years ago · not used since · photographs and videos wanted · an earlier quote found unreasonably high · a straight price sought. |
| Fault class | Impact damage — most probably a head fault, possibly with connector or board damage alongside it, dating from the fall itself. The recorded data is unaffected by the years in storage and sits on the platters behind the mechanical fault. |
| Equipment used | Profiled first on a current-limited bench supply to see what it does under power · opened beneath laminar flow in clean air, heads and platter surfaces examined under a stereo microscope, a matched donor head set fitted and aligned where the heads were the fault · imaged out to DeepSpar with PC-3000 UDMA behind it, the photographs and video found in R-Studio and checked by opening them. |
The reassuring part first, because it is the part people never believe. Magnetic recording is stable. A platter written in 2010 holds what it held in 2010, and fifteen years in a drawer has neither faded it nor blurred it. The only thing that has aged is the mechanism around it — bearings, lubricant, the rubber bump stops — and even those matter far less than the event that put the drive in the drawer in the first place.
That event is what we are actually treating. A drive dropped while running takes the impact through heads that fly a fraction of a hair above the surface, and the usual result is heads that no longer read, sometimes with the connector or the board knocked about as well. It is a physical fault and it has been sitting there, unchanged, ever since. Which means the job is precisely the job it would have been fifteen years ago, no better and no worse.
On price, since that is what sent him looking. We do not quote a drive we have not seen, and we do not quote a fault from a description. The drive is examined, the fault is named, and one fixed figure in writing follows — arrived at inside 2 working days of the parcel landing, and holding whatever the bench then finds under the lid. Where the drive has to be opened, half of that figure is payable before the clean-air stage, because donor parts and bench hours have to be committed up front; the balance is due only if the photographs actually come back. An old drive is not a discount, but it is not a surcharge either.
It was put on a current-limited bench supply first and watched rather than pushed, which is the whole point of that supply. It was then opened in filtered air beneath the flow hood, and the heads and the platter surfaces went under stereo magnification before anything else was decided. Matched donor heads were fitted and the alignment set, and the drive was copied to an image on DeepSpar, PC-3000 UDMA underneath in controlled passes. The photographs and video were located in R-Studio and rendered rather than merely listed, so that what went onto fresh media was known to open.
Head assembly replaced in filtered air, the drive read out to an image, and the photographs and video handed back on fresh media fifteen years after anyone last saw them. Free diagnostic; one fixed written figure including VAT for the fault as found. Because the drive had to be opened, 50% of that figure was payable up front against parts and bench time, with the remainder due only once the files were proven back. Where the platters had been scored by the original fall, the recovery would have narrowed to the undamaged regions and that would have been said plainly before any money changed hands.
Do not let the age put you off asking. Data on a platter does not decay in storage, so the photographs on a drive that has sat in a drawer since it was dropped are as recoverable now as they were the week it happened — the fault to be dealt with is the impact, and the impact has not got worse in the meantime. What you should not do is plug it in to see whether it has recovered on its own, because if the heads were damaged, powering it up is how the damage spreads to the surfaces. And if a price you were quoted felt like a number picked out of the air, it probably was: ask for a free examination and a fixed written figure instead, and decide with that in front of you.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
Nothing has changed while it sat there — which is exactly why it is still worth asking about
The noise is the diagnosis — heads that can no longer read, and every retry costs you surface
One folder, one deadline and one honest number — the fault decides the price, so the fault gets established first
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.