One external drive has "stopped working" and now "whirls with a clicking noise". Separately, and on a different machine, she has "managed to delete important files" — photographs and records — and describes herself as "gutted at the loss" and "very scared that any attempt of recovery may result in absolute permanent loss". That fear is reasonable, it is also the single most useful instinct anybody brings to us, and it is answered by one word: copy. Nothing is attempted on either original. Each is imaged first, and every rebuild, search and carve happens on the image — so a recovery that fails leaves the original exactly as it was, and a second attempt is always possible.
| Media | Two devices: an external hard drive that whirs and clicks and no longer works, and a laptop from which important files, including photographs and records, were deleted. |
| Reported situation | External drive · stopped working · whirring with a clicking noise · separately, files deleted in error on a laptop · photographs and records lost · owner afraid that any recovery attempt could cause permanent loss. |
| Fault class | Two unrelated faults. The clicking drive has a mechanical head fault and needs clean-air work. The laptop is a deletion, recoverable while the space has not been reused. Both are handled read-only, so no attempt can damage either original. |
| Equipment used | The clicking drive not powered further, opened under a laminar-flow hood, matched donor heads fitted, imaged out to DeepSpar with PC-3000 UDMA behind it · the laptop drive read through a hardware write-blocker and imaged, the deleted files recovered from that image by their filesystem records where those survived and by content signature where they did not · both sets validated by rendering and written to fresh media, the originals untouched throughout. |
Deal with the fear first, because it is doing more work here than either fault. The worry that trying might make things permanently worse is well founded — for a certain kind of trying. Consumer recovery software run on the original drive, writing its findings back to that same drive, genuinely does destroy what it is looking for. So does letting a clicking drive keep running while somebody experiments. The way round both is the same and it is not clever: make a copy, put the original away, and do everything on the copy.
The clicking drive is the mechanical half. Whirring with clicking is a drive spinning up and then failing to read — heads that can no longer find their reference and retract, over and over. It cannot be helped by software of any description, and every minute of power is spent grinding damaged parts across the surfaces. It is opened beneath laminar flow, given matched donor heads, and imaged. Only then does anyone go looking for files.
The deletion is the logical half, and it is a race rather than a repair. Deleting a file removes the reference to it, not the contents; the contents sit there until something else needs the space. Which means the enemy is ordinary use — a laptop left running quietly writes updates, caches and logs across exactly the space you are trying to reclaim. Powering it down and reading the drive as an image, rather than carrying on with it, is what keeps that race winnable.
Two jobs, kept entirely separate. The clicking drive was not powered up; it was opened in filtered air under laminar flow, examined under a stereo microscope, given matched donor heads and copied to an image on DeepSpar, PC-3000 UDMA underneath in controlled passes. The laptop drive was read behind a hardware write-blocker in line and imaged whole, then the deleted files were reconstructed from the image — from surviving filesystem records where those existed, by content signature where they did not. Both recoveries were rendered and checked before anything went onto fresh media, and neither original was written to at any point.
Both recovered: the clicking drive imaged after clean-air head replacement, and the deleted photographs and records carved back out of the laptop's image. Free diagnostic on each device, and a fixed written figure per device including VAT — because the two faults are not the same job and should not be priced as though they were. The deletion recovery ran on no fix, no fee. The clicking drive, needing to be opened, took 50% of its quote up front against donor parts and clean-air time with the balance owing only on success. Both sets of files were checked by rendering before they were handed over.
The fear is the right instinct pointed at the wrong target: it is not recovery that causes permanent loss, it is recovery done on the original. Anything worth doing here is done on a sector-by-sector copy, so an attempt that fails costs you nothing and can be tried again differently. What genuinely does destroy data is a clicking drive left plugged in while somebody works out what to do, and a laptop left running after a deletion, quietly writing over the space the deleted files are still sitting in. So: unplug the clicking one and do not power it again, shut the laptop down properly rather than continuing to use it, and treat the two as two separate jobs — because that is what they are.
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.
The noise is the diagnosis — heads that can no longer read, and every retry costs you surface
He had already worked it out — a clicking drive has no way of announcing itself, so Windows is shown nothing whatever
The shutdown is the drive admitting defeat — it cannot ready its heads, so it stops trying and steps back
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.