The fault · a drive making a noise it never made before
Remove the power from it, wherever in Nottingham it is sitting, and then leave the drive alone. What is recorded on the platters when the noise starts will usually still be intact. What disappears after that, however, disappears into the retries. When a head can't establish its position, it returns to the ramp and moves out across the surface looking for something, returns to the ramp again, and moves out again until the power is removed. Each time around gives the head another opportunity to touch the platter. Remove the power and the count stops where it was. £300 + VAT covers a single drive. Before that there's a free assessment, you'll get the figure in writing before anything starts, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Ask an engineer and the first look is free
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| What it looks like | What usually causes it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| A steady ticking, roughly once a second, going on and on | Servo markings were written at the factory to steer the arm. Without being able to read them, the arm parks on the ramp and starts searching again | Cut the power to it |
| A thin beeping, most often from a 2.5" portable | Nothing moving and no noise except that: a seized spindle bearing, or heads firmly stuck to the platter | No tapping it, no shaking it |
| A scraping, grinding kind of noise | The head is resting on the platter, damaging the surface for every second the drive turns | Files go while it keeps turning |
| One brief chirp on every power-up | The heads cannot calibrate, usually after a drop | Turn it off and stop there |
| Two or three clicks, then quiet | It gives up, resets itself and tries the same sequence again | Take the plug out to end the cycle |
| The clicking starts on particular files | This could mean either one head has failed, or a single band of platter is damaged | Stop the copy; it needs imaging |
Your case number is assigned when the item is received. Then an engineer works out what went wrong (no charge). At this point, you receive a basic summary of which parts are recoverable and which are not. You also receive a single written quote for the price of the recovery. Accept the quoted price or turn it down, and there is no obligation to pay anything.
The mechanism and platter surfaces are inspected visually first, with no connections attached. Any time a noisy unit really has to run, an engineer stays with it and lets it run a few seconds at a time. It is never left running alone.
The dead head stack is removed and a donor stack matched to your model goes in. If the spindle is locked, it is freed. The heads are lifted off the platters without dragging across anything. Once that is done, the drive is asked to do one thing: create a complete image of itself, and nothing else.
A hardware imager works slowly. At first it skips any awkward areas and captures all the easiest sectors, then comes back for the hard stuff until the copy holds as much as the drive can give. All later steps are carried out on that copy, and your drive is never written to.
A complete file list will be provided before any invoicing. Simply say "yes" or "no" to what we found: yes means it is billed, no means it is not, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. What we find is posted to you on media purchased specifically for your case, at no additional cost to you. We consider the process complete once you have opened those files yourself on your own computer.
There is one word that covers this whole page: stop. Clearance between a head and a platter spinning thousands of times a minute is measured in nanometres, and engineering at that level doesn't repair itself. Whether a drive comes back complete or partial typically depends on how quickly someone got to the plug. Get a quote before posting it, and an engineer has the lid off the day it arrives; one price follows in writing, before you spend a penny.
For five years, the takings had sat on a drive that came in from an upholstery workshop in Ilkeston, ticking about once a second. The second donor stack held. Imaging was given as long as it asked for, and the books were open again, with that quarter's VAT return still outstanding.
It is very unlikely. Ticking is the head assembly failing to find its position, and it tells you nothing about the platters underneath, which is where your files physically sit. With a matched donor stack and slow, careful imaging, most disks give back the bulk of their files. The longer the disk keeps running after the ticking begins, the more damage is done.
None at all, and it makes matters worse. That advice is far older than any drive still in use. When a sealed assembly is chilled, two separate things happen at once. The metal parts contract at different rates. Water condenses in places it does not belong. Once it warms up again, there is corrosion on the contacts on top of the original fault. Two faults now exist in place of one.
At the factory, servo marks go down on every platter and the arm searches for them. Finding nothing, it goes back to the ramp and starts searching again; this continuous loop is the ticking noise. The noise itself will never tell you the reason (a misaligned head, a failing preamplifier or contact marks across a surface), because all three sound identical through an alloy casing. Telling them apart means the cover comes off, under a bench.
No. Every request the software makes still has to pass through the head assembly that has already failed, so all it does is keep the drive doing the one thing that is wearing it out.
The look costs nothing. It gives you a file listing of what opened and what did not, along with the cost of finishing the job, in writing, before anything chargeable begins. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Do not switch the drive on until you have that listing.