The symptom · a drive nothing will show
You'll have identified the faulty part after answering three questions in order. Does the BIOS show the drive? Does Disk Management? Can Explorer open it? The point at which it drops out is where your problem lies (electronics, firmware or the volume), but your documents do not live on any of those parts. Drives reach our bench from Nottingham and the rest of Nottinghamshire with one common sentence attached: "the computer cannot see it". That sentence is describing a circuit. One drive is £300 + VAT, the assessment ahead of it is free, you receive the figure in writing before any chargeable work begins, 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Windows says Unknown, Not Initialized | The drive responds, but there is no valid signature and no usable partition table | Refuse that prompt |
| Windows wording: “…before Logical Disk Manager can access it” | Say yes and the entire existing partition layout is replaced with a blank partition map | Turn it down, then unplug it |
| Disk Management says No Media | Only the controller is responding and nothing beyond it can be accessed, so this is a hardware issue rather than a logical fault. | Leave it unplugged from now on |
| The BIOS shows no drive at all | Electronics or firmware: a dead board, a shorted protection diode, or service-area code that refuses to load | Repair down at component level |
| The BIOS lists a 1TB disk as 0MB | Firmware damage or translator damage, which is why the reported capacity is nonsensical | Firmware tools, not recovery software |
| It takes power and does nothing | The board's supply side has failed, taking the TVS diode short with it | Recoverable, as a rule |
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.
No disassembly takes place, and nothing runs without being watched. One quick trip into the BIOS. Next is Disk Management. Then a check in Explorer. From there the entire job boils down to one of three: repairing electronics, rebuilding a service area, or repairing a file system against the copy.
First off, the blown TVS diode comes off and a new one goes on. If a board can't be saved, a donor board replaces it, carrying your original ROM chip, as the adaptive values in that chip were taken from your own platters and suit nothing else.
The sector-by-sector copy is taken the moment the drive answers. Everything afterwards happens against that copy, with your own drive on a shelf, untouched.
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.
Worth holding on to: electronic and firmware faults account for nearly all of the drives that arrive "invisible" to their computers. Both exist to handle communication between a disk and a machine, and neither is where documents are stored. So a missing drive is simply reporting a hardware fault of its own, and that is why this situation ends well much more often than many other faults. Finding out which of the two it is costs you nothing.
Mains power failed overnight at a Newark farm office, and by morning the desktop showed one disk where there had been two. Silent WD, no entry in the BIOS, and the TVS diode on its board was the fault. Its own ROM went across to a donor PCB, and the full image was off within two days of the parcel arriving.
Generally, yes. A damaged board is repaired or replaced, and whatever killed it usually doesn't get past the electronics into the platters or the NAND behind them. As jobs go, a drive with no sign of life is among the more predictable ones.
Never. That box writes a blank partition map straight over the one that records where everything is. Say no, take the drive out, and get an engineer onto it before anything else has a turn.
No. The computer just can't detect the disk. The drive may have lost its means of identifying itself, but nothing has been removed from it. The fault sits in the electronics, or in firmware kept in the service area, and neither holds any of your files.
Very probably. A power surge causes a protection diode to short and die, which is what it is fitted to do before anything further back is hit. The electronics are gone, but what you saved is still where you saved it.
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.