Data recovery from a hard drive (HDD)
Clicking, dropped, not detected, scratched platter. Our lab has handled every kind of hard drive failure since 2004 — mechanical, electronic, firmware or logical — in an ISO 5 cleanroom, with over 20,000 parts and donor drives in stock.
Does your drive show one of these signs?
The heads can no longer read the servo tracks and the drive goes into safe mode. Mechanical failure — power it off now.
78% success with a donor driveThe drive spins but isn't recognized, or reports zero capacity: corrupt firmware (Service Area, Translator).
85% with Service Area accessPower surge: the PCB is destroyed, TVS or MOSFETs blown. The drive no longer powers up.
88% with PCB swap + ROM transferDeletion, formatting, RAW partition. As long as nothing has been overwritten, the data is recoverable.
95% on logical failureWhat the laboratory actually does.
Head-stack transplant
Clicking means the preamplifier no longer detects the servo tracks written on the platters. We don't repair heads: we transplant a complete HSA from a twin donor drive (same production week, same lithography mask), with sub-0.3 µm micrometric alignment, then reprogram the patient drive's adaptive modules.
Firmware & Translator rebuild
The drive spins but stays invisible, or reports 0 GB: the microcode stored on the platters is corrupt. Through a factory-mode serial terminal we patch the faulty modules (G-List, P-List, S.M.A.R.T.) and rebuild the Translator that maps logical LBA to physical addresses — without ever writing to the user area.
PCB swap with ROM transfer
Swapping the board isn't enough: each PCB stores the drive-specific adaptive parameters in ROM (factory defect map, head calibration, motor profile). Without transferring that ROM, the drive produces unreadable data. We always transfer the ROM before powering the drive back on.
Out-of-scratch recovery & platter swap
When a head touches the surface, the magnetic layer is torn away and every rotation extends the destroyed zone. We mask the failed heads to read outside the scratch; in extreme high-stakes cases we perform a platter swap into a donor mechanical body — the most delicate operation in the trade.
Cloning with no writes to the original
Before any intervention, a full image of the source drive (ddrescue, PC-3000 or DeepSpar imagers): healthy zones read first, defective zones bypassed, sealed with a SHA-256 hash. All further work is done on the cloned image, never on the physical device.
HDD success rates across 120,000+ cases.
Averages observed since 2004. Every case is unique: the free diagnosis refines the prognosis.
All brands, all formats 2.5″ and 3.5″.
Internal and external drives, including helium drives (≥ 8 TB, sealed) and SMR shingled drives, handled with dedicated PC-3000 modules.
What you should never do to a failing hard drive
- Restart a clicking drive — every rotation extends the scratches; odds can drop from 80% to under 20% in 30 minutes.
- Put a wet drive in rice or the freezer — corrosion continues, and thaw condensation short-circuits the electronics.
- Swap the PCB yourself — the ROM firmware is drive-specific; an "identical" board is not compatible.
- Run Recuva, TestDisk or EaseUS on a physical failure — software forces millions of reads that worsen the damage.
- Open the drive outside a cleanroom — a single dust particle on a platter causes a permanent scratch.
The golden rule: the less you intervene, the better your odds. Power the device off and send it to the lab.
Specialist answers on hard drives.
What should I do if my hard drive is clicking?+
Can data be recovered from a formatted hard drive?+
My external drive isn't recognized anymore — what now?+
How long does hard drive recovery take?+
How much does it cost?+
Understand the technique behind the intervention.
This page describes the service. For the practitioner methodology and the physical foundations, two open-access resources complement this device.
Step-by-step HDD methodology
Diagnosis phases, forensic imaging, cleanroom intervention, firmware and SMR reconstruction, verifiable success rates. IT / forensic level.
Read the Guide chapter →How an HDD works
Platters, heads, HSA, motor, PCB, Service Area: the full anatomy and points of failure, the foundation of any mechanical recovery.
Read the Manual chapter →Is your hard drive clicking or no longer detected?
Power it off and send it to our lab. Free diagnosis within 24h, your file list before any payment, fee charged only on success.