In this post we answer a large number of customer questions regarding retrieving the data from faulty hard drives and phones. If you have a problem similar to any of these please get in touch with us at one of our local recovery centres, or by using the form to the right hand side, or by calling our main number 0871 977 2525.

Recover from Hard Drive not Spinning

My boyfriend has an external hard drive with sentimental pictures on it. Recently the hard drive is not spinning/spooling up. We thought perhaps the motor is burnt out. Everything else seems ok and it’s been changed over. Would be grateful if u would be able to let me know if this is something that u could fix with a price quote and how long it could take. I am in London and can travel to the city if necessary.

Due to the complex workings of hard drives, once they start to go wrong it’s far better to recover the data to a new hard drive rather than attempt any type of repair on the old hard drive. As a general rule, it’s not possible or advisable to repair hard drives. Find out more information on our external hard drive recovery page. We have several locations across the country, including London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.

Recover from File Corruption

Hard drive stopped working some time ago and has been sitting on a shelf ever since. Problem came when trying to transfer data from apple to a mac so It think it’s some sort of file corruption problem. The hard drive itself is a 1TB capacity but only half of it or so is full. However there are many files on there I have managed to duplicate since and I’m only really looking to retrieve work files and possibly photos (which I think will end up being probably less than a third of the drive).
Not urgent but would be great to get it back within a few weeks. Can you tell me how much I can expect to pay for a data recovery?

A professional data recovery service will cost you upwards of £350+vat. So if you’ve already got most of the files then you need to ask yourself is the cost of recovery actually worth it?

Recover Xiaomi MI5

Hello guys,my Xiaomi MI5 accidentally fall into the sea for couple seconds. After I plug into usb it get into connect/disconnect loop like an unknown device. Now, just red light signaling when I connect. I disassembled and clean the device, it was a bit salt inside, but hope major circuits are not burned. Device have no slot for memory cards. There is 64GB mounted in motherboard. Would you be able to restore pictures and videos made by camera please? If yes, how much it will cost me? Thanks in advance

Data retrieval from phones is often dependent on the type of phone and also how the phone was damaged. For example, data that can be easily retrieved on a Samsung Galaxy Android phone can be impossible to recover on an Apple iPhone, just because of the different ways each phone works. Similarly phones that have been dropped into water are more difficult to recover as the internal electronics often have to be cleaned up before any retrieval attempt can be made. Click this link to go to our main phone data recovery page.

Recover Deleted SMS Messages

I would like to know if i can retrieve deleted sms messages from a particular mobile number. i deleted them on thursday or friday last week.

Yes, it’s usually possible to recover deleted SMS messages. The sticking-point is if they messages have been overwritten in the time between them being deleted and now. There’s no real way of telling without us taking a look at the phone.

Recover Deleted FaceTime Calls

Could you recover deleted iPhone FaceTime calls from iPhone and if so what would be the cost n how long would you need the phone ?

For the answer, see my above answer regarding recovering deleted SMS messages.

Recover Clicking Hard Drives

1. The drive is clicking and was not recognised by the laptop i did drop the laptop. Bough a bay and put it in that to access via my second laptop the drive is working in the bay and the clicking stopped but not able to access on the second laptop. Please can I have an estimate. I know it will be a rough estimate.

2. SEAGATE Backup Plus External Hard Drive – 3 TB, Black. Dropped on floor about 30 cm from the ground, started with blinking light but eventually came on.
Now constantly blinking lights and small buzzing noise with a slight whirring sound.

3. Western digital external hard drive MyPassport. Making a clicking noise and completely failing in explorer although recognised between devices. How much would it be to recover the data?

Hard drives that click usually have a head fault. To recover the data from them requires a donor hard drive to be sourced before the faulty parts are removed and replaced with the good parts. The drive is then rebuilt. It’s a complex operation that should never be attempted by anyone other than a competent data recovery company.

Recover iPhone not powering up

The iphone is no longer powering up. the apple logo flashes either if the devices is plugged in or unplugged 9 providing the battery is charged. Initially the phone had crashed and in an attempt to resolve this I replaced the battery however this did not resolve the issue.

This is quite a common problem, whether the data from the phone is recoverable depends heavily on what damage the phone has sustained. Typically the cost of phone recover is between £200 and £300 ex VAT.

Dropped WD My Passport

WD 1TB “My Passport” External HDD. Broken due to impact/drop. When I plug it in to my computer the HDD gives out a constant beeping sound and the computer cannot detect it anymore. I would like to ask for an estimate quote on the price for such a recovery.

A beeping noise usually means that the motor of the hard drive is either stuck or is broken. It is possible to recoup the data from this situation but it’s a intensive job requiring some hard drive surgery in a clean room

Recover from Inaccessible Boot Device

Windows 10 laptop, inaccessible boot device when trying to start machine last weekend. Have since installed a new hdd but could really do with the data off the failed drive, it is a 1TB but about half is used.

Inaccessible Boot Device is a Windows generated error message that refers to the computer not being able to access the hard drive. It usually means there’s a significant problem with the hard drive. Exactly what the problem is can vary considerably.

External drive not being picked up

I have a Seagate 1TB External Drive. When connecting to to a PC or Laptop through USB the Laptop or base computer isn’t picking it up. The Hard Drive is making a mechanical noise like its a motor yearning noise. Looking forward to receiving your best price. you can call me anytime after 5pm

A ‘motor yearning’ noise? I’m not exactly sure I know what you mean, but any noise coming from a hard drive that is different from the noise you usually hear is not a good sign. A data recovery service from a mechanical hard drive failure will cost you upwards from £500.

HTC Desire goes to boot menu

I’ve an HTC Desire which when switched on goes straight to boot menu, with limited options such as; HBoot, Fast Boot, Factory reset, SD dump, USB dump etc.

It seems your phone is stuck in a boot loop. This is common and is usually the result of some form of file or system corruption. If there is no data on the phone that you value you can simply return it to it’s factory settings but remember that by doing this you’ll lose all your data. If you do want the data recovered from your phone, costs start at around £200.

External Hard Drive not recognised on laptop

Recently my external hard drive stopped being recognised by my laptop. It seems to mechanically be ok but it just doesn’t mount. I realise it’s difficult to quote on an unseen case but could you give me any indication of how much it would be to recover files from a 1TB drive (around half full). I’ve already had it looked at by another company but simply couldn’t justify what they were quoting so wanted to get a rough idea before sending off to save wasting everybody’s time!

There are data recovery services and there are professional data recovery services. The difference is the first one is done typically by someone who works / knows lots about computers, and in these people some of us trust our previous data. But! just because someone sorted your printer problems out does not make them experts in hard disk recovery. My recommendation (if your data is of significant value to you) is to always use a professional data recovery company. The costs of professional data recovery start at around £350 pounds. The costs will vary depending on how much work is involved in rescuing the data.

Retrieve files from a Diskcryptor hard drive

Encrypted Ex HDD Seagate drive encrypted via DiskCryptor no longer accepting password since fresh install of Win 7.
Tried using notepad to input password to rule out ASCII issues no joy.
I had 2 encrypted HDDs with same password and other one is OK. (definitely not user error password issue)
Disk shows as RAW with a drive letter in Disk Management in windows and is visible in disk cryptor (although oddly diskcrytor not giving option to ‘mount’ only to ‘mount all’ at which point get drives mounted = 0 message.
Please help as very important data. I’m in the Leeds area so please drop me an email with a tentative prognosis/diagnosis and price.

Your drive probably has a significant amount of bad media meaning that parts of the hard drive can no longer be read. This will cause many problems – and be significantly amplified by running a disk encryption program such as Diskcryptor. My advice is to power down the hard drive immediately – bad media can spread quickly across a hard drive making matters worse. Bad media should only be tackled by applying a hardware solution – don’t run a software ‘fix’ as you will make matters 10 times worse by unnecessarily stressing the read heads of the hard drive. We have a local data recovery centre in Leeds on Gelderd Road, as well as Liverpool and Northampton.

Clicking Netgear Stora

Netgear Stora. Dual bay, only single bay used. Disk spins, click about half a dozen times then spins down and shuts off power. Just looking for a potential cost of recovery. HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200. 1TB. ST3100528as.

These devices come with two hard drives that mirror each other – ie. the contents of one drive is the same as the other. This is known as RAID 1, and is a well used type of data redundancy – so if one hard drive should fail then there is no data loss as exactly the same files are preserved on the second disk. Why is there only one hard drive being used in your system? Was there a fault on the other? NAS hard drive faults can be complex and varied – you can learn more on our NAS data recovery and RAID data recovery pages.

Recovered Files to same device

I saved a lot of videos which are extremely important but accidentally deleted the files but managed to get most of the files back using a software recovery however at the time i didnt know you werent supposed to store the retreived videos onto the same device so over 20+ files, the most important ones are now over written. is there any chance of getting the videos back??

Oh dear, this is a very common mistake. If you lose or accidentally delete files from your hard drive and decide to download a piece of software to recover them NEVER download that software to the same drive you are trying to recover the files from. You’ll overwrite the data you are trying to recover. This is what’s happened in the above example and there is no chance of any successful further recovery.