A DIY HDD Head Change and More – Help and Advice

Do not try to change hard drive heads yourself. No really, don’t. It won’t work and there’s a very high chance you’ll destroy any chance of us recovering the data too.

Here are a selection of phone and hard drive recovery enquiries received at Data Clinic over the last 24 hours. Is your problem in here too?

DIY Head Replacement on a Hard Drive

Got dead hard drive seagate SV 35.5 ST31000525SV 1 tb.
I’ve opened hard drive and attempted head replacement before I read to not do that.
Is there any chance to recover data after my f**k up?

Ah, for anyone thinking about trying a do a head replacement on a hard drive, DON’T. It’s a very skilled job and needs to be done in a clean air environment to stop insides of the drive being contaminated with airborne particles. DIY attempts can often ruin any subsequent chance of data recovery, but each case is taken on it’s merits. Give us a call and we’ll see what can be done

Phone’s that have Stopped Working

Hi, I have a Samsung S4 that has recently stopped working the phone does not power on, nor charge regardless of which button combinations I press. I have been told it could be a possible hardware issue. My question is, is their anyway you can retrieve my photos and videos from that phone? and roughly how much would that cost?

i have an old i phone 3g which had some pictures on that i would love to get back this was dropped and the screen smashed however it looks like it turns on but cannot access anything it would be great if these could be recovered.

The possibilities of recovering the data from both these phones is good. It may not be possible to use the software recovery route due to type of problems the phones have, so we can read the information you want directly from the phone’s memory chips using either a Chip-Off or JTAG process. Click here to read more about our Phone data recovery service.

Help with Broken Hard Drives

I have a Seagate 2TB desktop HD that is nearing 5 years old. After not being plugged in for a month or so, when power is connected there is a series of beeps and I can hear the disk trying to spin up but rather sounding like a car with no battery. I believe the issue to be the power supply, however I don’t have a spare one to test. Would this be something you can help with?

I think I have a hardware failure. Apparently it is not showing up on the BIOS. It is spinning but making a ticking sound. I need to recover my photos and videos! How much would this cost please?

My Passport external harddrive has stopped working and i have potentially lost all my music collection.

I have a seagate external hard drive I am looking for the PC board and the reader (head) the hard drive don’t show up but it dose show up some times I can hear the reader moving back and forward but nothing happens I think the hard drive fell.

Any sort of unusual noise you hear when starting your hard drive usually means that the hard drive has a technical problem. Inside your hard drive are a collection of moving parts, these parts wear out over time, or can be damaged by the drive being jolted or similar. The best advice is not to keep switching the drive on in the hope that it will start up. It won’t. The noise is telling you that there’s a mechanical fault on the hard drive. This needs to be rectified before your data will become accessible again. Repeatedly switching the drive on will potentially make matters far worse, so please don’t do it and call us for advice instead.

London Location

For those of you in the capital looking for data recovery in London, you can call in at our Lombard Street offices (next to the Bank tube station) or take advantage of our collection service where we collect your damaged equipment, free of charge, from any home or work address.

Countrywide Locations

Data Clinic are not just in London, take a look at our local regional office locations throughout the UK.