Hard Drive Help and Advice, Known Issues & Case Studies

Welcome to Data Clinic’s regularly updated Help and Advice section. Here we discuss and provide links to various different types of hard drive problem and what can be done about them. Take a look below and see if you can find a problem similar to yours. If you can, great! – if you can’t, use the form to your right to contact us and tell us more about the issues you are having.

Further down this page we discuss current known issues with particular hard drives in the marketplace and have links to some case studies of recent RAID and server recovery work we have completed.

To find our more about our services and capabilities, click on Data Recovery Services from the main menu above.
To find your local Data Clinic lab go here: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/dataclinic-locations/

Help and Advice

November 2018: External hard drive recovery – examples of faulty drive problems: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/external-hard-drive-recovery/
October 2018: Examples and UK data recovery centre locations: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-lab-locations/
September 2018: Example data recovery hard drive and phone enquiries: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-lab-locations/
August 2018: New local hard drive data recovery service pages for August: Salford and Barnsley
July 2018: New local data recovery service pages for July: Walsall, Nuneaton, Sefton, Rotherham.
June 2018: New local data recovery service pages for June: Fife, Birkenhead, Derby.
May 2018: Data recovery enquiries from Glasgow, Manchester and London: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-recovery-in-london-manchester-and-glasgow/
April 2018: ‘Equipment Interference’ – how the government can legally hack your devices: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/equipment-interference-how-the-government-can-legally-hack-your-data/
April 2018: Data Recovery Mistakes – clueless local IT shops and computer companies try their hand at data recovery with disastrous effects: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-mistakes/
March 2018: Hard Disk Error and SMART Errors – what to do to rescue your files: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-smart-errors/
February 2018: Data recovery advice on G-RAID and WD MyBook Duo NAS hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/network-attached-storage-data-recovery/
February 2018: Solved – Problems with hard drives that are not initialised: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/unknown-disk-not-initialised-hard-drive-problem-solved/
January 2018: Cookies – Protect your online privacy using this handy guide and factsheet: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/cookies-a-privacy-factsheet/
January 2018: Serious security flaw in some WD My Cloud NAS hard drives uncovered: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/serious-security-flaw-in-some-wd-nas-hard-drives/
November 2017: Safe Mode and System32 data recovery problems discussed: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/safe-mode-and-system32-boot-problems/
November 2017: Recovering data from hard drives and phones with faulty or broken PCBs: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/pcb-problems-with-phones-and-hard-drives/
October 2017: Unresponsive phones – examples of phones in need of data recovery from across the country: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/unresponsive-phones-need-data/
October 2017: Recovering the data from a hard drive with orphaned files in Harrogate and dealing with bad sectors to rescue files in Loughborough: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-recovery-qa-october-2017/
Sept 2017: Need to recover data from hard drive or mobile phone?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/need-to-recover-data-from-hard-drive-mobile-phone/
Sept 2017: Finding data recovery services for phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/find-data-recovery-services-phones/
Sept 2017: Data recovery required from hard drives and phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-and-phone-problems/
Aug 2017: Hard drives not showing up – light remaining on: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-august-2017/
Aug 2017: Advice regarding unresponsive hard drives and phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-unresponsive-harddrive-phone/
July 2017: Unrecognised hard drives and phones and what to do about them: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-hard-drives-and-phones-not-recognised/
July 2017 – Broken iPhone and Samsung S6 smartphones plus a WD My Passport that is no longer responding: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-july-2017-part-1/
June 2017 – A hard drive with bad media/SMART failure and another one with a “click of death”: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-june-2017-part-2/
June 2017 – Common faults and data recovery enquiries on HTC, iPhone, Samsung, Nokia and Sony smart phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-data-recovery/
May 2017 – Discusses 4 common types of hard drive fault, diagnosis and recovery options: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/4-common-hard-drive-faults/
Apr 2017 – Data Recovery Q&A Pt 2 – Retrieving files from an HP Proliant, an SSD and an iPhone stuck on the Apple logo: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-april-2017-pt-2/
Apr 2017 – Data Recovery Q&A Pt 1 – Answers to several data recovery questions: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/april-2017-qa-part-1/
Mar 2017 – How much does data recovery cost?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/how-much-does-data-recovery-cost/
Mar 2017 Pt1 – Help with a problematic iMac, a beeping hard drive and a Samsung S6, plus more: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/march-2017-data-recovery-qa-part-1/
Feb 2017, Hard drive and phone recovery Q&A – a BIG post – perhaps you have a similar problem to these?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-feb-2017-pt-1/
Jan 2017 Pt2, Help with RAW file systems, dropped external hard drives and a LaCie FW800 running RAID 5: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-help-and-advice-jan-2017-part-2/
Jan 2017 Pt1, Recovering data from Samsung S2 and Nexus 4 phones, plus CCTV recovery from a Floureon system: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-help-and-advice-pt1-jan-2017/
Dec 2016 Pt2, Christmas and New Year opening times: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/christmas-new-year-opening-times-2016/
Dec 2016 Pt1, G-Technology NAS with undetected drives, recovering deleted Whatsapp and SMS texts, and retrieving data from a Sun Microsystems RAID 5 server: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-help-and-advice-december-2016-part-1/
Nov 2016 Pt2, The pitfalls of using a data recovery program that overwrites data!: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-help-advice-november-2016/
Nov 2016 P1, The dangers to data of using a warranty repair service and Easy Recovery software: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/beware-of-warranty-repairs-and-data-recovery-software/
Oct 2016 Pt3, A selection of enquiries regarding retrieving the data from faulty phones and hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/problems-requiring-data-recovery/
Oct 2016 Pt2, Free data recovery evaluations, phones with cracked screens, hard drives that won’t copy data: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-phones-qa/
Oct 2016 Pt1, Is it possible to recover data from a hard drive with a scratched surface?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/scratched-hard-drive/
Sept 2016 Pt2, Various types of phone fault and data recovery options: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-recovery-questions-help-and-advice/
Sep 2016 Pt1, Data loss after an upgrade to Windows 10, and a hard bricked Samsung Galaxy S5: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-with-data-loss/
Aug 2016 Pt3, Is is possible to recover files and folders after a factory reset ?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/how-does-a-factory-reset-affect-your-data-files/
Aug 2016 Pt2, Hard drive dropped – now hums, beeps and is unresponsive: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/humming-beeping-hard-drives-not-recognised/
Aug 2016 Pt1, An iPhone with the ‘red screen of death’ and an unresponsive SSD: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-ssds-and-iphones/
July 2016 Pt2, Various phone problems – Help and advice: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-data-recovery-example-enquries/
July 2016 Pt1, Problems on Samsung EVO 840 series SSD hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/samsung-evo-840-ssd-faults-beware/
June 2016 Pt3, Data Recovery from External Hard Drives – Help and Advice: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/external-hard-drive-data-recovery-help-and-advice/
June 2016 Pt2, A dropped Western Digital Ultra hard drive, and WhatsApp/SMS message retrieval for use in court: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-advice-dropped-wd-passport-and-recovering-smswhatsapp-texts/
June 2016 Pt1, Data recovery advice for owners of LG G4 smartphones that are failing to boot: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/lg-g4-smartphone-failed-not-booting/

> For more Help and Advice pages go to The Archive

Known Issues & Case Studies

Data Clinic staff work on recovering the data from a severely damaged hard drive using a Spinstand in the clean room.

As the UK’s largest data recovery company we see lots of broken hard drives, servers and mobile phones that come in for recovery each week. Because we see so many faulty data storage devices, we are often aware of apparent problems early and in addition to documenting them, can identify ways to get around these problems and recover the data. Historically, Data Clinic were one of the first companies in the world to discover the firmware fault on the Seagate 7200.11 series of hard drives, and the serious Fujitsu MPG firmware fault several years before that.

On this page we’ve highlighted a few of the recent known issues we’ve seen with some current hard drives, as well as some interesting RAID and NAS data recovery case studies.

Current Known Issues (Autumn / Winter 2017)

> Information Link: Why It’s Not Possible to Repair A Faulty Hard Drive

RAID and NAS Data Recovery Case Studies (Spring / Summer 2016)

Due to it’s complexities, RAID and NAS devices provide some of the most interesting and challenging data recovery work that we do.

Samsung SRD-1670D CCTV Recovery (Ok, so this is a CCTV case study !)

Thecus N7700 RAID 6 NAS
Netgear 4 disk NAS
Netgear server running RAID 5
Seagate 6 disk RAID 5 NAS
HP Proliant ML370 Series RAID 5
Dell Poweredge MD1000 series RAID 5
Dell FreeNAS 6 Disk RAID 0 running ZFS

Information Link: Three Tips To Avoid Data Loss When Your RAID / NAS / Server Fails

The Archive

As we are adding information to this site all the time we have developed an archive area that contains lots of useful links to articles we’ve written since 2002.

The archive contains both recent and older information on all aspects of hard drives and recovery that we don’t have room for elsewhere on the site.

Go to The Archive.

Jacob Greenwood

14:38 30 Mar 18

5* customer service! Recovered my father's book from an old drive, also retrieved some long forgotten about photos. Simply cant put a price on something like that.

Jarek Roover

12:21 30 Jul 18

Go there if you lost your data

Tony Cowgill

15:56 10 Apr 13

We've used Data Clinic twice now - once for my son's laptop which held all his University work and suddenly seemed to just die, that was recovered with ease. And then secondly in connection with work when our office computer system backups were somehow corrupted. These people really know their stuff - they are very helpful and professional and quick! Thanks so much for everything.

Rob Deighton

11:33 09 Dec 16

Happy to recommend Data Clinic to anybody that suffered Data Loss on storage Media. The guys were extremely helpful and knowledgeable and made the recovery of our valuable data a stress free experience.

George Thorpe

12:19 20 Feb 14

My company provides IT support to approximately 60 Yorkshire based companies ranging from small 10-15 users up to Enterprise sized organizations. Due to disk failure a client recently lost their entire database. We contacted Data Clinic and within hours a representative was onsite, several hours later the drive was returned, again in person by Data Clinic Manchester. I would not hesitate contacting them again, outstanding service in a market that can mean life or death to a business. 10 stars if there was an option!

Kieran Collins

21:02 25 Oct 18

Fantastic. Could not fault them at all, Brilliant, 10 year old iMac full of data and they had the data back to me in 72 hours. Communication via e-mail was fast, clear and superb.

David Tett

14:36 24 Aug 18

Sent them a 4tb WD Red hard drive to recover. They quoted me £588 incl VAT and recovery media. I was a bit sceptical so I asked for it to be returned. First they sent me the wrong hard drive (a 500GB WD Blue). Not too careful about data protection then. When I eventually got the drive back it had been totally stripped and outer casing binned (would have been nice to know about this beforehand). I decided to send it to Curry's PC World. They quoted £90 + recovery media. All data recovered and both hard drives returned within a week. What more is there to say.

Elle Sweet

22:12 20 Aug 18

Awful communication, I was constantly chasing them for updates on my device. My device was with them days before work was started on it. The data this company couldn’t retrieve was later retrieve by Apple. Waste of a £110.

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