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/
Click for Data Clinic’s main data recovery homepage

Help and Advice

May 2020: Data recovery from Macbook’s with a soldered SSD and T2 security chip: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/soldered-macbook-ssds-and-the-t2-security-chip/
May 2020: Examples of when hard drive recovery and external hard drive recovery is necessary: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-recovery-blog/
March 2020: Teardown and data recovery of a water damaged iPhone XS: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-a-water-damaged-iphone-xs/
February 2020: Recovering data from iPhones with error code 14: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-iphone-error-14/
January 2020: Data Recovery from SSDs that use the TRIM feature: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-and-the-ssd-trim-feature/
January 2020: Data Clinic hard drive, phone, RAID server and CCTV recovery in Bolton, Blackburn and Bradford: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-bolton-blackburn-and-bradford/
December 2019: New Page – Bitlocker data recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-from-bitlocker-encrypted-volumes/
December 2019: Huawei phones hanging and not booting: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/huawei-phones-hang-on-loading-screen/
November 2019: Phone Data Recovery Questions: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-data-recovery-questions/
October 2019: Western Digital WD My Passport hard drive data recovery in London: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/wd-my-passport-data-recovery/
August 2019: Is it possible to recover data from a phone after a factory reset?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-on-a-phone-after-a-factory-reset/
July 2019: Data Recovery Q&A – forensic data recovery, application errors, water damage and CCTV image recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-july-2019/
June 2019: New Page – Advanced data recovery solutions for digital forensics examiners: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/digital-forensic-data-recovery/
June 2019: Video walkthru of the repair and recovery of a water damaged iPhone: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/water-damaged-iphone-repair-and-recovery-video-walkthru/
May 2019: Submitted data recovery questions from customers: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-with-data-recovery/
April 2019: Data Clinic’s mobile phone data recovery services – chip off: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-clinics-chip-off-data-recovery-for-phones/
April 2019: Data recovery on Dell XPS8300 and Buffalo Ministation HD-PCFU3 series hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/dell-and-buffalo-data-recovery/
March 2019: Hard drive data recovery enquiries in our London and Birmingham data recovery locations: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-in-our-london-and-birmingham-locations/
January 2019: What to do when you see the error “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/the-file-or-directory-is-corrupted-and-unreadable/
January 2019: Recovering data from Apple Fusion hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/fusion-hard-drive-recovery/
December 2018: Hard drive recovery enquiries from our London office on Lombard Street: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/london-data-recovery-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

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

RAID and NAS Data Recovery Case Studies

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.

Marc De-Haviland

06:54 13 May 20

Contacted Data clinic with my Hard drive Issue. Chris was FANTASTIC !!! Called me back at 10 pm at night !!!! Explained in detail the ins and outs of hardware issues in an easy to understand manner. Arranged for a courier to pick the hard drive up and get it fixed. Friendly, professional and Informative service. Went above and beyond all expectations. Can’t thank you enough. Great comms throughout.

Ken Sargeant

18:11 07 May 20

I approached two companies for help with a failed drive and data recovery. Data Clinic was the 2nd company to respond, one day later than the first but still quick in response. Helpful, supportive, calm and non 'pushey' response was a big plus for me, especially since it was going to cost some. I dont know the industry standard for speed of service but a couple of days between pre arranged pick up of my failed drive, getting back an email of drive recoverable contents and receiving back to my home a new drive with my information was a great relief and no hassle. Looks like pretty much all of my data was recovered. Being Joe Public I had some worries and questions, they got answered reassuringly. All in, pleased with the service and thank you DC.

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