The Vault – Archive
The Archive contains lots of information about hard drives and data recovery that we’ve been compiling since 2002. Whilst you’ll find up to date information about current issues and problems throughout the rest of the site, the archive contains pages that we feel are still relevant but don’t really have a place anywhere else.
Help and Advice (Older Pages)
For the most recent hard drive and data recovery help and advice pages to here: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/known-issues-case-studies/
- December 2019: 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: 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 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/
- May 2016 Pt3, Advice for retrieving information from an external Mac HDD, and DVR CCTV system, and an iPhone 6: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-a-mac-dvr-cctv-and-an-iphone-6/
- May 2016 Pt2, Help and Advice with Cyclic Redundancy Check errors and another unresponsive external hard drive that clicks: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-with-cyclic-redundancy-check-errors/
- May 2016 Pt1, A brief introduction to Tor and how it protects your browsing: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/an-introduction-to-tor/
- Apr 2016 Pt3, Help, Advice and Recommendations to a company running a 7 disk RAID6 server with 2 drives failed and no backups…: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-supporting-a-raid-6-with-2-failed-drives/
- Apr 2016 P2, Information, help, advice and recommendations to users with unresponsive beeping hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/wd-my-passport-beeps/
- Apr 2016 Pt1, Android 101 – The Definitive Guide to Common Problems on Android Devices: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/android-101-the-definitive-guide-to-common-problems-on-android-devices/
- Mar 2016 Pt3, WhatsApp – What’s It All About? – a closer look at the world’s most popular messaging app: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/whatsapp-whats-it-all-about/
- Mar 2016 Pt2, A drowned mobile phone, a keyboard accident leads to a broken disk and an unresponsive WD My Passport: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-keyboard-knock-creates-unresponsive-hard-drive/
- Mar 2016 Pt1, 3 Portable Hard Drives, 3 Different Problems: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/portable-hard-drives-help-and-advice-problem-page-march-2016/
- Apr 2016 Pt3, Help, Advice and Recommendations to a company running a 7 disk RAID6 server with 2 drives failed and no backups…: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-supporting-a-raid-6-with-2-failed-drives/
- Apr 2016 P2, Information, help, advice and recommendations to users with unresponsive beeping hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/wd-my-passport-beeps/
- Apr 2016 Pt1, Android 101 – The Definitive Guide to Common Problems on Android Devices: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/android-101-the-definitive-guide-to-common-problems-on-android-devices/
- Mar 2016 Pt3, WhatsApp – What’s It All About? – a closer look at the world’s most popular messaging app: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/whatsapp-whats-it-all-about/
- Mar 2016 Pt2, A drowned mobile phone, a keyboard accident leads to a broken disk and an unresponsive WD My Passport: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-keyboard-knock-creates-unresponsive-hard-drive/
- Mar 2016 Pt1, 3 Portable Hard Drives, 3 Different Problems: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/portable-hard-drives-help-and-advice-problem-page-march-2016/
- Feb 2016 Pt3, Learn how we use ultrasonic cleaning to recover the data from submersed phones and hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ultrasonic-cleaning-for-phone-hard-drive-data-recovery/
- Feb 2016 Pt2, A DIY head change on a hard drive, more broken phones and hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-a-diy-hdd-head-change-and-more/
- Feb 2016 Pt1, Dell RAID servers – hard drive error status codes explained: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/raid-hdd-status-codes-on-dell-servers/
- Jan 2016 Pt4, A troubleshooting guide for when you lose access to a shared hard drive / folder over a network: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/troubleshooting-a-mapped-drive-problem/
- Jan 2016 Pt3, Rescuing the data from flooded PCs and a NAS with a faulty chassis case: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/helpadvice-flood-damaged-hard-drives-readynas-dead-chassis/
- Jan 2016 Pt2, Recovering the data from a vandalised CCTV recorder: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/vandalised-cctv-system/
- Jan 2016 Pt1, Recover data from a phone dropped in water, retrieving deleted text messages and chats: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-dropped-into-water-recovering-deleted-messages/
- Dec 2015 Pt3, Mac hard drive mounts OK but crashes Finder: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/external-hard-drive-mounts-but-crashes-finder/
- Dec 2015 Pt2, Help and advice for users of a Buffalo LinkStation Duo RAID 0 running in emergency mode: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-a-buffalo-linkstation-in-emergency-mode/
- Dec 2015 Pt1, Help and advice with a burning smell from a hard drive and a re-formatted Buffalo TeraStation: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/burning-smell-from-a-hard-drive-a-re-formatted-terastation/
- Nov 2015 Pt3, Problems with Western Digital WD10 hard drives and an Iomega RAID 5 NAS issue: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-and-advice-iomega-raid-nas-and-wd-hard-drives/
- Nov 2015 Pt2, A user of a G|RAID NAS dual disk RAID 0 loses access to their data: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/problem-with-a-graid-dual-drive-storage-system/
- Nov 2015 Pt1, Smartphone Problem Special ! – An unresponsive Samsung S6, iPhone 5s and Nokia Lumia 925: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/getting-data-from-unresponsive-smartphones/
- Oct 2015 Pt4, Wet phones not working, a crashed Buffalo Ministation and a hard drive that needs formatting: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-october-2015-part-4/
- Oct 2015 Pt3, An ill fated attempt at DIY data recovery – here’s why some common things people try to fix their hard drives don’t work: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/broken-hard-drive/
- Oct 2015 Pt2, A faulty Seagate Barracuda, a water damaged Samsung Galaxy S2, an unresponsive Dell Poweredge and a ‘Did You Know’ security feature on iPhones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-qa-october-2015-part-2/
- Oct 2015 Pt1, Identifying the problem and retrieving the data from a generic unresponsive hard drive: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-help-and-advice-an-unresponsive-hard-drive/
- Sept 2015 Pt4, Lost pics on an LG phone running Android and a legal case requiring the recovery of deleted text messages from a Samsung Note 3: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/mobile-phone-recovery-qa/
- Sept 2015 Pt3, Looks at faults on older IDE PATA hard drives and a Samsung mobile phone issue: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/old-ide-pata-hard-drive-recovery-qa/
- Sept 2015 Pt2, Discusses various user problems with Seagate and Western Digital portable hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/help-with-hard-drives-qa-september-2015/
- Sept 2015 Pt1, Issues with a Dell Poweredge 840 and a Buffalo TS-XL/R5 NAS running RAID 5, plus ACER Extensa 5635Z laptop HDD errors: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-help-recovery-questionsanswers-sept-2015-pt1/
- August 2015 Pt2, Several problems with external / portable hard drives and a laptop that refuses to start: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-help-data-recovery-questions-and-answers-august-2015-part-2/
- August 2015, Hybrid hard drive problems and issues with a Thecus NAS: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-help-data-recovery-questions-and-answers-august-2015/
- July 2015, Dropped hard drives, Mac problems, RAID 5 trouble and smashed iPhones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-enquiries-july-2015/
- June 2015: Spilt liquid on a laptop, missing images on a CCTV system, 2 instances of deleted photos: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-enquiries-weekly-roundup-june-2015/
The Causes of Hard Drive Failure
The causes of hard drive failure – Part 1
The causes of hard drive failure – Part 2
The causes of hard drive failure – Part 3
General ADR
Hard Drive Head Misalignment
Water / Flood Damaged Hard Drives
Why, What and How ?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of external hard drives? https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/advantages-disadvantages-external-hard-disk-drives-usb-firewire
Why do hard drives tick ? https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-ticking-hard-disk-head-problem/
What is a head crash ? https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/what-is-a-head-crash-hard-disk-drive-information/
How to disable Scandisk and Chkdsk https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/disable-scandisk-chkdsk/
Why use of Scandisk and Chkdsk should be avoided https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/scandisk-chkdsk-disk-checking-repair-software/
What are hard drive CRC errors ? https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-crc/
How bad sector repair programs work (flow chart) https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-regenerator-repair-flow-chart/
Even Older Stuff
Maxtor hard drive recovery https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/maxtor-hard-disk-recovery/
Retrieving data from Maxtor DiamondMax 22 hard drives https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-maxtor-diamondmax-22/
Quantum hard drives https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/quantum-hard-disk-data-recovery/
Recovering data from an ATA password protected Fujitsu drive https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-case-study-fujitsu-mhu2100at/
Same thing on an ATA password protected Seagate Momentus https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-case-study-seagate-momentus-5400/
The old IBM Deskstar https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-ibm-deskstar-hard-disk-drive/
Data recovery on Apple X-Serve
Police ACPO Guidelines
26P05AVG Chip Corruption
ATA password protected Fujitsu MHU2100AT Hard Drive
ATA password protected Seagate Momentus
Maxtor Hard Drive Firmware Faults
Data Recovery Maxtor N40P
IBM and Hitachi Deskstar Data Recovery
Data Recovery Maxtor DiamondMax 22
Data Recovery Seagate 7200.11
Seagate Momentus hard drive data recovery
Hard Drive Head Faults
Western Digital Caviar Hard Drive Recovery
Western Digital Caviar Noisy Hard Drives
Data Recovery Western Digital Protege
Data Recovery from Western Digital WD10TMVV
Windows Hard Drive Error Messages
Data Recovery XFS Filesystem
How to enable and disable Scandisk and Chkdsk
Data Recovery Fujitsu MPF and MPG Hard Drives
Invalid CRC – Hard Drive CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check)
How Do Data Recovery Programs Work ?
The Differences between helium and air filled HDDs
Linux Filesystems and Disk i/o
Data Recovery ATA Password Protected Hard Drive
RAID Disk Status Codes on Dell Servers
RAID Parity Calculation Using The XOR Operation
Fitbit Data Recovery
NetGear ReadyNAS data recovery
Lacie NAS Data Recovery
Recovering data from hard drives with bad sectors
Recovering data from Format and Fdisk
Don’t Run Scandisk, Chkdsk or Fsck
Soldered MacBook SSD’s and the T2 Security Chip
Why Swapping Controller Boards On Hard Drives Doesn’t Work
Miscellaneous
Windows / BIOS errors you may see when you have a HDD problem https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-windows-disk-error-messages/
Corrupt 25P05AVG HDD chips https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/corrupt-25p05avg-flash-chip-hard-disk-drive/
Seized spindles and data recovery https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-hard-disk-drive-seized-spindle/
Jaz and Zip disk recovery https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-jaz-zip-disk/
Recovering the data from XFS hard drives https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-xfs-hard-drive/
Recovery and repair of deleted, corrupted SQL databases https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recover-deleted-data-from-SQL-database/
The use of the XOR operating in calculating RAID parity https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/raid-parity-xor/
A discussion of native and journal file systems on Linux and disk I/O operations https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/linux-file-systems-and-disk-io/
Reading the signals from faulty HDD heads on an oscilloscope https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-head-signals-1/
Hard drive defects table – P & G Lists
Restoring data after an HDD Format or Fdisk
SCSI HDDs – A common error message
Recovering files from flash cards and memory sticks