The Archive - General Hard Drive and Data Recovery 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/

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

https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-drive-data-loss-ONE/
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-drive-data-loss-TWO/
https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-drive-data-loss-THREE/

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 http://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/

Older Stuff

(Still relevant, though no longer updated)

Hard Drives From Yesterday…

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/
Repair and recovery of a firmware fault on a Maxtor N40P hard drive https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-case-study-maxtor-n40p/
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/

Miscellaneous

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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