A solicitor's practice in the city centre keeps scanned deeds and closed matter files on an external drive, in addition to the case system, and that drive stopped being readable. A recovery firm examined it and reported that the heads had failed and that the next step was a head assembly replacement and a rebuild. The practice manager did not doubt the diagnosis. She doubted the figure, which was into four digits, and she wrote asking whether a second opinion was worth the postage.
| Media | An external hard drive holding scanned deeds and closed matter files, already examined by another recovery firm, whose finding was a failed head assembly and whose quotation the practice found excessive. |
| What was reported | External drive, unreadable, inspected by another recovery firm, their finding was failed heads with a head assembly replacement advised, quotation into four figures, a second opinion sought before proceeding. |
| Fault class | Mechanical, and correctly identified before it arrived. Two heads of the four had failed, the drive was retrying and never completing its start-up, and the platters were unmarked. The first firm had read it accurately. |
| On the bench | The earlier finding treated as a hypothesis and tested rather than assumed, with the drive profiled on a current-limited bench supply behind PC-3000 UDMA and the retry pattern recorded; the seals and screws checked for evidence of a previous opening before anything else; opened under laminar flow, heads and both surfaces examined under a stereo microscope; matched donor heads fitted and alignment set; imaged on DeepSpar with the head map monitored; the volume parsed in R-Studio and documents opened before release. |
Agreeing with the first firm was the honest answer and it was the first thing established. There is a temptation in this trade to find something the previous examiner missed, and it is worth resisting. The drive behaved exactly as described: power, spin, a repeating seek and retract, and no identification. Head failure was the correct reading and saying so plainly cost nothing.
What differs between firms is the pricing model, not usually the physics. A head assembly comes out of a donor drive of the correct family, and the work is a morning if the donor is in stock and the alignment sets first time. Some firms price that as a bespoke engineering project and quote accordingly. The figure here is published, applies to any single disk, and does not move once it has been given, which is the entire difference between the two answers she received.
The first question about a drive somebody else has looked at is whether they opened it. An inspection is one thing; an attempt is another. A drive opened outside filtered air has particles in it that were not there before, and a drive somebody has already fitted donor heads to has usually had its surfaces touched. This one had never been opened, the screws and the seal confirmed it, and that is what kept it a routine job.
Failed heads over clean platters is the most ordinary serious fault there is. Nothing has been lost when a head fails. The material is on the surfaces and the reading mechanism has stopped working, so the mechanism is replaced and the surfaces are read. It sounds dramatic from a desk and it is a well-worn procedure on a bench, which is exactly why it does not warrant a bespoke price.
The screws and the seal were examined first, because everything afterwards depends on whether the drive is in the condition its owner thinks it is in. It was untouched. On a current-limited supply the retry pattern matched the earlier report precisely, and the interval was steady enough to rule out a supply or a board problem.
Under laminar flow, two heads were visibly damaged and the surfaces below them carried no scoring, which meant the practice had stopped using it early. Donor heads were fitted from a matched drive, alignment was set, and the disk imaged on DeepSpar with the map watched for any head falling behind. R-Studio read the volume out of the image, and a spread of deeds and matter files was opened before the set went out.
Everything came back, including a folder of scanned wills the practice had been most concerned about. The recovered material went out encrypted on a new disk, at the practice's request, since the contents were client documents and a courier is a courier.
One disk is £300 + VAT, the same as any other single disk, and the fault being an expensive-sounding one does not change it. Head replacement is mechanical work, which the published exclusion names, so 50% was payable before the drive was opened and the balance once the documents had been checked.
Ask three questions before agreeing to anything. First, has the drive been opened, and if it has, by whom and in what conditions, because that changes what the next firm inherits. Second, is the figure fixed or does it move once work starts, since a quotation that can grow is not really a quotation. Third, what happens if it fails, which for mechanical work will normally mean a deposit is not returned, and that should be stated plainly rather than discovered later. Do not ask for the drive to be tested again while you decide, because every start-up on failed heads is spent from a limited supply. A second opinion is worth having, but get it on the drive as it stands rather than after somebody has had a go.
Each of these is a real enquiry, taken from a household or a business somewhere in Leicester or the surrounding county, with the name of the customer, the firm and anything else that would identify them taken out. What is left is the reasoning: what turned up, what had actually failed inside it, the method that fault required and the equipment it was worked on. One of the thirty-six is a job that was refused, and it belongs here every bit as much as the successes do.
The published figure is per disk, not per fault, however many faults are stacked in front of it
Beeping is a mechanism drawing power it cannot turn into movement
Silence after clicking is the drive giving up on schedule, not a second failure arriving
Examining it is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure goes to you in writing and does not move afterwards, and a logical fault carries no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.