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My previous desktop failed some time ago and although I never figured it out what caused it the motherboard was clearly beyond repair because when I swapped in a different psu it would start up at all, the system was totally dead. I've recently got a new desktop and wanted to recover the data from the old hard disk which was an ide connection and so I had no intention of making it a part of the new system. What I really want from it is theasy photos of my daughter when she was wee. I got an ide to usb adapter from Novatech but when I connected it up there was a nasty smell and a wisp of smoke from the power input to the disk. I intend to check the power lead in case there was a manufacturing fault which led to it giving the wrong voltage. My concern is that the board on the disk might be shorted out and I'm reluctant to try a different adapter, even one borrowed from a friend which i know is good in case I damage the disk further. So what I'd like is a quote for recovering the data on the disk.

IDE hard drives have not been widely used for almost 10 years now. Their SATA replacement hard drives featured a new type of connection that got rid of the parallel data cable and 4 wire D-connector type power cable

When the hard drive starts to smoke it means there is a problem with the electronic controller board of the hard drive. This is usually caused by a fault - usually in the voltage regulator chip that prevents the hard drive from powering up. Replacing the hard drive PCB with an identical one won't work as the board also controls a map of how the data is stored on each hard drive. So if you need the data from the hard drive you'll need a way of transferring the drive mapping from the old disk to the new disk too.

All files suddenly disappeared from external hard drive and I didn't delete them. How much would it cost to recover them in the London area?

I think my daughter removed the drive without safely ejecting it. Now when it is plugged in it just requests to be formatted. It is now not recognisable on my MacBook Pro either. I use it to back up my main HP Windows PC but I have before been able to access files when plugging it into my MacBook. The hard drive is an Hitachi 1TB XL1000. In London and have used the excellent services of http://londondatarecovery.pen.io/ before.

Wd My passport Ultra 1TB, hello I've been backing things up from our iMac and the lights are on, the disc is making a noise but its not recognised on my iMac, it is recognised in disk utility, I've tried disc utility and it says unrepairable, one minute then the partition map appears to be okay, can you help ?

My iPhone 5S is stuck in recovery mode. It was water damaged (I jumped in a canal to save a dog!) so I stuck in rice to try and save it. This worked but the home button is no longer functional. And since the iOS update you cannot swipe to enter your passcode. Therefore I turned it off as this forces a pin entry. However when I turned back on it was in recovery mode and has been since. I am not concerned about saving the phone itself, I had actually purchased a new one prior to the canal incident, but I do really want to rescue the photos which irritatingly don't appear in my iCloud photo library. In the last 24 hours the iPhone will charge off my Mac but is no longer recognised as a device.