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Enquiry: My Hard Drive recently packed in. It was running ok the night before (although in retrospect after being asked about it, I'd heard it click a couple of times), but when I booted it up I kept getting an error message saying windows couldn't be found.
So on boot up I went to the BIOS menu to see if something had reordered the drives and discovered the hard drive couldn't be read. I then took it to a repair shop and they attempted to diagnose the problem (it was them who asked about the clicking). They left it over night for a diagnostic and said that on a couple of occasions the Hard Drive was picked up but the only info they could get off it was garbled nonsense. They said that they thought that the heads may have failed on the Hard Drive and that wasn't something they could fix and recommended someone else. The 2nd person came to the same conclusion and said he didn't want to tamper with the heads either as it wasn't something he could fix and so he recommended you.

Finding a Data Recovery Company

You can look for a local data recovery company but my experience is that good data recovery companies a few and far between. Make a distinction between a data recovery specialist and a PC repair shop. They are not the same beast at all. Even though the shop may claim to perform data recovery, it's capabilities will be no where approaching what the data recovery company can do. The best way I've found is to do a countrywide internet search and then look at the reviews of the company. Another useful method is to look for bloggers who write about data recovery and hard drive issues - if you are in the UK you can visit the Recover Deleted Data web site. It deals in answering questions about all types of data recovery, not just retrieving deleted data.

Usually I get asked a lot about broken hard drives but sometimes I get cases where there is nothing wrong with the customer's hard drive but instead something on the hard drive is giving them problems.
There now follow a few examples:

• http://clivenay.beeplog.com/
• http://janschon.edublogs.org/
• http://johnnyforeigner.jimdo.com/
  

This post features a selection of data recovery enquiries from people with hard drive and NAS problems who need their files retrieved.

Data recovery enquiry from a reseller
Hello, we are a computer and laptop repair shop in Hounslow, London.
I have got job from my customer to recover data from a laptop hard drive.
Hard Drive Details, HGST, 1TB
and its giving clicking sound you when you plug in.
can you give me quote to recover data from it. please consider that we have to charge our services from customer as well.

NAS
I have a ready Nas duo, that has developed a fault and will not boot or connect since we last turned it on.
I have read various options online about possible things to do, but in the spirit of i don't won't to fix it worse thought i would seek expert help.


HDD
I have a western digital My Passport Ultra (1TB) external hard drive.
It initially started to take a long time for folders to open and to access files. I began to back up the hard drive (taking hours to back up only a small amount of data).
Now the drive is not visible in Windows explorer. I have the option to "safely remove it" and I can also see it in "devices" and "device manager" but cannot actually see the drive to open any folders.
Any suggestions as to how to get access? or is it possible for you to recover the data (there's almost 900GB)? and how much would it cost?

My WD hard-disk is working till morning. Now, my computer is recognising it but not reading it. Also, in disk management it's showing unallocated.
What shall I do? Please advise.

External usb 3.0 drive
Verbatim enclosure
Hitachi Z5K500-500
500GB 2.5" SATA
Initially was detected by PC but inaccessible. No strange noises, disc was spinning.
A few restarts later, disc still spins, continuous clicking. Completely undetectable by PC.

Help Recover Data From Hard Drive
The hard drive on my MacBook Pro laptop has a physical problem – I have taken it into an apple genius store and they told me the only way to try and get my data back is from a company such as yourselves. I need my documents – I work freelance and have all my relevant paperwork on my hard drive. Plus my photos from the last 2 years.

My MacBook Pro's Internal Hard drive (Mid 2012 Non-Retina) recently started making noises and the laptop pretty much doesn't respond to anything anymore or if it does only very slowly. I am quite sure that the hard drive is in its last breaths and a backup to an external hard drive did not succeed either unfortunately. BIOS recognises drive and windows occasionally detects and installs. However cannot read or access. The heads seem to be cycling around. No clicking i.e. hitting the end stop. Was working fine then failed to boot correctly followed by no access.
What can I/you do to save my files?

The problem with your Macbook Pro sounds very much like bad sectors - parts of the hard disk that can no longer be accessed by the computer. It's a very common problem and far more widespread than you think. The likes of you and I hardly ever notice this or come into contact with it because the hard drive has a built-in bad sector management program that swaps out bad sectors and replaces them with good sectors whenever a bad sector is encountered.

Bad sectors do not go away or diminish, instead they grow as it's the only things they can do, eventually spreading across an entire hard drive. A good guide you can use is the slower your hard drive becomes, the more likely it is to have a high number of bad sectors. If you don't have a backup of your data then bad sectors will eventually lead to you losing all your data.

Retrieving the data from hard drives with bad sectors is possible, but you'll need a data recovery company to do it for you. These company's have specialist pieces of hardware equipment that are able to read 'through' the bad sector and get at the original data underneath. I recommend companies such as this one or http://24hourcomputerrepairs.com/ should you be looking for a data recovery provider.

New Phone Data Recovery Service
Data Recovery Tips (http://data-recovery-tips.co.uk/), the UK data recovery service has recently started to provide phone data recovery in addition to hard drive recovery.

Having used this service provider before and had good results I will now also be sending broken phones I receive to have their data extracted to them.

A recent number of phone recovery enquiries are reprinted below: in each case Data Recovery Tips have a service to retrieve the data. Alternative service providers are recommended at http://blogs.rediff.com/data-recovery/.
Iphone 6s got dropped in water, was put in rice. It did not turn on, attempted screen replacement. The screen came on but was extremely dim until last night and screen stopped coming on. Need backup of all data.

• 
  I need to retrieve a number from Feb 25th of this year on an Iphone. It is not left on the call history log, since Iphone only stores the last 100 calls which means about a month back in time. Can you help me retrieve it?
  I have heard about your services all the way to Sweden and that is why I am going to London next week to have this phone number recovered.
  Therefore, I will show up on Wednesday morning on June 8th and am leaving for Stockholm on Friday morning June 10th at 6.30 AM.
  Therefore, I would like to kindly ask if I could collect my USB stick with the lost phone number on Thursday June 9th, before you close at 6 PM. I definitely need this number with me on my flight back, perhaps you could make an exception and wonder how much that costs extra? Money is not an issue. I have to get the data recovered before I leave.
  Please, call me as soon as possible to make an appointment on Wednesday, in order for you to be able to retrieve the phone number before my departure.
• Phone was dropped in toilet by my son and was in there for a minute while turned on. I took it out and turned it off. About 10 minutes later the battery seemed to get really hot. Later that day I put it in one of those drying bags with drying crystals after opening it up and taking screen off. I left it in there 5 days. Now it have tried to turn it on but it is dead. I need to recover about 32gb of info which is mostly photos and videos. I live in Herts and work in London.
• I have a samsung s7 edge that fails to boot. I have contact and messages that I would like recovered from the phone, is this something you can help with?
• My Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini was recently infected with a virus. I had to perform a systent restore and wipe the phone in order to be able to use it again. The problem was that after the restore I realised that I had not backed up my data and as a result lost all my pictures. I am aware that it is possible to retrieve data after a system restore. Would it be possible for you to retrieve my data from my phone.
  

Dropped my external hard drive yesterday (Western digital 1TB P/N:WDBMWV0020BBK-05) and now it will not connect to pc. It just sits making a ticking sound for a couple of minutes, then shuts off completely. My hobby is in photography and It contains a number of photographs that I have been working on for the past few months.

Mobile and smartphones break in many ways. We believe that once a phone is broken that it's not possible to recover the data from it. This is not true, skilled phone data recovery organisations like England's Data Clinic (see http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-from-mobile-devices-phones-tablets-etc/) can get the data back from almost any type of damaged or broken phone.

No Power To Phone

Samsung s2 mobile phone.
No power. Screen slight crack. Need photos videos. Phone numbers recovered.

This shouldn't be too difficult a problem to recover the data from. To me it suggests that the cracked screen has interfered with the phone's circuitry and is preventing it from switching on. Replacement of the cracked screen with a new one and a general clean inside the phone to remove and unseen debris should result in this phone working perfectly again.

Phone Stuck in Boot Loop

I have an LG G4 which appears to be stuck in a boot loop. I cannot access recovery and it does not stay on long enough to be able to access it via a computer. While the phone is still under warranty and I can get it replaced, I do not want to lose the large amount of pictures and videos stored on the device. I am keen to locate someone that would be able to recover the photo's and videos from the phone before it goes off to be replaced by LG. The only catch is that the data recovery will need to done without unscrewing the back of the phone to access its motherboard as this will void the warranty and result in me not being able to replace it. Is this something you are able to help with?
I live in Reading and so can pop into local IT provider "Its Gone Funny" if necessary, but ideally would like to know whether its possible.

You don't disclose how your G4 phone got into a boot loop, was it after a software update perhaps or did the phone run out of battery mid operation? Getting the data back from phones that are stuck in boot loops is possible, often by bypassing the operating system (and therefore the boot loop) and reading the information straight off the memory chips. This is a highly skilled task however and should not be left the the unskilled staff in your high street mobile phone repair shop. Instead look for a competent data recovery company, they will be able to assist.

Sony Xperia Dead Battery

I have an unresponsive Sony Xperia T mobile phone which I think has had the battery shorted with all possible hopes to switch it back on gone. If I have the phone, with a dead battery, is there still the possibility to recover files previously saved on the internal memory via some sort of chip off process? I'm based in the city of London only 5 minutes from Bank which would be easiest Data Clinic office to get too. Just preliminary inquiry at the moment to check viability.

Hello again, here's my monthly tech site roundup where I recommend the UK sites that have impressed me this month and provide links to them too. This month I've turned my attention to hard disk related problems and the need for data recovery services. These are usually technical companies that have the ability to retrieve information from hard disk drives that have broken and no longer work. Hence the need for a data recovery service to retrieve the data from the hard drives.

Example 1: Could not access hard drive (whirred and showed question mark. Apple could not restart. My son has taken the hard disc out and installed in a docking station, but it doesn't drive the disc. I'm an academic and would like my current WORD files retrieved if possible back to June 2012, when my back up failed without warning me. I now have a new computer and do not need applications, pdfs or ppt's which I can retrieve from my downloads or memory sticks.
My comments: Sounds like you need the services of a data recovery company to me! Try http://www.datlabsdatarecovery.co.uk on  0871 977 2999 (UK).

Example 2: Hi, I have a Canvio 3tb that I had partitioned with Time Machine. It is does not show up on my Macbook nor on my sons Windows Laptop. Have you had experience reovering from this issue as a basic technician has already taken a look? Toshiba wouldn't cover the work under warranty as the serial number was not present? If you can conduct the work what would be a rough estimate of price? I am currently out of the country so please reply via email.
My comments: The Apple Time Machine is a form of external hard drive and a good post with good advice regarding rescuing the files from device like these can be found on the Frank Canon microsite at http://frankcanon.blogbaker.com/2016/03/14/external-hard-drive-problems.

That's it for this month. Short and sweet I guess. Remember that if you have any technical queries or questions you can contact me and I'll try and answer them. They may even make their way onto my month blog roundup too.

"My external hard drive has stopped working. It is a Samsung product. Powered via the USB cable. I have changed the cable and confirmed that is not the problem. It makes no sound or movement when connected to any computers. I need to extract or recover my data.".

I read that you've done some fault finding on your Samsung hard disk drive already! Good, this makes my job easier. Eliminating items like the cable is a sensible thing to do and I've seen, on more that one occasion, a cable being responsible for the fault. In your case, describing the fault as you do, to me it seem that your Samsung external hard drive is damaged. Googling something like 'damaged external hard drive recovery' pulls back many results and I had a look at some of them. The best sites I could find were http://computersciencelabs.com/ a site that has a corporate feel that is all about data recovery. It has some interesting information on it, including stuff on the forensic examination of computer disks and also obtaining the information from CCTV - much of which is written to hard drive these days. A less corporate site but one equally as good which is also awash with information pertaining to the extraction of data from Samsung (and other) hard drives is http://24hourcomputerrepairs.com. Many of the recent articles are about computer forensics involving hard drives and CCTV but take a look through the articles and you'll notice plenty of useful stuff.