Data Erasure and Recovery - Manchester and London

I was just wondering if you provide data wipe services? I have an old computer and laptop that both need the data wiping for peace of mind before I dispose of them. If you can't could you please recommend someone who can? Commonly known as Data Erasure, this is kind of the opposite of what a data recovery service is.

Could somebody please get back to me via email regarding possible data recovery. I have lost the data on portable 'my passport' hard drive made by WD mark. Not sure whether its possible to restore that thought SQL somehow so I would apprecaite your contact as soon as possible. I am in London near to the Bank tube station.

My iPhone (5s) stopped working because memory was overloaded I think. I couldn't see anything but an apple icon. I tried to refresh it but it didn't work. I did a factory reset and now I have new version of iOS and only 300 photos (from iCloud) of my 7000 in total. I have contact local repair services in Manchester, Bury and tried internet recovery programmes with no result. Phone has no value for me without these images. I don't mind if you take it apart. I must have my photos back. Can you help me? (PS: I have send one message before, but I think this one is more precised)

2TB Seagate Expansion Hardrive - Already contained approximately 1.5TB worth of schooling data (high school,undergraduate and postgraduate data), media and other backup data. Was adding more media onto the hard drive when it crashed. Disconnected and reconnected the hard drive and computer says it has an unrecognised file system. Was previously formatted to FAT32. I live in Lancashire (Greater Manchester) and sometimes travel to London.

External Hard Drive Recovery

Lacie / Freecom
Data recovery company Data Clinic Ltd are specialists in rescuing the files from computer hard drives and phones that can't be accessed by regular means. Examples of some of the work they do follows...

We have a 2TB HDD taken out of a Lacie drive that my son dropped on the floor and now the unit will not initilise. Its spins up the arms keep popping out and making like a grinding noise. It had our personal photos on there which we had mostly backed up but there was a folder we didnt back up and would like to retrieve. We are in Leeds.

The Freecom external hard drive was not read or recognised by any PC when plugged in. The IT officer at my College in London managed to get a PC to read the drive, but it says 'drive need to be reformatted before use'. Formatting the drive will render all data (that I accumulated from the four years of PhD) lost. Thus, I need to recover files from the external hard drive to a new hard drive.


I work in Liverpool and my Seagate external USB hard drive is picked up when plugged into the computer but I cannot access it. I haven't used it in a while and it's now clicking when plugged in. I read that it does that when dropped but I haven't dropped it and it has been in a case since the last time I used it.
It's giving message "hard drive imminent failure detected" message and does not boot. It comes from a Lacie case.

My usb disk has been damaged and the Freecom internal board has become separated from the connection. I know there is a Data Clinic office in Manchester and the board itself appears not to be damaged. Does this sound like something which could be repaired? Approximately how much will it cost?

I got external HDD seagate 2gb mac formated. I'm based in Northampton and due to unsafe disconnection the drive stopped working.
Data are not critical but good to have.
Please let me know the price

I have a Maxtor 3.5, manufactured Jan 2005, DiamondMax Plus 8, ATA/133 40GB HDD. It has stopped working and there are signs of overheating on the PCB (chip popped maybe).
What is the cost for retrieving the data from this disk? The hard drive is in Sheffield.


Help Please

Hi everyone, can anyone of my data recovery specialists help me with retrieving the files from these hard disk faults? If yes please contact me!

I have elderly mac whose disk does not work (makes noises no startup).
I would like the disk image of it taken if at all possible.

Desktop External Drive Sata 2000gb 3.5in 5400rpm WD20EARX 6gb/s 64mb Cache, Model WD20EARX 00PASB0. The pcb board failed and was replaced with a donor included swapping the firmware chip. It now spins up but is not detected by the pc. The actuator arm clicks, making several attempts to initialise/access data then parks up again. The arm never actually gets to the point of scanning the over the platter, it just gets as far as the edge then retreats back repeatedly. My main concern is to retrieve what is probably about 300gb of music and 500gb of tv programs, not so concerned about the films although if i can retrieve everything, that would be a bonus.




I've got an old iphone 5 that won't switch on or charge, but i have so many old pics and vids that i'd like to recover. Before it died, the screen had internal issues – the screen resolution was so low, you can't tell whether it's on or off. Is it possible for you to recover al my pics and videos? if o i'd like to use this service.

My external hard disk drive WD20EARX keeps making a beeping sound when connect to a pc/laptop i hear a beeping sound coming from the hard drive and i can not access the hard drive .i just want to tranfer the data to another hard drive please help

I have a LaCie external drive used to store photos. I’m trying to download some albums to my Mac and get an error message that a number of files are unreadable. Some copy fine, some will not. Is there a way I could recover all contents to a new HD and if so how much would it cost?



WD beeping hard drive - data recovery

WD My Passport for Mac – beeps 9 times, followed by 3 beeps, followed by 3 beeps. My computer will not read the drive when plugged into my USB cable. It is a 2TB, but only has pictures on it and it not nearly to storage capacity. Samsung P3 1TB is not recognized by laptop. Makes beeping sounds for a few seconds and then stops.

My WD hard drive doesn't read. Was recovered and repaired before, not sure if done poorly but damaged again instantly as it repeated beeps. Has very important sensitive data to me, really important
I need to recover deleted txt messages from a certain phone number from a Samsung 5 Ive down loaded a app that recovered virtually every txt message from 2016 but the one number I needed to see the txt messages between was not there, can you help?

The mini-b usb port for my Hitachi hard-drive has broken off. I've taken apart and can see I required a new "Orlando_CONNECTOR BOARD REV:1.1"

I dropped my western digital portable hard drive and now it will not power up. The hard drive beeps when in a dock and I suspect it to be a hardware fault with the board or the heads. I have an iStar password protected WD USB for my Brownie unit which is beeping. I have used it with no problems for over 5 years.

All of a sudden it is telling me it is write protected or that there is a I/O device error. it will not let me update or change any existing documents on it, copy or save new documents to it or copy or cut documents to another location. I have tried to remove the write protection myself using the command prompt administrator but it hasn't worked. This WD USB hold years of records including our unit accounts and I am extremely concerned I will loose all this data completely, not being able to save changes or add new data is worrying and very inconvenient. please can you let me know if this is something you can help with and how much will it cost?

Recover files on mobile phones

I've recently received enquiries asking for help in rescuing the files from various types of mobile phone that can not be accessed for one reason or another. Most of us carry huge amounts of valuable data on our phones and if we drop our phones, or delete messages that we wanted to keep contacting a phone recovery company in usually the best action. In one of my recent posts I wrote about phone recovery and how data recovery services work with mobile phones. Here are some of the enquiries:

  1. My mobile phone just went in factory reset and I have nothing left in my phone. I have stopped using the mobile phone so the data isn't overwritten. Please kindly let me know if you will be able to help
  2. My daughter disabled my phone by putting in the wrong passcode. It now has restarted itself and is in restore mode. I had not backed up my phone and I would like some precious pictures retrieved
  3. Phone has been reset- lost all photos. They are not appearing on iCloud storage? Any chance of retrieval ?
  4. Water damaged iPhone 6s Won’t turn on + been in rice for 3 days. Want to retrieve 30gb of photos and videos
  5. I'm just inquiring in regards to recovering a call log from a specific number from my Samsung galaxy S8+ within the past 12 months.

The next question people ask is "how much does phone data recovery cost?". The answer is "between £95 and £300 depending on the problem". Contact a phone data recovery specialist and talk your requirement through with them. Once they know how much work is involved they should be able to give you a cost for the work.

ReadyNAS Data Recovery Manchester

I need a data recovery service on my Netgear Readynas which has some WD Green hard drives that are not working properly. I am located in Bolton, part of Greater Manchester.

The drive is a 3TB Sata Western Digital WD30EZRX. I have a pair of these drives in the Netgear NAS. One has failed and the culprit is 'for sure' the controller board. Removed controller board from the working drive and installed it on the drive that was dead and this now works and reads fine. I have a user who has experienced a SMART error on his Intel SATA SSD M.2. I have tried unsuccessfully to recover the data using an external SSD adapter card. There are extremely vital emails on the drive which unfortunately have not been backed up and are required for a very important project. Would you be able to offer any advice on whether this data is recoverable and possibly a quote for the service?

Cannot connect to my computer anymore (no sign that it works at all). I think there is a problem with the cable or the way to plug it in. The cable cannot be removed as my dad tried to fix it with glue… so I'm really stuck with my data that I cannot access!

1. When I was copying images onto the drive, it froze, and I unplugged the drive directly
2. When I then tried to connect, it says that the disk needs to be formatted. I have tried to remove it safely but it froze when I did that, so I removed the drive directly again.
3. I tried to connect the drive again and now it says the disk parameter is incorrect. Explorer would freeze when I tried to disconnect it safely.
4. The hard drive is 1TB, with around 600G of data on it.

As I said above, I need a clinic for my broken Netgear Readynas in Bolton, Manchester.

Files lost on Mobile Phone

I recently lost some data from my mobile phone and needed to get them back. Fortunately I'd previously written a blog on mobile phone data recovery (here), so this time I followed the instructions on the page and managed to recover my files. It's then that I discovered that many people lose data from their phones - for example:

- I have a Samsung s6 mobile phone . the screen is damaged and does not power up. And the USB port is damaged. I don't care about the phone. Just the pics of my wedding that are stored on it

- iPhone 7 fell in water – stuck on apple logo and hasn't been backed up so at a massive risk of losing all my data on the phone


- My phone just died beyond repair I tried going to the apple store, I just want to restore the data on the phone

- I have call recorder on my HTC one mini 2. I had a precious conversation on it with my granddaughter. Only this morning I accidentally deleted it. Please would you be able to retrieve it. I downloaded a app on my computer but it was not able to root to my phone, whatever that means.

broken phone

- I have a Samsung S6 Edge that failed last week – it just switched off and will no longer charge or switch on, instead a section of the motherboard near to where the battery connects to the MB just gets hot. I have a large number of photos on this device which I am very keen to retrieve. This device has onboard storage only.

- My iPhone 6 crashed a month ago and won’t restart (if I try to switch on the phone it just shows the apple logo and then a black screen). I’m looking to recover my data (in particular my photos). Would you be able to provide a quote to recover my data?

- Samsung galaxy mini3 deleted photos can you retrieve them at all please

My recommendation is that you follow the link above to learn how to recover your phone's data.

G-RAID File Recovery Needed

I've received the following questions from people wanting to recover files from G-RAID hard drives that have developed one fault or another. It's worthy to note that G-RAID hard drives sometimes run a RAID file structure which see's the files stored on the hard drives in a distributed segmented way rather that sequentially. Subsequently data recovery on RAID hard drives can be problematic. My advice with all RAID data recovery occurrences is to take the RAID to a data recovery expert - personally I use the guys at http://www.recover-deleted-data.co.uk/ when I've got to get files back from any sort of RAID device, not just G-RAIDs. Here are the questions:

Thunderbolt G-Raid drive is recognised by computer and you can see the files on the disk. But when you try to browse the files it crashes finder and you have to unplug it. I'm located in Manchester but can bring the drives to either Wolverhampton (Birmingham) or London locations.

I have a 4 x Seagate 2TB hard drives which are combined together into a 4 disk RAID 5 system. The system is made by a company called G-RAID but I'm unsure of which model I have. It failed on me a couple of years ago but I've never got round to trying to fix. I did take it to a couple of 'computer shops' around London (where you can mobile phone accessories – that sort of place) but they didn't have any luck.

One of our clients in Wolverhampton has an external G-RAID RAID 5 whose hard drives appear to have died, when it is connected (proprietary connector and sata) it spins briefly and then stops: It is not detected by Windows, we have tried on multiple machines. Our client is quite upset as she has family pictures and backups on the drive. Could you give us a quote to recover the drive? Inside the G-RAID the device the hard drives are Samsung 4 x ST1000LM024 1000GB. we have had a failure on one of our laptop SSDs we are after some documents recovering.

Seagate and Drevo Data Recovery

Here are a couple of data recovery enquiries I received about the feasibility of getting the files back from Seagate and Drevo hard drives that are no longer showing up.

I have a samsung M3 Portable hard drive (now Seagate) which has just stopped working. When you plug it in with the USB it very quietly makes a repetitive tonal sound that is internal to the device and sounds like it isn’t able to work – almost like when a CD skips, but not quite. It usually hums as soon as you plug it in, but it sounds unable to. The light on the device, however, does come on. The drive does not show up where it usually does on my laptop, although the laptop knows the USB is connected. I’m sure it’s a problem with the drive and not my laptop, as I’ve tried it on 2 different laptops. It is a personal drive (not work related) so it’s not essential I recover the files on it, but I would really like to, as there are photos and so forth on it. Any hope?

My Drevo X1 Pro SATA III 256gb SSD hard drive has failed. I'd had problems with my MacBook Pro previously, where it couldn't connect to my old HDD. Replaced it with an SSD, still couldn't connect. Replaced the hard drive cable, which solved the problem. All working fine until one day out of the blue I had the same issue again. The MacBook couldn't find the SSD or boot up etc. Initially thought it was the same problem, ordered a new hard drive cable, but that didn't fix the problem. Took it to the campus IT shop, they ran some tests, came to the conclusion that the hard drive was faulty, as he couldn't connect to it from his systems either. His comments on the invoice were as follows: "Cannot pick up SSD hard disk. Tested hard disk in a another PC – also not picked up either in bios or macdrive diagnostic software. Tested the cable with known good Mac hard disk – ok. Conclusion – faulty Drevo SSD hard disk." He also said that it looked like whatever connectors there were in there, that they could be faulty.

My comment: Until I've taken a good look at each drive to discover what's wrong, I'm not able to say if I can recover the files. From the symptoms above, I', hopeful that I can get the drives showing up again and retrieve the files, but I really do need to diagnose them first

Data Recovery Report

When you have a broken hard drive that you need to get the files from you have to send your computer disk to a data recovery company to get them to retrieve your data. They will examine your hard drive and find out what is wrong with it. Then they'll send you a report detailing the faults and issues. Here's a standard report:

This is the report from another company I used two years ago:
The report from the lab has been finalized and the engineer has reported the following.
· When powered the drive clicks and spins down
· Drive opened within clean lab for internal examination
· Failing read/write heads preventing access to data
· Possible damage on media surface area causing mechanical and logical read/write operation to fail.
· Partition tables unreadable due to read/write failure
Access to data is unsuccessful due to damaged read/write heads.
The heads are the mechanical components that read/write data to/from the internal platters.
The work required to correct the faults include:
1. Drive disassembled within clean lab facility
2. Drive rebuilt with compatible donor heads
3. Drive to be placed on Data Extractor to improve stability and read/write process
4. Attempted Sector by sector image
This is a highly skilled process that is not infallible. The chance of a successful recovery once this process has been completed is approx: 70%.
Unfortunately there are currently no parts in stock to complete the rebuild but we can purchase a compatible donor from our suppliers in the US.

As you can see, a data recovery report clearly identifies what the problem with the hard drive is and the chance of them getting your data back should you decide you want to proceed with the data recovery cost. You can expect to pay in the region of £300 to £700 for a data recovery service from a hard drive.