A tree surgeon working out of Warfield keeps job photographs, quotes and invoices on a Toshiba 2TB portable, which is more of a business than it sounds: the before-and-after photographs are what settles most disputes about what was agreed. The drive stopped showing up. Its light still flashes and it can plainly be heard doing something. A shop got far enough with it to list the files, could not copy any of them, and told him it needed a lab because the head was stuck.
| Media | A Toshiba 2TB portable drive that no longer appears on any computer. The indicator flashes and the drive is audible. A repair shop was able to list the files but not copy them. |
| What was reported | Toshiba 2TB portable drive, stopped showing up, light flashes and it can be heard working, a shop scanned it and found the files but could not retrieve them, advised a lab, head reported as stuck, recovery sought. |
| Fault class | Mechanical. The head stack was not moving freely across the surface, so the drive could be coaxed into responding briefly and could not sustain a read. The platters were intact, which the shop's partial listing had already suggested. |
| On the bench | Not run further, profiled once on a current-limited bench supply with the head behaviour and current draw traced, opened in clean air under laminar flow, the head stack, ramp and platter surfaces inspected under a stereo microscope, the stuck stack freed and then replaced with matched donor heads once its condition was assessed, alignment set, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, the volume parsed in R-Studio and photographs validated by rendering. |
A shop listing the files is genuinely good evidence. To produce a listing, something had to read the directory, which means the drive responded at least once and the structures were intact when it did. That does not make the job easy, but it does rule out a lot of pessimistic explanations.
Listing and copying are different demands. A directory is small and sits in one place; copying means sustained reading across the whole surface for minutes at a time. A head stack that binds will manage the first and fail the second, which is exactly the pattern described.
Stuck is a family of faults, not one fault. Heads can bind on the ramp they park on, they can adhere to the platter surface after a long idle period, or the arm's pivot bearing can stiffen. They present the same way from outside and they are told apart by opening the drive and looking, which is why this is bench work and not something to persist with at a desk.
Freeing a stack is not the end of the job. A head that has been stuck has usually been stressed, and putting it back into service risks a fault appearing halfway through an image. Once the drive is open and the surfaces are known to be clean, fitting a matched donor stack is the safer route, and it is what happened here.
It arrived and was not run. One profiled start on a current-limited supply showed the arm attempting to move and stalling, with a current draw that rose and held rather than settling, which matched a binding stack rather than a spindle problem or an electronics fault.
Opened under laminar flow, the stack was found bound at the ramp with one slider showing wear from the repeated attempts. The surfaces were inspected across the full radius and were unmarked. Rather than return the original stack to service, matched donor heads were fitted and alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. R-Studio read the volume out of the image and the job photographs were rendered on screen for checking.
Everything came back, photographs, quotes and invoices, in the folder structure he had built by year and by customer. The shop's listing turned out to be an accurate preview of the recovery.
One drive, £300 + VAT. The drive had to be opened in clean air, which is mechanical work and falls outside the published guarantee, so 50% was settled before the lid came off and the balance once he had opened the photographs.
Stop as soon as somebody uses the word stuck. A binding head stack that is asked to keep trying will eventually free itself in the worst possible way, by contacting the surface, and that is the one kind of damage nobody can undo. If a shop has already produced a file listing, keep it and send it with the drive: knowing which files exist and roughly where they sit is useful and it saves the bench a read. Do not accept an offer to run recovery software overnight, because overnight is thousands of retries. And do not tap, shake or spin the drive by hand to unstick it, which is advice that circulates and which has ended more of these jobs than it has saved.
These files are written up from genuine enquiries taken from households and businesses in Bracknell, across Berkshire and Surrey and into London, with names, firms and anything else identifying stripped out. Each one sets down how the fault was reasoned through, the method it actually needed and the equipment it was worked on. One of them is a job that was turned away, which belongs here as much as the rest of them.
A drive that announces itself to the port but never appears has a mechanism stuck short of ready
A fall damages heads mechanically whether the drive was running or not, and the clicking is the proof
Clicking gets worse with use, and the fortnight between the first noise and the last is spent, not free
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.