An architect in Wimbledon lost a WD Passport for Mac halfway through copying a completed project off it. It began clicking and never stopped. The firm she sent it to first came back with a careful and, as it turned out, entirely accurate report: read/write head damage, motor sound, platters sound, firmware sound. They then said they could not retrieve it. She asked whether a second opinion was worth the postage.
| Media | A WD My Passport for Mac that began clicking during a transfer. A previous recovery firm diagnosed damaged read/write heads with the motor, platters and firmware all confirmed sound, and returned it unrecovered. |
| What was reported | WD Passport for Mac, started clicking mid-transfer, another recovery firm confirmed head damage with motor, platters and firmware sound, that firm could not retrieve the data, prior analysis supplied, second opinion sought. |
| Fault class | Mechanical, and already correctly identified. The read/write heads were damaged; everything around them was intact. A head fault over unmarked platters is the most recoverable serious fault a drive can have, provided a properly matched donor can be found. |
| On the bench | The previous report read before anything was touched, the drive re-profiled once on a current-limited bench supply, opened in clean air under laminar flow, heads and platter surfaces inspected under a stereo microscope with particular attention to any marking from earlier attempts, donor matched on model, firmware revision and manufacturing batch rather than model alone, heads fitted and alignment set, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, the HFS+ volume parsed in R-Studio and drawings validated by opening them. |
Their diagnosis was right, which made it useful. A report confirming damaged heads over a sound mechanism and sound firmware is worth having. It meant the second attempt did not start from nothing, and it meant the drive was not asked to demonstrate its fault all over again.
Not retrieving is not the same as not retrievable. Head replacement lives or dies on the donor. The replacement stack has to match the original closely, and on some models that means matching the firmware revision and the manufacturing batch, not merely the model number printed on the label. A firm without access to the right donor will do everything correctly and still finish with nothing.
Sound platters are the whole prize. Once a set of surfaces has been scored there is no equipment that puts the magnetic layer back. Here the surfaces were unmarked, which is what happens when a clicking drive is switched off promptly, and that made this an ordinary job rather than a difficult one.
A second attempt is not free of risk and should not be pretended otherwise. Every opening is an opportunity to introduce contamination and every head swap puts a new stack over the surfaces. The honest position is that a confirmed head fault over clean platters has good odds and no guarantees, and that is what she was told before she posted it.
The previous firm's analysis was read first and their findings were taken at face value rather than re-tested, because re-testing a clicking drive means running it and running it is the one thing that damages surfaces. A single profiled start on a current-limited supply confirmed nothing had changed since their report.
The drive was opened under laminar flow and the surfaces inspected: unmarked, with no evidence of anyone having spun it more than necessary. A donor was matched on model, firmware revision and batch, the head stack transferred and alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. R-Studio read the HFS+ volume from the image and the project drawings were opened rather than counted.
The project came back whole, along with everything else on the drive. It took a correctly matched donor, which was the only thing missing from an otherwise sound first attempt.
A single drive is £300 + VAT, and a second opinion is priced the same as a first one. Opening a drive is mechanical work and falls outside the guarantee, so 50% was payable upfront with the balance once the drawings had been opened and checked.
Ask for the report and send it with the drive. A previous firm's findings, even a discouraging set, save the second bench from repeating the tests that put a drive at risk, and a report describing sound platters is genuinely good news. Ask what they actually did: a drive that has been opened once can be worked on again, but the bench needs to know it, because contamination introduced earlier has to be cleaned before new heads go in. Do not accept unrecoverable as a verdict on the data when it may only be a verdict on the donor supply, and equally do not expect a second attempt to be certain. What makes the difference is whether the surfaces are still clean, and that can be seen under magnification.
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 swollen battery kills a laptop and leaves the storage entirely untouched, on any machine with a removable drive
A drive that announces itself to the port but never appears has a mechanism stuck short of ready
An interrupted write leaves the volume inconsistent, so the drive letter survives and the files behind it do not
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.