A classic car restorer in Binfield is a man entirely comfortable taking things apart, which on this occasion did not help. His old Maxtor external started making a noise and then stopped working, so he did what he would do with a gearbox: got it onto the bench, took the lid off and had a look. He could see straight away that the heads were sitting wrong and one of them was visibly bent. Then he rang, which was the right moment to ring.
| Media | A Maxtor external hard drive that began making a noise and stopped working, subsequently opened by its owner on a workshop bench. The head stack is visibly displaced and one head is bent. |
| What was reported | Maxtor external drive, started making a noise and stopped working, owner opened it himself and found the heads moved and damaged, drive not run since, data still needed. |
| Fault class | Mechanical, and confirmed by eye before it arrived. The head stack was damaged. The additional issue was contamination: the drive had been open on a workshop bench, so particles had settled on the platters and had to be dealt with before any new stack could be fitted. |
| On the bench | Not powered at any point after arrival, opened in clean air under laminar flow, the interior and both platter surfaces inspected under a stereo microscope and the contamination from the earlier opening assessed and cleaned, the damaged stack removed, matched donor heads fitted and alignment set, the filter replaced, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, the volume parsed in R-Studio and files validated by opening them. |
What he saw was correct, and it saved a diagnostic step. A displaced stack with one bent head explains the noise and explains the failure. There was no ambiguity left to resolve, which meant the drive never had to be powered again to demonstrate its own fault.
Opening it was still the wrong thing to do. A workshop is full of exactly what a hard drive cannot tolerate: brake dust, swarf, filings, fibres. A drive interior is engineered around a filtered air path, and the head flies far closer to the platter than any of that debris is wide. Once a drive has been open in ordinary air, contamination becomes part of the job.
It is not, however, the end of the job, and it is worth saying so. A drive opened once, briefly, and not run afterwards is usually recoverable. What ends these jobs is opening a drive and then powering it, because that drags the settled particles across the surfaces under the heads. He did not do that, and that single decision is why this reads as a recovery rather than a refusal.
The rule of thumb is simple. If a drive has been open, do not plug it in, do not spin it, and do not try to put the lid back on and pretend. Say what you did when you send it. The bench can clean an interior and replace a filter; nobody can restore a surface that has been polished away.
It was not powered after arrival. It went straight into clean air under laminar flow, and the first task was the contamination rather than the heads: the interior, both surfaces and the filter were examined under magnification, particles were counted and cleaned, and the filter was replaced. The surfaces themselves were unmarked, which confirmed that he had genuinely not run it after opening it.
The damaged stack was removed and matched donor heads were fitted with alignment set. The drive was imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, and because a contaminated drive is a drive with a shorter working life, the imaging took everything in one continuous ordered pass rather than in stages. R-Studio read the volume out of the image and files were opened rather than counted.
The recovery was complete. He was told plainly that it had been closer than he realised, and that the reason it worked was that he stopped after looking rather than trying it again afterwards.
One drive, £300 + VAT, cleaning and filter included rather than added on. This is mechanical work carried out in clean air and is outside the guarantee: 50% payable upfront, the balance once the recovered files had been checked.
Do not power it, and do not try to undo it. A drive that has been opened and left alone is in a repairable state; the same drive run for thirty seconds afterwards frequently is not, because the particles that settled while it was open get dragged across the platters by the heads. Put the lid loosely back on to keep more dust out, tape it if you must, and pack the drive so nothing can move. Then say what you did when you send it in, including how long it was open and where. There is no penalty for having looked, and there is a real penalty for hiding it, because the bench needs to know that contamination has to be cleaned before a new head stack goes anywhere near the surfaces.
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.