Hard Drive Data Recovery
Your hard drive failed. Your data probably didn't.
Clicking, dead, undetected or corrupted — internal and external hard drives recovered in our own Belfast laboratory. Power it down, leave it alone, and talk to a specialist before anyone else touches it.
The problem
A failure that rarely gives warning.
Most drives are not lost to the original fault — they are lost to what happens in the hour after it.
- Clicking or beeping — the classic sign of read/write head failure or platter damage. Power off and leave it off.
- Not detected or won't mount — firmware corruption, PCB faults, or electrical failure.
- Deleted data and lost partitions — accidental deletion, formatting, file system corruption.
- Slow or degraded performance — bad sectors, weakening heads, failing media.
- Dropped or knocked drives — mechanical shock causing spindle seizure or head crash.
- Liquid or fire damage — short circuits, scorched PCBs, smoke intrusion.
- Encryption lockouts — BitLocker, WD Security and other OEM hardware encryption.
Do not power a clicking drive back on, run repair software, or open the enclosure yourself. Each of those turns a recoverable drive into a permanent loss. Severely damaged drives are opened only under cleanroom conditions, imaged sector by sector, and rebuilt using donor parts where a mechanical part has failed.
Coverage
Every brand. Every capacity.
Western Digital
WD Blue, WD Black, Red and Red Pro NAS drives, and My Passport external drives.
Seagate
BarraCuda and BarraCuda Pro, IronWolf and IronWolf Pro NAS drives, SkyHawk surveillance drives, Expansion and Backup Plus externals.
Toshiba & Hitachi (HGST)
X300 desktop drives, N300 NAS models, Canvio portables, and HGST enterprise mechanisms.
LaCie, G-Technology & OEM
Many retail-branded drives contain WD, Seagate or Toshiba mechanisms inside — including Dell, HP and Lenovo drives from desktops, servers and DAS units. The enclosure brand doesn't matter; the mechanism inside does.
External & portable drives
USB and Thunderbolt enclosures add their own failure points — port faults, bridge-board failures and enclosure-level encryption. Both layers handled in-house.
Every capacity
From 500GB laptop drives to 20TB+ enterprise and surveillance storage — consumer, professional and enterprise ranges alike.
Process
From failure to restored data.
- 01
Assessment & fixed quote
The drive is examined and the failure identified. You receive a clear, fixed quote before any recovery work starts — no surprises at the end.
- 02
Cleanroom repair or imaging
Physical faults are addressed in cleanroom conditions with donor parts where needed; the drive is then imaged sector by sector so nothing further is risked on the original media.
- 03
Logical reconstruction
Partitions and file systems are rebuilt from the image, and encryption or firmware faults resolved as part of the same process.
- 04
Verified, secure return
Recovered files are verified as openable, then returned on a new encrypted drive or via encrypted transfer.
Transparent pricing
Hard drive recovery pricing.
Priced by capacity — published starting prices, with your fixed quote confirmed after diagnosis. Prices exclude VAT.
All prices below are net (before VAT). We add VAT at 20% on top — shown beneath each price as “inc VAT”, which is the total you actually pay. For example, a £425 net recovery is £510 including VAT. VAT-registered businesses can usually reclaim it.
Hard Drive Recovery
| Capacity | Recovery from |
|---|---|
| 0 – 500 GB | £425£510 inc VAT |
| 501 GB – 1 TB | £475£570 inc VAT |
| 2 TB | £525£630 inc VAT |
| 3 TB | £550£660 inc VAT |
| 4 TB | £750 – £1,000£900 – £1,200 inc VAT |
| 5 TB | £750 – £1,000£900 – £1,200 inc VAT |
| 6 TB | £1,250£1,500 inc VAT |
| 8 TB | £1,950£2,340 inc VAT |
| 10 TB | £2,495£2,994 inc VAT |
| 12 TB | £2,995£3,594 inc VAT |
| 14 TB | £3,225£3,870 inc VAT |
| 16 TB | £3,950£4,740 inc VAT |
Add £150 for encrypted drives. Missing manufacturer sticker: £150 non-refundable handling charge.
See the full price list for turnaround options and RAID, SSD or server pricing.
Questions
What clients ask us first.
My drive is clicking. Is it already too late?
Usually not — but stop it running now. Clicking almost always means a mechanical head or platter fault, and every extra power-on risks further, sometimes permanent, damage to the platter surface. Powered off and sent to the lab, most clicking drives are fully recoverable.
The drive isn't even detected by my computer. Can it still be recovered?
Often, yes. Non-detection is commonly a firmware, PCB or electrical fault rather than lost data — the platters themselves are frequently untouched. Diagnosis tells you exactly which failure you're dealing with before you commit to anything.
Can you recover an encrypted drive?
Yes — BitLocker, WD Security and other OEM hardware encryption are all handled routinely, provided you can supply the relevant key or credentials. This adds a small fee to reflect the extra work involved.
Do you work on external and NAS drives, or only internal ones?
Both. External USB and Thunderbolt drives, and NAS/DAS units, are recovered under the same process — including enclosure-level faults like a failed bridge board, separately from whatever the drive inside is doing.
Why use a Belfast lab instead of sending it to England or Scotland?
Every other option in Northern Ireland means courier days each way before work even starts. This laboratory is on the Ormeau Road in Belfast — drives can be dropped off in person or couriered from anywhere in the UK or Ireland, and urgent business cases can get a same-day assessment.
Power it down, describe what happened, and get a straight answer on what's recoverable and what it will cost — before any work begins.