Case Study
Dropped and dead. Over 90% of the data came back.
A Western Digital 1TB My Passport was dropped, crashing both read/write heads and taking a client's photos and business documents with it. Here is how a cleanroom head swap and an all-night session got it back.
The case
A drop, a dead head, and a deadline.
The drive: a Western Digital 1TB My Passport external drive, carrying photos and business documents the client needed back urgently.
The drive arrived after being dropped — one of the most common ways an external hard drive fails, and one of the most damaging. A physical shock like this can crash the read/write heads into the platter surface, and in the worst cases it makes the data underneath permanently unreadable.
Diagnosis started with listening to the drive spin up. It wasn't behaving like a disk-level or mainboard fault, so the case was opened for a closer look. The verdict: the heads had crashed and needed replacing — a more involved and more expensive repair than a disk or mainboard issue, quoted at £350 + VAT before any work began.
The client needed his photos and business documents back as soon as possible, so the job was scheduled into an all-night session rather than the standard queue.
The recovery
Diagnose, replace, image, deliver.
- 01
Diagnosis and fixed quote
Listening to the drive and inspecting it ruled out a disk or mainboard fault and confirmed head crash instead. A fixed quote of £350 + VAT was given for the head replacement before work started.
- 02
Cleanroom head replacement
The damaged heads were swapped for matching donor parts under cleanroom conditions — the only environment in which a drive's sealed platter chamber can safely be opened.
- 03
All-night imaging session
With the drive back online, recovery ran through the night so the client could have his data back within 24 hours instead of waiting in the standard queue.
The result
More than 90% of the data recovered.
The recovery brought back more than 90% of the client's data, including the photos and business documents he needed most. Some loss was expected — a head crash can scratch the platter surface, and a head replacement is never a guaranteed fix once that has happened.
Because of the rush turnaround, the total came to around £400 including VAT for a same-day result on a drive that many services would have written off. Not every dropped drive recovers this well, but this one did — and the client had his files back within a day.
For more on how drives like this are approached generally, see hard drive data recovery.
Power it down and stop using it. Tell us what happened and an engineer will give you an honest view of what's recoverable and a fixed quote before any work starts.