Case Study
Spilled, then knocked off the desk. 99% of the data came back.
A Western Digital 3TB Red NAS drive was doused in a spill, then knocked off the desk in the panic to deal with it — arriving at our Belfast lab grinding and unreadable. Here is how nearly all of it came back.
The case
A spill, a panicked knock, then grinding on arrival.
The drive: a Western Digital 3TB Red — WD's NAS-class mechanism — running in an external enclosure and holding a client's business data.
Something was spilled over the enclosure. In the scramble to deal with it, the drive was also knocked off the desk. Two separate accidents, seconds apart, and either one alone would have been enough to worry about.
By the time it reached our Belfast office, the drive was making grinding noises and couldn't be identified by a computer — a combination pointing to both electrical and mechanical damage before we'd even opened it.
The recovery
Yellow sectors, a cleanroom head swap, a decontaminated board.
- 01
Imaging on DeepSpar DDI
Connected to our DeepSpar DDI imaging tools, the drive returned page after page of yellow blocks rather than the green of healthy sectors — a clear sign the read heads themselves were failing, separately from whatever the water had done.
- 02
Cleanroom inspection and head replacement
In the cleanroom, the platters showed no sign of scratching — the mechanical damage had stopped short of the media. The read heads were transferred over from a matching donor drive.
- 03
Ultrasonic cleaning of the PCB
The water had reached the mainboard, not the platters. Following our standard procedure for liquid damage, the board was bathed in an ultrasonic cleaner for a couple of minutes to remove corrosion, and its fuses replaced.
- 04
Re-imaging with the new heads
With the donor heads fitted and now reading green rather than yellow, the whole drive was imaged through to completion.
The result
Almost everything back, in under two days.
About 99% of the data was recovered, with the whole job — imaging, head replacement and PCB decontamination included — completed in under two days.
Recoveries combining liquid damage and a physical head fault carry more work than either problem on its own, and this one came to roughly £350 + VAT. That reflects two faults resolved in the same job, not a single straightforward repair.
See how we approach hard drive data recovery generally, including liquid damage and mechanical head failures like this one.
Power it down and stop using it, however it happened. Tell us what's going on and an engineer will give you an honest view of what's recoverable and a fixed quote before any work starts.