Hard Drive Data Recovery

Swindon Data Recovery: The UK’s No.1 HDD & SSD Data Recovery Specialists | 25 Years of Expertise

For a quarter of a century, Swindon Data Recovery has stood as the UK’s premier specialist in data recovery from all storage media. With 25 years of continuous innovation and hands-on experience, our state-of-the-art laboratory is equipped with a Class 100 ISO 5 cleanroom and industry-leading tools like the PC-3000 system and DeepSpar Disk Imager. We provide professional recovery services for every type of hard drive fault, from simple logical corruptions to the most complex physical and electronic failures, supporting every major manufacturer and interface in use today.

Comprehensive Manufacturer & Model Support

We maintain an extensive inventory of donor parts and proprietary firmware resources for over 40 major storage manufacturers:

1. Seagate: Barracuda, IronWolf, Exos, FireCuda, SkyHawk

2. Western Digital (WD): Blue, Black, Red, Purple, Gold, Ultrastar

3. Toshiba: P300, MQ04, X300, N300, MG Series

4. Samsung: 860/870 EVO/PRO, 970/980/990 PRO, T5/T7 Series

5. Hitachi (HGST): Deskstar, Ultrastar, Travelstar

6. Intel: SSD 665p, 670p, Optane Memory Series

7. SanDisk: Ultra 3D, Extreme PRO, WD Blue 3D (OEM)

8. Kingston: A400, KC600, NV2, HyperX Fury

9. Crucial: BX500, MX500, P3, P5 Plus

10. ADATA: SU800, XPG SX8200 Pro, Legend 850

11. Corsair: Force MP600, Force Series GT

12. Fujitsu: (Legacy) MHY, MHZ, MBA Series

13. PNY: CS900, CS1030, XLR8 Gaming

14. Sabrent: Rocket 4 Plus, Rocket Q

15. TeamGroup: CX2, MP33, Cardea Zero Z440

16. LaCie: Rugged, d2 Professional, Porsche Design

17. Micron: 5200/5300 ECO, 2210/2300 NVMe

18. Plextor: M8V, M9P Plus

19. IBM/Hitachi: (Legacy) Deskstar, Ultrastar

20. Maxtor: (Legacy) DiamondMax, FireBall

21. Quantum: (Legacy) Fireball, Bigfoot

22. Transcend: SSD220S, StoreJet

23. Seagate Technology: Momentus (Laptop Drives)

24. Western Digital: VelociRaptor (Enterprise SATA)

25. SK Hynix: Gold P31, Platinum P41

26. KIOXIA: (Formerly Toshiba) EXCERIA, CM6 Series

27. Lexar: NM610, NM800

28. OWC: Mercury, Aura Pro

29. Patriot: Burst Elite, P300, Viper VPN100

30. Gigabyte: AORUS Gen4, M30

31. Super Talent: (Legacy) SATA & IDE SSDs

32. KingFast: (Consumer SSDs)

33. V-GeN: (Consumer Drives)

34. Addlink: S70, H90

35. Netac: NV7000, S500

36. Colorful: SL500, CN600

37. Galax: HOF, Gamer Series

38. Zotac: SONIX, AMP Series

39. Seagate Laptop: Laptop Thin HDD, Laptop SSHD

40. WD Legacy: Raptor, Scorpio Series

Supported Storage Interfaces

Our engineers possess deep expertise in recovering data from every storage interface, ensuring no device is beyond our capability:

• SATA (Serial ATA): All generations (SATA I/150, II/300, III/600, III.2/16Gbps)

• PATA (IDE): 40-pin 40-conductor and 80-conductor ATA/ATAPI interfaces

• SAS (Serial Attached SCSI): 3Gbps, 6Gbps, 12Gbps generations with SGPIO

• SCSI: Ultra (20MHz), Ultra Wide (40MHz), Ultra-2 (80MHz), Ultra-160, Ultra-320

• PCIe (PCI Express): x1, x4, x8, x16 lane configurations

• NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express): Over PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0 with 1-32 lanes

• M.2: Supporting both SATA and NVMe protocols (Key B, M, B+M)

• U.2 (SFF-8639): Enterprise NVMe with PCIe x4 interface

• eSATA (External SATA): Including eSATAp with power delivery

• Fibre Channel: 1GFC, 2GFC, 4GFC, 8GFC, 16GFC speeds

• USB Bridge Controllers: All major bridge ICs (JMicron, ASMedia, Initio, etc.)

• Apple Proprietary: 40-pin ZIF, 80-pin SCA-2, Blade SSDs (A-series connectors)

• Legacy Interfaces: ST-506, ESDI, ISA, VL-Bus

Top 25 Hard Drive & SSD Errors: Technical Recovery Processes

Our 25 years of expertise enables us to handle the most complex data loss scenarios with precision engineering and advanced forensic techniques.

1. Head Stack Assembly (HSA) Failure & Head Crashing

• Summary: Read/write heads have physically contacted platter surfaces, causing damage to both heads and media, often resulting in clicking or scratching sounds.

• Technical Recovery: In our Class 100 cleanroom, we perform microscopic inspection of platter surfaces for scoring. The damaged HSA is removed and replaced with a compatible donor assembly. Critical to this process is transferring the original preamplifier (pre-amp) chip via micro-soldering to maintain compatibility with the drive’s unique adaptive data stored in the System Area. The drive is then immediately imaged using hardware-controlled readers with reduced read retry thresholds to minimize stress on the new heads.

2. Firmware Corruption in Service Area (SA)

• Summary: Critical firmware modules in the drive’s Service Area (TRANSLAT, CERT, SMART, etc.) are corrupted, preventing drive initialization and access to user data.

• Technical Recovery: Using PC-3000 technology, we place the drive in a technological mode to bypass the public firmware. We directly access the SA on the platters to diagnose and repair corrupted modules. This involves rewriting damaged modules with known-good versions from our extensive database, carefully adapting them to the specific drive’s configuration parameters (RAM overlays, adaptive data, and unique module variants).

3. Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Failure & ROM Transfer

• Summary: The drive’s electronic board has failed due to power surges, component failure, or physical damage, preventing power-up or communication.

• Technical Recovery: We diagnose failed components (TVS diodes, fuses, motor drivers, main controller) using schematic analysis and component-level testing. A simple board swap is insufficient due to drive-unique adaptive data stored in the serial EEPROM (SPD). We desolder this chip using hot-air rework stations and transfer it to a compatible donor PCB, or directly program the donor board’s ROM with the extracted adaptive data.

4. Spindle Motor Bearing Seizure

• Summary: The motor that spins the platters has seized due to worn bearings, lack of lubrication, or contamination, preventing platter rotation.

• Technical Recovery: The HDA is opened in our cleanroom, and the entire platter assembly is transplanted into an identical donor HDA with a confirmed healthy motor and bearing assembly. Extreme precision is required to maintain platter alignment and avoid contamination. The spindle is often clamped during transfer to prevent micro-misalignment that would render data unreadable.

5. Media Degradation & Bad Sector Propagation

• Summary: The magnetic coating on platters has degraded, creating unstable sectors that cannot be read reliably, often leading to slow performance and eventual failure.

• Technical Recovery: We use hardware imagers (DeepSpar, Atola) with sophisticated control algorithms that perform non-destructive reading with soft-resets and adjustable timeout/retry parameters. For persistent weak sectors, we may apply firmware-level modifications to temporarily reduce the drive’s internal read retry thresholds (Read Retry, Read Channel, Fly Height controls) to extract data before sectors are permanently reallocated.

6. SSD Controller Failure & NAND Access

• Summary: The SSD’s main processor has failed, making the NAND flash memory inaccessible through standard interfaces.

• Technical Recovery: We perform chip-off recovery by desoldering NAND flash packages using controlled reflow profiles. Each chip is read individually using dedicated NAND programmers. The raw binary dumps are processed through our software, which reverse-engineers the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) – including RAID-like striping, XOR parity, wear-leveling, and bad block management – to reassemble the original logical data.

7. Platter Surface Scoring & Deep Scratching

• Summary: Severe head crashes have physically gouged the platter surface, permanently destroying data in affected tracks.

• Technical Recovery: After cleanroom HSA replacement, we perform full surface scanning with hardware configured to skip heavily damaged areas instantly. We recover all readable data first, then attempt multiple passes with varying physical head actuator offsets and adjusted read channel settings (MR head bias, read current) to read remnant magnetic flux transitions from track edges.

8. Water & Liquid Contamination Damage

• Summary: The drive has been exposed to corrosive liquids, causing PCB corrosion and potential internal contamination.

• Technical Recovery: The PCB is ultrasonically cleaned with high-purity isopropyl alcohol. The HDA is opened in the cleanroom, and all components are meticulously cleaned. Heads and platters may be transferred to a donor HDA if corrosion is present internally. All electronic components are tested for shorts before power application using specialized isolation testing equipment.

9. Fire & Extreme Heat Damage

• Summary: The drive has been exposed to extreme heat, potentially warping components, degrading media, and damaging electronic components.

• Technical Recovery: The drive is assessed for structural integrity. If sealed, we may attempt a controlled bake at low temperature to re-establish seals. Platters are typically transferred to a donor HDA as original components are compromised. A critical challenge is dealing with annealed platters where heat has reduced magnetic coercivity, requiring sensitive read channel settings during imaging.

10. NAND Flash Wear-Out (SSD End of Life)

• Summary: Flash memory cells have exceeded their program/erase cycles, leading to high rates of uncorrectable errors that exceed the drive’s internal ECC capability.

• Technical Recovery: We perform chip-off recovery and process the NAND dumps through advanced error correction algorithms that surpass the drive’s built-in ECC. We employ read retry calibration, systematically adjusting read reference voltages (V_read) to find optimal thresholds for reading degraded cells, effectively “tuning” the reader to the worn-out NAND silicon.

11. Accidental File Deletion & Formatting

• Summary: Files have been deleted or the drive has been formatted, removing file system structures but not immediately overwriting the actual data.

• Technical Recovery: We create a forensic sector-by-sector image to prevent overwriting. Using specialized software (R-Studio, UFS Explorer), we perform deep scanning that analyses residual file system metadata (NTFS $MFT, EXT inode tables, HFS+ Catalog File) and performs raw file carving based on file signatures, rebuilding directory structures from orphaned metadata entries.

12. Logical File System Corruption

• Summary: Critical file system structures are corrupted due to unsafe ejection, software bugs, or system crashes, making the volume inaccessible.

• Technical Recovery: We work with a disk image to perform manual file system repair. This involves locating backup copies of critical metadata (NTFS $MFTMirr, EXT superblock backups) and using hex editors to manually patch damaged structures, ensuring consistency between metadata and actual file data runs. For complex corruptions, we may need to rebuild entire B-tree structures.

13. Partition Table Corruption (MBR/GPT)

• Summary: The Master Boot Record or GUID Partition Table is damaged, making all partitions appear lost.

• Technical Recovery: We perform full sector-by-sector imaging and scan for backup partition tables. For MBR, we search for backup copies at the drive’s end. For GPT, we use the primary header to locate the secondary GPT. If backups are corrupted, we manually reconstruct the table by scanning for partition boot records and calculating partition boundaries based on file system signatures.

14. Power Surge & Electrical Overstress

• Summary: Voltage spikes have damaged protection components and potentially the main controller on the PCB.

• Technical Recovery: We diagnose and replace failed components (TVS diodes, fuses, motor driver ICs). If the main controller is damaged, we perform ROM transfer to a donor PCB. The HDA is tested for shorts on the preamplifier power supply line, which may necessitate HSA replacement if compromised.

15. Overheating & Thermal Damage

• Summary: Chronic overheating has weakened solder joints (particularly BGA), degraded electronic components, and accelerated media degradation.

• Technical Recovery: The PCB is reflowed using BGA stations with precise temperature profiling to repair cracked solder joints. Components are tested for thermal degradation. The drive is imaged in a temperature-controlled environment with real-time monitoring of SMART parameters, pausing if temperatures or error counts rise dangerously.

16. SSD Trim Command Data Wipe

• Summary: The operating system has issued TRIM commands, instructing the SSD to physically erase NAND blocks containing deleted data.

• Technical Recovery: Once TRIM’d blocks have been erased by the SSD’s garbage collection, data is physically unrecoverable. We can only attempt recovery if TRIM commands haven’t been processed, which requires immediate power-down and chip-off recovery before background maintenance operations complete.

17. Mechanical Bearing Wear & Acoustic Noise

• Summary: The spindle motor bearings have worn, causing increased acoustic noise and potential misalignment of platters.

• Technical Recovery: The platter assembly is transferred to a donor HDA with healthy bearings. We use precision alignment tools to maintain platter stack integrity. The donor HDA’s motor must have identical electrical characteristics to ensure stable rotation during the imaging process.

18. Firmware Bugs & Compatibility Issues

• Summary: Bugs in the drive’s firmware or compatibility issues with specific systems cause erratic behavior or data corruption.

• Technical Recovery: We identify the firmware version and known issues through our extensive database. We may update or patch the firmware using technological commands, or work around bugs by modifying specific adaptive parameters in the drive’s configuration to stabilize operation during imaging.

19. Service Area (SA) Module Adaptation

• Summary: The drive requires specific adaptation of Service Area modules to function properly with replacement components.

• Technical Recovery: We modify critical SA modules (typically the TRANSLATOR and ZONE CONFIGURATION) to adapt to the specific hardware configuration, particularly when using donor HSAs or after platter swaps. This involves recalculating zone tables, head maps, and adaptive parameters to match the physical hardware.

20. Read/Write Channel Adaptation Issues

• Summary: The drive’s read/write channel parameters are misaligned, causing read instability and errors.

• Technical Recovery: Using factory-level commands, we adjust read channel parameters including MR head bias, read current, write current, and precompensation settings. We may also modify adaptive read retry settings to optimize data extraction from marginal sectors.

21. S.M.A.R.T. Attribute Overflow & False Positives

• Summary: S.M.A.R.T. attribute counters have overflowed or report false failures, causing the drive to enter a failure state prematurely.

• Technical Recovery: We access the S.M.A.R.T. log in the Service Area and reset specific attributes or modify threshold values to allow continued operation. We carefully monitor drive behavior during imaging to distinguish between false positives and genuine media issues.

22. PCB Microcode & ROM Compatibility

• Summary: The ROM content on replacement PCBs must be precisely compatible with the specific drive variant.

• Technical Recovery: We analyze the original ROM content and modify it as necessary for compatibility with the specific drive’s physical configuration (head map, zone table, adaptive data). This may involve merging ROM versions or patching specific code segments to ensure proper initialization.

23. Head Disk Assembly (HDA) Hermetic Seal Failure

• Summary: The HDA’s hermetic seal has been compromised, allowing contamination and potentially causing head crashes.

• Technical Recovery: The drive is opened in our cleanroom and thoroughly cleaned. We assess platter and head damage, replacing components as necessary. The drive is then assembled in a donor HDA with intact seals to prevent further contamination during recovery.

24. Adaptive Data Reconstruction

• Summary: Critical adaptive data parameters have been lost or corrupted, preventing proper drive operation.

• Technical Recovery: We reconstruct adaptive data by analyzing patterns in the Service Area and comparing with known good profiles from our extensive database. This may involve regenerating head offsets, adaptive fly height parameters, and channel adaptation values.

25. Factory-Level Defect List Management

• Summary: The drive’s internal defect management (P-list and G-list) has become corrupted or overflowed.

• Technical Recovery: We access the factory defect lists in the Service Area and perform necessary repairs. This may involve clearing the grown defect list (G-list), rebuilding the primary defect list (P-list), or modifying the defect management algorithm to stabilize the drive during imaging.

Advanced File System Recovery Capabilities

Our logical recovery expertise spans all major file systems with specialized techniques for each:

• NTFS: $MFT reconstruction, $LogFile analysis, USN Journal parsing, attribute list repair

• HFS+: Catalog B-tree repair, extent overflow reconstruction, journal replay

• APFS: Container superblock repair, space manager reconstruction, object map validation

• EXT2/3/4: Superblock and group descriptor recovery, inode table repair, journal replay

• XFS: Inode and B+tree reconstruction, allocation group repair

• ReFS: Table reconstruction, checksum validation, container repair

• exFAT: FAT and cluster heap repair, bitmap reconstruction

• ZFS: Uberblock validation, space map reconstruction, MOS (Meta Object Set) repair

Why Choose Swindon Data Recovery?

• 25 Years of Continuous Expertise: A quarter-century of successful recoveries across all storage technologies

• Class 100 ISO 5 Cleanroom Facility: Guaranteeing media integrity during physical interventions

• Advanced Tool Investment: PC-3000, DeepSpar, C3 Pro technologies, and proprietary developed solutions

• Component-Level Microelectronics Lab: BGA rework stations, chip programmers, and schematic analysis capabilities

• Multi-Vendor Specialization: Deep knowledge across consumer, enterprise, and legacy storage systems

• Free Comprehensive Diagnostics: Detailed technical assessment with clear recovery options and fixed-price quotation

• Proven Success with Thousands of Recoveries: Government agencies, multinational corporations, and individual clients

Contact Swindon Data Recovery today for a free, confidential evaluation by our engineering team. Trust the UK’s most experienced data recovery specialists to recover your critical data with maximum integrity and technical excellence.