Swansea Data Recovery: The UK’s Premier HDD & SSD Recovery Specialists
With 25 years of dedicated service, Swansea Data Recovery stands as the No.1 data recovery specialist in the UK for HDD (SATA and PATA) and SSD technologies. Our state-of-the-art laboratory is equipped to handle every conceivable data loss scenario, from simple accidental deletions to the most complex physical and electronic failures. We support every major storage manufacturer and interface, providing a lifeline when your critical data is on the line.
Supported Manufacturers & Models
We possess extensive expertise and a comprehensive parts inventory for all major manufacturers. Here are the top 30, along with their most prevalent models we encounter:
Supported Interfaces
Our engineers are proficient in recovering data from every hard disk and solid-state drive interface in use today, including legacy and enterprise systems:
SATA (Serial ATA): All generations (SATA I, II, III).
PATA (IDE): Parallel ATA, including 40-pin and 80-wire cables.
SAS (Serial Attached SCSI): Enterprise-grade drives.
SCSI: Legacy Ultra, Ultra Wide, and LVD interfaces.
PCIe (PCI Express): Standard card-based storage.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express): Over PCIe and M.2 form factors.
M.2: Supporting both SATA and NVMe protocols.
U.2: Enterprise NVMe drives (SFF-8639).
eSATA (External SATA): External drive enclosures.
USB (All Generations): Bridge board recovery from external devices.
Fibre Channel: High-performance enterprise storage networks.
Apple Proprietary: Including older 40/80-pin and new T2/Mx chip security.
Top 30 Hard Drive Errors & Our Technical Recovery Process
This section details the most common failures we resolve daily. For each error, we provide a summary of the problem followed by a detailed, technical explanation of our recovery methodology.
1. Head Stack Assembly (HSA) Failure
Summary: The read/write heads have become damaged, stuck, or contaminated, preventing access to the platters.
Technical Recovery: The drive is disassembled in a Class 100 ISO 5 cleanroom. The damaged HSA is carefully removed. We source a compatible donor HSA from our extensive library, often performing micro-soldering to transfer the original preamplifier (pre-amp) chip to maintain compatibility with the drive’s unique adaptive data. The donor HSA is installed, and the drive is imaged using specialised hardware (e.g., PC-3000, DeepSpar) to create a sector-by-sector clone, bypassing the firmware to minimise stress on the new heads.
2. Firmware Corruption (Service Area Damage)
Summary: The drive’s internal operating system, stored in the Service Area on the platters, is corrupted, causing the drive to not be recognised or to freeze.
Technical Recovery: Using a utility like PC-3000, we place the drive into a technological mode to bypass the corrupted firmware modules. We access the Service Area directly, diagnose the damaged modules (e.g., TRANSLAT, SMART, CERT), and either repair them using factory-level algorithms or rewrite them using a known-good firmware module from our database, carefully adapting it to the specific drive’s configuration parameters (RAM overlays and adaptive data).
3. Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Failure
Summary: The drive’s electronic board has failed due to a power surge, component failure, or physical damage.
Technical Recovery: A simple board swap is insufficient as modern PCBs contain drive-specific adaptive data stored in a serial EEPROM (SPD) or the main controller. We desolder this chip using hot-air rework stations and transfer it to a compatible donor PCB. In cases of damaged ROM, we use a programmer to extract the binary data and write it to the donor board. We then test for failed components like TVS diodes, fuses, or motor drivers and replace them as necessary.
4. Spindle Motor Seizure
Summary: The motor that spins the platters has failed due to worn bearings, contamination, or lack of lubrication.
Technical Recovery: In a cleanroom, the platter assembly is removed from the original drive. It is then transplanted into an identical donor HDA (Hard Drive Assembly) that has a confirmed healthy motor and bearing assembly. Extreme precision is required to maintain platter alignment and avoid contamination. The new assembly is then imaged immediately.
5. Bad Sectors (Media Degradation)
Summary: The magnetic coating on the platters has degraded, creating areas that cannot be read reliably.
Technical Recovery: We use hardware imagers with sophisticated control algorithms. The process involves reading data in a non-destructive manner, employing techniques like soft-resets to bypass unreadable sectors, adjusting read timeout and retry parameters, and using “skip-on-the-fly” to map out unstable sectors. For persistent areas, we may apply a firmware-level tweak to temporarily reduce the drive’s read retry thresholds, allowing data to be extracted before the drive marks it as permanently bad.
6. Platter Surface Scoring/Scratching
Summary: A head crash has physically scratched the platter surface, permanently destroying data in those tracks.
Technical Recovery: This is one of the most severe cases. After cleanroom disassembly and head replacement, we use our imaging hardware to perform a full surface scan. The imager is configured to skip heavily damaged areas instantly to prevent head damage. We recover all readable data first. For the scratched areas, we may perform multiple passes, adjusting physical and firmware parameters (head fly height, read channel settings) to attempt to read any remaining magnetic flux transitions from the damaged tracks.
7. Accidental Formatting or Partition Deletion
Summary: The user has formatted the drive or deleted a partition, removing the file system structure.
Technical Recovery: We create a forensic image of the drive. Using specialised file system recovery software (R-Studio, UFS Explorer) and manual hex analysis, we scan the entire drive for surviving file system metadata (e.g., $MFT for NTFS, inode tables for EXT4, Catalog File for HFS+). We reconstruct the partition boot sector and directory tree, often recovering the original folder structure and file names by parsing these metadata structures.
8. Water/Liquid Damage
Summary: The drive has been exposed to corrosive liquids, leading to PCB corrosion and internal contamination.
Technical Recovery: The PCB is immediately cleaned with high-purity isopropyl alcohol and inspected under a microscope for corroded traces and components. The HDA is opened in the cleanroom, and all components are meticulously cleaned to remove residue. Heads and platters may be transferred to a donor HDA if corrosion is present on internal surfaces. All electronic components are tested for shorts before power is applied.
9. Fire & Heat Damage
Summary: The drive has been exposed to extreme heat, potentially warping components and degrading media.
Technical Recovery: The drive is carefully assessed for structural integrity. If the HDA is sealed, we may attempt a controlled bake at a low temperature to re-establish seals before cleanroom opening. Platters are often transferred to a donor HDA as the original motor and heads are likely compromised. A critical challenge is dealing with annealed platters, where heat has reduced the magnetic coercivity; this requires very sensitive head and read channel settings during imaging.
10. SSD Controller Failure
Summary: The drive’s main processor (controller) has failed, making the NAND flash memory inaccessible.
Technical Recovery: We use chip-off recovery. The NAND flash memory chips are desoldered from the failed SSD using a reflow station. The chips are then read individually using a dedicated NAND programmer (e.g., PC-3000 Flash, Soft-Center). The raw data (dumps) from all chips is then processed through our software, which uses controller-specific algorithms to reverse-engineer the RAID-like striping, XOR parity, and wear-leveling algorithms to reassemble the original logical data.
11. SSD NAND Flash Wear-Out
Summary: The flash memory cells have reached their program/erase cycle limit, leading to a high rate of uncorrectable errors.
Technical Recovery: Similar to controller failure, we perform a chip-off procedure. The key difference is that the NAND dumps will contain a high bit error rate. Our processing software employs advanced Error Correction Code (ECC) algorithms, often more powerful than the drive’s built-in ECC, to correct these errors. We also utilise known data patterns to calibrate the read thresholds for the aged NAND cells, a process known as “read retry.”
12. Logical File System Corruption
Summary: Critical file system structures (e.g., Master File Table for NTFS, Superblock for EXT) are corrupted, making files inaccessible.
Technical Recovery: We work with a disk image. Our engineers perform a manual file system repair by locating backup copies of critical metadata structures (e.g., $MFTMirr in NTFS) or rebuilding them by scanning the entire volume for file signatures and directory entries. For complex corruptions, we use a hex editor to analyse and patch the damaged structures directly, ensuring consistency between the metadata and the actual file data runs.
13. Failed RAID Rebuild
Summary: An attempt to rebuild a degraded RAID array has failed, often due to a second drive failing during the process or controller error.
Technical Recovery: We create physical images of every member drive. Using RAID recovery software, we manually determine the RAID parameters (stripe size, order, parity rotation, and disk order) through statistical analysis. We then create a virtual RAID reconstruction. If the rebuild was interrupted, we may need to extract data from a “staleness” state by comparing pre- and post-rebuild parity data.
14. Power Surge Damage
Summary: A voltage spike has damaged sensitive components on the PCB and potentially the preamplifier on the head stack.
Technical Recovery: The PCB is diagnosed for failed components (TVS diodes, fuses, motor driver IC, controller). The HDA is tested for a short circuit on the preamplifier’s power supply line. If a short is present, the HSA is likely damaged and requires replacement in the cleanroom. We repair the PCB and then proceed with a careful power-up and diagnostic sequence.
15. Overheating Damage
Summary: Chronic overheating has weakened solder joints, degraded electronic components, and potentially accelerated media degradation.
Technical Recovery: The PCB is reflowed to repair any cracked solder joints under a BGA station. Components are tested for thermal degradation. The drive is then imaged in a temperature-controlled environment, as overheating drives can be unstable. We monitor drive health in real-time, pausing the imaging process if the drive’s SMART temperature or error counts rise to dangerous levels.
16. USB Bridge Board Failure (External Drives)
Summary: The external enclosure’s interface board has failed, but the internal SATA drive may be healthy.
Technical Recovery: We remove the internal drive from the enclosure. If the drive is standard SATA, we connect it directly to our recovery hardware. If the drive uses a proprietary interface or hardware encryption on the bridge board, we must repair the original bridge or source a compatible one to act as a translator to access the data.
17. Clicking/Click of Death
Summary: The drive attempts to recalibrate repeatedly, causing a clicking sound. This indicates HSA failure, firmware issues, or media damage.
Technical Recovery: This is a symptom, not a cause. We first attempt a firmware-level diagnosis to see if the drive is stuck in a recalibration loop. If firmware is ruled out, we proceed with cleanroom HSA replacement. The clicking is the sound of the heads parking and unparking as the drive fails to initialise.
18. BIOS Not Detecting Drive
Summary: The computer’s BIOS does not recognise the drive. This can be due to PCB failure, firmware corruption, or severe internal damage.
Technical Recovery: We systematically eliminate causes. We first test the PCB and ROM. If those are functional, we use a hardware tool to put the drive into a factory mode to bypass the public firmware and access the Service Area directly. This allows us to diagnose and repair the firmware modules responsible for the drive’s identification and initialisation process.
19. 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 a full sector-by-sector image of the drive. We then scan the entire drive for backup copies of the partition table. For MBR, we look for a backup copy at the drive’s end. For GPT, we use the primary GPT header to locate the secondary GPT, which is usually intact. If backups are corrupted, we manually reconstruct the table by scanning for partition boot records and calculating partition boundaries.
20. Accidental File Deletion
Summary: Files have been deleted from the operating system and are no longer in the recycle bin.
Technical Recovery: We immediately create a forensic image to prevent overwriting. We then scan the file system’s metadata (e.g., the $MFT in NTFS). When a file is deleted, its metadata entry is often merely marked as unused; we recover the file by parsing this entry to find the original data run locations on the platters/NAND. For deeper recovery, we perform a raw carve based on file signatures.
21. Virus/Ransomware Infection
Summary: Malicious software has encrypted, deleted, or corrupted files.
Technical Recovery: We image the drive. For ransomware, we analyse the encryption method; in some cases, decryption tools are available. For data destruction, we use the same techniques as for accidental deletion and file system corruption. We also scour the drive for shadow copies (Volume Snapshot Service) or temporary files that may contain uncorrupted versions of the data.
22. S.M.A.R.T. Errors & Predicted Failure
Summary: The drive’s Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology has logged a high count of reallocated or pending sectors.
Technical Recovery: This is a pre-failure warning. We use our imaging hardware to clone the drive, prioritising the healthy data first. The imaging process is configured to be highly sensitive to read instability, allowing us to extract data from weak sectors before they become fully unreadable and are reallocated, which can sometimes lead to data loss.
23. Physical Impact/Shock Damage
Summary: The drive has been dropped, causing head-to-platter contact or misalignment.
Technical Recovery: Cleanroom intervention is mandatory. The HSA is almost always damaged and requires replacement. Platters are inspected for scoring. The spindle motor and bearings are checked for misalignment. A full HSA transplant into a donor HDA is the most common solution, followed by controlled imaging.
24. Corruption from Unsafe Ejection
Summary: An external drive was disconnected without using “Safely Remove Hardware,” leading to file system metadata corruption.
Technical Recovery: This primarily affects journaling file systems like NTFS and HFS+. The journal may contain inconsistent transactions. We image the drive and then use file system tools to replay the journal or, if the journal is corrupt, ignore it and rebuild the file system structures directly from their primary locations, checking for consistency.
25. CCTV DVR/NVR Data Recovery (Including Overwritten)
Summary: Recovery from proprietary CCTV file systems, often involving fragmented video footage that has been partially overwritten due to loop recording.
Technical Recovery: We reverse-engineer the proprietary file system and video container format used by manufacturers like Hikvision, Dahua, etc. We scan the drive for the specific file headers and footers of video frames. Even if the file system index is lost or overwritten, we can often recover contiguous blocks of video by reassembling these frames based on their timestamps, though fully overwritten data is permanently lost.
Software-Level & Logical Recovery
Our expertise extends beyond physical repair to complex logical scenarios:
Drive Not Recognised: Diagnosed at PCB, firmware, and internal physical levels.
Failed RAID Rebuilds: Virtual reconstruction of RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60, ZFS, and other nested arrays.
CCTV Overwritten Data: As detailed above.
File System Reconstruction & Repair: We are experts in all major file systems:
Windows: NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS
macOS: HFS+, APFS (including encrypted volumes)
Linux: EXT2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, JFS
Unix: UFS, ZFS
Proprietary: QNAP, Synology, CCTV DVR formats
Why Choose Swansea Data Recovery?
25 Years of Expertise: A quarter-century of successful recoveries for consumers, businesses, and government agencies.
Multi-Vendor Specialists: Deep knowledge across consumer, enterprise, and cutting-edge SSD technologies.
Class 100 Cleanroom Laboratory: Guaranteeing the integrity of your media during physical repairs.
Advanced Tools: Investment in industry-leading hardware and software like ACE Lab PC-3000, DeepSpar Disk Imager, and Flash extractors.
Clear, No-Obligation Diagnostics: We provide a full report and a fixed-price quote before any work begins.
High Success Rate: Thousands of successful recoveries, handling the simplest to the most catastrophic data loss situations.
Contact Swansea Data Recovery today for a free, confidential evaluation of your failed storage device. Your data is our priority.
