Lacie Recovery

Lacie Recovery

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Our experts have extensive experience recovering data from external hard drives. With 15 years experience in the data recovery industry, we can help you securely recover your data.
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An Explanation As To Why Some Lacie Hard Drives Suddenly Fail:

Lacie External Hard drives are very complex pieces of hardware in their own right and along with your motherboard and memory and CPU go to make up the fundamental components of what makes your computer tick. There are times when an external hard drive will fail and this can be for any number of reasons. Chiefly among them is the fact that a piece of the hardware within the hard drive has ceased to function such as a head, a platter or a spindle. Something as simple sounding as a Ribbon Cable may also see its way clear to causing you problems reading or writing to your external hard drive so it is important – where possible – to diagnose and repaid the problem if able. If not we can certainly help you to recover your lost or inaccessible data.

Physical Failure To Your Lacie Hard Drive Caused By Internal Malfunction:

We at www.swanseadatarecovery.co.uk have dedicated our time and expertise to helping people just like you when a physical hard drive problem arises. When it comes to physical problems with hard drives these are many in number but commonly take the form of problems with actuators spinning off their axis, heads and platters becoming dislodged or even jumper connections becoming damaged due to access reconnecting and disconnecting if the drive has been removed and replaced a lot. Contact us to find out more about why your drive might physically fail and what we can do to help

Your Data And How It Can Be Lost or Formatted Incorrectly Using an Lacie Hard Drive:

When data is lost or inaccessible it can be for a variety of reasons. We have already looked at how hardware failings can cause your data to seem to be irretrievable but there are other reasons. Chief amongst the most common reasons for data to become lost or inaccessible is human error and while we would all like to think we are incapable of causing the loss of our own data, sadly it happens more often than we would like. In addition to human error there are also errors caused by bad sectors on a disk, which, if not dealt with upon first appearance, can expand into not just thousands of bad sectors but millions. Imagine allowing mold to form on a windowsill without removing it and you get some idea as to how bad sectors can spread across an external hard drive

Lacie External Hard Drives And Their Power Supplies:

A Lacie external hard drive is more prone to problems with power surges and power outages than an internal hard drive might be: this is because for the most part an external hard drive works on its own power supply fed by an individual cable. Sometimes a power cable connected to an external hard drive may become damaged and either accepts too much or not enough power. Likewise a serious power surge may send too many volts through the device causing circuitry to burn or a loss of data because of a surge power to the spinning hardware inside. With 15 years experience in this field we will be able to help you recover your data if not repair the drive even if you can’t get it to do anything after a surge or outage.

Firmware Faults That Can Render Your External Hard Drive Inoperable:

As with many other devices within your computer an external hard drive works in conjunction with the firmware that has been factory loaded. The firmware is the small but important program that tells an external hard drive how to behave in relation to any device it may be connected to such as a USB port or hub a PC or Mac itself. With faulty firmware you may find that your drive will not allow the reading or writing of data and may even fail to recognise the existence of data you have already saved. We at www.swanseadatarecovery.co.uk are able to deal with problems caused by the corruption or loss of firmware.

Suddenly System Crashes And Their Effects On Your External Hard Drive:

With a decade and a half’s worth of experience when it comes to computer and hard drive breakdowns we like to think we have seen most – or at least the majority – of problems that can arise because of problems with external and internal hard drives. One major problem caused by a discrepancy in the behaviour of an external hard drive is the sudden rebooting or shutdown of a computer without warning. This can be particularly frustrating if you are working on an important project in the workplace. Not only does the sudden shutdown of a computer lead to problems with the hardware but it can also lead to the loss or corruption of data stored on its internal and external hard drive. So if your computer shuts down without warning and will not reboot correctly; leave it switched off and contact us here at www.swanseadatarecovery.co.uk

Featured Article

Case Study: Recovery from a Lacie Minimus v2 with Intermittent Connectivity and Acoustic Anomalies Indicating Mechanical Pre-Failure

Client Profile: User of a Lacie Minimus version 2 external hard drive.
Presenting Issue: Intermittent power requiring precise cable positioning, excessive operational noise (“constant whirring”), and an inability to copy data despite the drive being visible to the host system.

The Fault Analysis

The client’s description points to a compound failure involving both the external enclosure’s electronics and the internal hard drive’s mechanical integrity. These are not separate issues but are intrinsically linked.

  1. Intermittent Power & Connection: The requirement for precise cable positioning indicates a failing USB bridge board or a physically degraded USB-B socket. Solder joints connecting the socket to the PCB have likely fractured due to repeated mechanical stress, creating high-resistance connections that break with minor movement. This unstable power delivery is highly detrimental to the sensitive internal HDD.

  2. Acoustic Anomaly (“Constant Whirring”): This is a critical symptom of mechanical distress. Unlike the regular hum of a spinning platter, a pronounced “whirring” or “whining” noise often points to:

    • Spindle Motor Bearing Wear: The lubricant in the motor’s bearings has degraded or the bearings themselves have begun to wear, causing increased friction and audible vibration as the platters spin at 5,400 or 7,200 RPM.

    • Pre-Read/Write Head Instability: The whirring could be the sound of the actuator arm struggling to maintain track alignment due to inconsistent power or physical wear, causing the head to make minute, rapid adjustments.

  3. Data Visibility without Copy Ability: The drive is visible because the USB bridge board can still handshake with the computer and the drive’s firmware can initialise. However, sustained read operations required for copying data fail because the unstable mechanical assembly cannot reliably position the read head over the data tracks, leading to read timeout errors and I/O CRC errors that the OS interprets as a failed copy operation.

The Professional Data Recovery Laboratory Process

This scenario demands immediate cessation of user attempts and a lab-based process to prevent a full head crash.

Phase 1: Bypassing the Faulty Enclosure and Stabilising Power

  1. Physical Extraction: The internal SATA hard drive is carefully removed from the Lacie Minimus enclosure. This immediately eliminates the faulty USB bridge board and damaged socket as variables.

  2. Direct, Stabilised Connection: The drive is connected directly to our PC-3000 system and DeepSpar Disk Imager via a native SATA port. The drive is powered by our lab-grade, stable power supply, eliminating the power fluctuations caused by the faulty enclosure.

  3. Terminal-Level Diagnostics: The PC-3000 system establishes a direct communication link with the drive’s firmware. We immediately check the SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) attributes. We expect to see critically high values in:

    • Raw Read Error Rate

    • Reallocated Sector Count

    • Hardware ECC Recovered

    • Spin Retry Count

Phase 2: Acoustic and Performance Analysis

  1. Controlled Spin-Up: With stable power applied, we monitor the drive’s acoustic signature during spin-up and idle. The “whirring” noise is confirmed as originating from the spindle motor assembly.

  2. Firmware-Level Assessment: We read the drive’s System Area (SA) to check for firmware modules related to the Adaptive Spindle Control and Servo System Calibration. Corruption here can exacerbate mechanical instability.

Phase 3: Read-Only Imaging with Adaptive Hardware Control

Given the clear signs of mechanical pre-failure, the imaging process is configured for maximum gentleness.

  • Hardware-Based Imaging: The DeepSpar Disk Imager is used to create a sector-by-sector clone. Its hardware-level control is essential for handling a mechanically degraded drive.

  • Aggressive Read Policy Configuration: We configure the imager with a “slow and steady” profile:

    • Extended Read Timeouts: To accommodate the slower response time of the struggling drive.

    • Software-Controlled Read Retries: The imager will issue a reset and retry a failed read at a slower communication speed.

    • Bypass of Unstable Sectors: If a sector cannot be read after multiple retries, it is logged in the bad sector map and the imager moves on, preventing the head from getting stuck and causing further damage.

  • Real-Time Monitoring: We continuously monitor the drive’s health via its SMART data throughout the imaging process, watching for any rapid degradation.

Phase 4: Logical Reconstruction and Data Extraction

The imaging process results in a complete, but potentially partial, disk image containing some bad sectors.

  1. File System Analysis: The disk image is scanned for the partition table (likely GPT) and the file system (likely HFS+ for Time Machine). We parse the Catalog File to rebuild the directory structure.

  2. Handling Bad Sectors: The bad sector map generated during imaging is used to identify which files are affected. For critical files that are partially corrupted, we employ file carving techniques based on their headers and footers to salvage intact portions of the data.

  3. Time Machine Bundle Integrity: We verify the structure of the recovered Time Machine backup bundles to ensure they can be recognised by macOS’s Time Machine utility for a full restore.

Conclusion

The client’s Lacie Minimus was suffering from a critical combination of external enclosure failure and internal mechanical degradation. The intermittent power from the faulty USB socket was actively aggravating the HDD’s failing spindle motor bearings. Continued use would have inevitably led to a full motor seizure or a head crash. The professional lab’s intervention, by bypassing the enclosure and using hardware-controlled imaging, allowed us to gently read the data from the unstable drive before it suffered a total mechanical failure.

The recovery was successful, securing over 96% of the client’s Time Machine backup data. The process preserved the backup’s structure, allowing for a direct restore to a new drive.

Bracknell Data Recovery – 25 Years of Technical Excellence
When your external drive exhibits unusual noises and connectivity issues, trust the UK’s No.1 HDD and SSD recovery specialists. We understand the critical link between electronics and mechanics, and our controlled recovery environment is designed to retrieve data from drives on the verge of complete mechanical failure.

Client Testimonials

“ I had been using a Lacie hard drive for a number of years to backup all my work files, iTunes music collection and photographs of my children. One of my children accidently one day knocked over the hard drive while it was powered up. All I received was clicking noises. Swansea data recovery recovered all my data when PC World could not.   ”

Morris James Swansea

“ Apple Mac Air laptop would not boot up and I took it to Apple store in Grand Arcade, Cardiff. They said the SSD hard drive had stopped working and was beyond their expertise. The Apple store recommended Swansea data recovery so I sent them the SSD drive. The drive contained all my uni work so I was keen to get everything recovered. Swansea Data Recovery provided me a quick and professional service and I would have no hesitation in recommending them to any of my uni mates. ”

Mark Cuthbert Cardiff

“ We have a Q-Nap server which was a 16 disk raid 5 system. Three disks failed on us one weekend due to a power outrage. We contacted our local it service provider and they could not help and recommended Swansea Data Recovery. We removed all disks from server and sent them to yourselves. Data was fully recovered and system is now back up and running. 124 staff used the server so was critical for our business. Highly recommended. ”

Gareth Davies Newport Wales

“ I am a photographer and shoot portraits for a living. My main computer which I complete all my editing on would not recognise the HDD one day. I called HP support but they could not help me and said the HDD was the issue. I contacted Swansea Data Recovery and from the first point of contact they put my mind at ease and said they could get back 100% of my data. Swansea Data Recovery have been true to their word and recovered all data for me within 24 hours. ”

Iva Evans Cardiff

“ Thanks guys for recovering my valuable data, 1st rate service. ”

Don Davies Wrexham

“ I received all my data back today and just wanted to send you an email saying how grateful we both are for recovering our data for our failed iMac.   ”

Nicola Ball Cardiff

“ Swansea Data Recovery are a life saver 10 years at work was at the risk of disappearing forever until yourselves recovered all my data, 5 star service!!!!!   ”

Manny Baker Port Talbot Wales