D-Link Recovery

D-Link Recovery

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Our experts have extensive experience recovering data from external hard drives. With 25 years experience in the data recovery industry, we can help you securely recover your data.
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Swansea Data Recovery: The UK’s Premier DLINK, External HDD & NAS HDD Recovery Specialists | 25 Years of Expertise

For 25 years, Swansea Data Recovery has been the UK’s trusted name in complex data recovery. We specialise in recovering data from all makes and models of External Hard Drives, NAS Drives, and D-Link storage systems, regardless of the interface or the fault. Our state-of-the-art laboratory, equipped with a comprehensive inventory of advanced tools and donor parts, allows us to achieve the highest possible success rates where others fail.

Our Expertise: Top 40 External HDD Manufacturers & Models in the UK

We recover data from any manufacturer, including the top 40 found in the UK market:

  1. Western Digital (WD) – My Passport, My Book, Elements, Black P10/P50

  2. Seagate – Expansion, Backup Plus, One Touch, IronWolf (External)

  3. Toshiba – Canvio Basics, Canvio Advance, Canvio Flex

  4. Samsung – T-Series (T5, T7), Portable SSD

  5. SanDisk – Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro

  6. ADATA – SD700, SE800, HD710

  7. Kingston – XS2000, NV2 (External Enclosures)

  8. Crucial – X6, X8 Portable SSDs

  9. LaCie – Rugged, d2, Blade

  10. Buffalo – Ministation, DriveStation

  11. Transcend – StoreJet, ESD350C

  12. Iomega (now LenovoEMC)

  13. Verbatim – Store ‘n’ Go, Slimline

  14. Lenovo – ThinkPad USB-C Dock

  15. HP – P500, P600

  16. Dell – External Hard Drives

  17. Fujitsu – External Storage Solutions

  18. HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) – Touro

  19. Maxtor – OneTouch, Basics

  20. Promise – Pegasus, SanDisk Professional

  21. Glyph – Blackbox, Atom

  22. OWC – Mercury Elite, Envoy Pro

  23. Sabrent – Rocket XTRM-Q, External Enclosures

  24. Corsair – Flash Survivor, Voyager

  25. TeamGroup – PD1000, PD2000 Portable SSDs

  26. PNY – Pro Elite, Portable SSDs

  27. Intel – SSD 670p (in external enclosures)

  28. Apacer – AC232, AH333

  29. Silicon Power – Armor A60, A65

  30. Inateck – FE2005, FE2011

  31. Vantec – NexStar TX, MX

  32. Thermaltake – BlacX Duet

  33. StarTech – S251BMU33R, S252BU313R

  34. Icy Box – IB-1667U3, IB-3810U3

  35. Orico – 2139U3, 2539U3

  36. QNAP – TR-004, TL-D800C

  37. Synology – EDS14, DX517

  38. Asustor – AS6004U

  39. Fantom – Drives, GForce

  40. Freecom – Mobile Drive, Hard Drive XL

The Swansea Data Recovery Process: 25 Top External HDD Errors & Our Technical Resolution

Here is a detailed breakdown of the most common faults and the sophisticated, in-lab processes we use to resolve them.

1. Firmware Corruption (HDD & SSD)

  • Problem: The drive’s internal operating system is corrupted, causing it to be detected incorrectly (e.g., wrong model number), to “click,” or to enter a frozen state. Common in WD drives with “slow responding” issues or Seagate F3 drives showing “BSY” errors.

  • Technical Resolution: We use the PC-3000 system with Data Extractor to establish a terminal connection to the drive’s processor. We bypass the corrupted ROM by reading a donor firmware image from the service area on the platters. We then repair the critical modules (e.g., TRANSLATOR, SMART, U_LIST) and re-generate the adaptive parameters to restore user area accessibility for stable imaging.

2. Read/Write Head Stack Assembly Failure

  • Problem: Physical damage to the delicate read/write heads, often resulting in clicking, beeping, or scratching sounds. This is a prelude to platter damage and requires immediate cleanroom intervention.

  • Technical Resolution: In our Class 100 ISO 5 cleanroom, we disassemble the HSA. We source an identical donor HSA from our extensive parts library and perform a precise transplant. The drive is then immediately connected to our DeepSpar Disk Imager to create a sector-by-sector clone using slow, stable read commands to minimise stress on the new heads.

3. Bad Sector Proliferation (Uncorrectable Sector Errors)

  • Problem: The drive’s internal ECC (Error Correction Code) can no longer correct bit errors in numerous sectors, leading to file corruption and I/O errors. This is a sign of media degradation.

  • Technical Resolution: We use hardware imagers with adaptive read control. The system employs multiple read retries at slower speeds, software-based ECC correction stronger than the drive’s internal ECC, and will skip sectors only as a last resort, logging them in a bad sector map for later analysis.

4. Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Failure

  • Problem: The drive’s electronic board is damaged by power surges, often blowing TVS diodes, fuses, or the motor driver IC. The drive will not spin up.

  • Technical Resolution: We perform component-level electronics repair, replacing faulty components. If the PCB requires replacement, we transplant the unique NV-RAM chip from the patient PCB to the donor PCB using a programmer, as this chip contains the drive-specific adaptive data essential for initialisation.

5. SSD Controller Failure / “Phantom” Drives

  • Problem: The SSD’s main processor (controller) fails, often due to a firmware bug or power loss. The drive may be detected but show 0GB capacity or fail all commands. This is common in SandForce, Phison, and Silicon Motion-based drives.

  • Technical Resolution: For drives where the controller is irrecoverable, we perform a NAND Chip-Off Recovery. We desolder each NAND flash chip, read its raw content with a PC-3000 Flash reader, and use our software to reverse-engineer the Flash Translation Layer (FTL), including page/block mapping, XOR scrambling, and wear-leveling algorithms, to virtually reassemble the user data.

6. Accidental Formatting or Partition Deletion

  • Problem: The user or an OS error deletes the partition table (MBR/GPT) or reformats the volume, removing the logical map to the files.

  • Technical Resolution: We perform a full disk image to preserve the state. Our software then performs a file system signature scan to locate the former partition boundaries. For NTFS, we search for the $MFT (Master File Table) and rebuild it; for HFS+, we rebuild the Catalog File. We then reconstruct the directory tree without overwriting any data.

7. Logical File System Corruption (e.g., NTFS, exFAT, HFS+)

  • Problem: Critical file system metadata structures are damaged, preventing the OS from mounting the volume. Errors include “file system RAW” or “parameter is incorrect.”

  • Technical Resolution: We use R-Studio and UFS Explorer in a lab environment to parse the damaged structures. We manually repair the $Boot file in NTFS, replay the journal log in ext4, or rebuild the MFT Mirror to achieve a consistent file system state for data extraction.

8. NAND Flash Wear (SSD Degradation)

  • Problem: The SSD has exhausted its program/erase cycles, leading to an increasing number of uncorrectable bit errors. The drive may become read-only or suffer drastic performance loss.

  • Technical Resolution: This is a race against time. We use our hardware to place the drive in a read-only state and perform a rapid, controlled image. We then employ powerful software ECC correction, often using Reed-Solomon or BCH algorithms more advanced than the drive’s controller, to recover data from the failing memory cells.

9. Motor Spindle Bearing Seizure

  • Problem: The lubricant in the platter spindle motor degrades or the bearings seize, preventing the drive from spinning up. A distinct “whirring” or “humming” sound may be heard as the motor tries and fails to start.

  • Technical Resolution: In the cleanroom, we perform a platter transplant. The platters are moved with extreme precision to an identical donor drive that has a functional motor and HSA. This is one of the most complex procedures, requiring perfect alignment to prevent data loss.

10. Service Area (SA) Module Corruption

  • Problem: The drive’s reserved system area on the platters, which holds the firmware modules, has unreadable sectors. The drive may not initialise or may display strange behaviour.

  • Technical Resolution: Using the PC-3000, we read the SA and identify the damaged modules. We then write repaired modules from our technical database, often by adapting them from a donor drive, to create a stable enough environment to image the user data area.

11. USB Bridge Board / Adapter Failure

  • Problem: The external drive’s enclosure interface board fails, but the internal SATA HDD/SSD is healthy. The drive is not recognised, or the enclosure gets hot.

  • Technical Resolution: We physically remove the native drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to our SATA recovery hardware. If the enclosure uses hardware encryption (common in WD My Passport), we may need to repair the bridge board or source an identical one to decrypt the data stream.

12. Platter Surface Damage (Scratches)

  • Problem: A head crash has physically scored the magnetic coating on the platters. Data in the affected zones is permanently destroyed.

  • Technical Resolution: After a head replacement, we use our imaging hardware to create a bad sector map. The software is configured to skip the severely damaged areas quickly to prevent further head damage. We then recover all readable data around the scratches, maximising the salvageable content.

13. Accidental File Deletion

  • Problem: User deletes files and empties the recycle bin/trash. The file system marks the space as available but the data remains until overwritten.

  • Technical Resolution: We create a forensic image to prevent overwriting. Our software performs a file signature carving (file carving) scan, searching for known file headers (e.g., JPEG, PDF, DOCX) and footers to reconstruct files without relying on file system metadata.

14. RAID Configuration Loss (NAS Devices)

  • Problem: A NAS unit loses its configuration due to a failed update or multiple simultaneous disk errors, breaking the RAID array (0, 1, 5, 6, 10).

  • Technical Resolution: We image all member disks individually. Our software analyses the data patterns to empirically determine the RAID parameters: stripe size, disk order, parity rotation, and data start offset. We then build a virtual RAID in software to reassemble the original volume.

15. Power Surge / Electrical Damage

  • Problem: A voltage spike damages multiple components on the PCB and potentially the preamplifier on the head stack.

  • Technical Resolution: A multi-stage repair. We first repair or replace the PCB. If the drive remains unresponsive, the cleanroom HSA replacement is performed, as the surge often travels down the flex cable and destroys the preamp.

16. Encrypted Drive Failures

  • Problem: A drive using hardware (e.g., SED) or software (e.g., BitLocker, FileVault) encryption suffers a physical or logical failure. The encryption key is inaccessible.

  • Technical Resolution: We first recover the drive to a non-encrypted state using the appropriate physical/logical methods above. Decryption is then attempted using provided passwords, recovery keys, or by repairing the corrupted metadata that stores the key (e.g., the BitLocker boot sector).

17. NVMe SSD Firmware Crash

  • Problem: The SSD becomes unresponsive, not detected, or stuck in a ready state. Common in older Samsung SSDs with known firmware bugs.

  • Technical Resolution: We use the PC-3000 NVMe kit to put the drive into a technician mode, bypassing the main firmware. We can then directly access the NAND chips to read the raw data and perform a chip-off recovery if necessary.

18. Thermally Induced Read Instability

  • Problem: The drive works when cold but develops read errors as it heats up during operation, a sign of component or media degradation.

  • Technical Resolution: We place the drive in a dedicated cooling chamber connected to our imager. The drive is cooled to a stable, low temperature, and the imaging process is conducted as quickly as possible before thermal expansion causes misalignment and errors.

19. Virus & Ransomware Corruption

  • Problem: Malware encrypts, renames, or moves user files.

  • Technical Resolution: We create a forensic image. For ransomware, we attempt to identify the strain and utilise known decryption tools. For less destructive malware, we scan the raw image for file signatures to carve out the original, unencrypted files from the unallocated space.

20. Damaged USB/SATA Connector

  • Problem: The physical port on the drive is broken or detached from the PCB.

  • Technical Resolution: We perform micro-soldering to reattach the existing connector or solder a new one onto the PCB, restoring the physical interface for data recovery.

21. Preamplifier (Preamp) Failure on HSA

  • Problem: The IC on the head stack that amplifies the signal from the heads fails. The drive may spin up but be completely silent or generate unique beeping sounds.

  • Technical Resolution: This necessitates a full Head Stack Assembly (HSA) replacement in the cleanroom, as the preamp is an integral part of the HSA and cannot be replaced separately.

22. ZFS/EXT4 Pool Corruption (NAS)

  • Problem: The advanced file system on a NAS becomes corrupted, often due to a failed write or power loss during a transaction.

  • Technical Resolution: We use specialised tools to parse the ZFS Uberblocks or ext4 journal to roll back the file system to the last known consistent transaction, restoring access to the pool.

23. S.M.A.R.T. Flagged Drive Failures

  • Problem: The drive’s self-monitoring system predicts an imminent failure (e.g., High Reallocated Sector Count, Uncorrectable Sector Count).

  • Technical Resolution: We treat this as a drive in pre-failure. We immediately image the drive using our most gentle, stable imaging hardware to get ahead of the complete failure, often achieving a near-100% recovery.

24. Water & Fire Damage

  • Problem: Physical contamination of the internal components.

  • Technical Resolution: We perform a meticulous, multi-stage cleaning process in the cleanroom. Platters are chemically cleaned and transplanted into a new, sterile environment (donor drive). Any corroded PCBs are ultrasonically cleaned and repaired.

25. Factory Re-initialisation

  • Problem: The drive has been restored to factory settings, often overwriting the partition table and some user data.

  • Technical Resolution: We perform a deep scan of the entire LBA range to locate residual file system structures. We then carve data from the unallocated space, focusing on file types specified by the client.

Contact Swansea Data Recovery Today

With 25 years of experience, an unparalleled parts inventory, and tools like PC-3000, DeepSpar, and Cleanroom Technology, we resolve the data loss scenarios that others cannot. We provide a free, no-obligation diagnostic to accurately assess your device and provide a fixed-price quotation.

Regain your critical data. Contact Swansea Data Recovery now.

Featured Article

Case Study: Forensic Recovery from a D-Link ShareCenter NAS Following Catastrophic Logical Corruption and File System Destruction

Client Profile: User of a D-Link ShareCenter Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.
Presenting Issue: Initial file corruption errors progressed to complete data inaccessibility after the client ran CHKDSK and subsequently formatted the drives via the NAS interface. The device now reports “drives deleted,” and any accessible files contain only gibberish. All original data, including MP3 collections, is unavailable.

The Fault Analysis

The client’s actions, while logical for a standalone Windows PC, triggered a catastrophic sequence of events on the NAS’s specialized storage architecture. The failure occurred at multiple logical layers:

  1. Initial Underlying Cause: The original “file corruption” warning from the NAS was likely caused by unstable sectors on the physical hard drives. As the NAS attempted to read files, the drives’ internal ECC failed, returning uncorrectable errors. This corrupted the NAS’s file system journal, leading to the directory errors the client first observed.

  2. The CHKDSK Catastrophe: Running Windows CHKDSK on a NAS drive is profoundly destructive. A NAS typically uses a Linux-based file system like EXT4 or BTRFS. CHKDSK, an NTFS repair tool, incorrectly interprets the EXT4/BTRFS structures as massive corruption. In its attempt to “repair” the foreign file system, it:

    • Deleted critical metadata structures like the inode table and journal.

    • Replaced the original, coherent directory entries with CHKDSK’s own FOUND.000 folders containing FILExxxx.CHK fragments, which are the “gibberish” files the client encountered.

    • Overwrote the Superblock—the “root” of the file system—with NTFS-like data, rendering the volume unmountable by the NAS.

  3. The Final Blow: NAS Formatting: The format command issued through the D-Link interface completed the data destruction. This process wrote a new, empty file system structure to the drives, overwriting the remaining fragments of the original Superblock and any recoverable metadata that CHKDSK had not already destroyed.

The Professional Data Recovery Laboratory Process

Recovery in this scenario required a forensic approach to peel back the layers of logical damage, working from the most recent corruption backwards to salvage original data.

Phase 1: Physical Drive Stabilization and Forensic Imaging

  1. Drive Extraction & Isolation: The hard drives were removed from the D-Link ShareCenter. They were connected directly to our PC-3000 system via native SATA ports, bypassing the NAS hardware and any potential RAID configuration.

  2. Sector-Level Imaging: A full, sector-by-sector clone of each drive was created using our DeepSpar Disk Imager. The process was configured in a read-only mode to prevent any modification to the source drives. This created a forensic copy for all subsequent analysis.

Phase 2: File System Archaeology and Metadata Reconstruction

This was the core of the recovery, involving a meticulous, layered analysis.

  1. Analysis of the Format Layer: We first scanned the disk images for the new, post-format file system signature. We identified and documented the LBA range of this new structure to understand what space it occupied.

  2. Carving for the Superblock Backup: EXT4 and BTRFS file systems maintain multiple backup copies of their critical Superblock at various locations on the disk. We performed a raw scan of the entire disk image to locate these backup Superblocks, which the format process had not overwritten.

  3. Virtual File System Assembly: Using a recovered backup Superblock, we mounted a virtual EXT4/BTRFS file system in our recovery software (R-Studio Technician and UFS Explorer). This gave us a view of the file system as it existed after the CHKDSK damage but before the format.

  4. Handling CHKDSK Artifacts: The mounted structure was heavily damaged. We bypassed the corrupted primary inode table and instead performed a raw inode scan. By analysing the inode structures directly, we could reconstruct the original directory tree and file metadata, ignoring the CHKDSK-created FOUND.000 directories.

Phase 3: Data Carving and File Validation

With the original file map largely reconstructed, we moved to data extraction.

  1. Media File Carving: For files where the metadata was irrecoverable, we performed file signature carving. We scanned the unallocated space of the disk image for the headers of MP3 files (which begin with ID3 or FF FB). This technique recovers files based on their content rather than their file system entries.

  2. Data Integrity Verification: Recovered MP3 files were validated using checksums and spot-checked for audio integrity to ensure they were not salvaged from the physically degraded sectors that likely initiated the original failure.

Conclusion

The client’s data was not lost to a single failure but to a cascade of logical destruction: initial media degradation was compounded by the application of an incompatible file system repair tool (CHKDSK), which was finalized by a full format. A professional lab’s success hinged on the ability to work forensically, using backups of critical file system metadata stored on the drive itself to effectively “rewind” the logical damage layer by layer. By completely ignoring the NAS-generated file system and the CHKDSK artifacts, and instead focusing on the raw, underlying data structures, we could reconstruct the original directory and salvage the client’s files.

The recovery successfully restored approximately 92% of the client’s MP3 library and associated data. The 8% loss was attributed to the initial physical media errors and the small portion of data permanently overwritten by the new file system during the format.

Swansea Data Recovery – 25 Years of Technical Excellence
When your NAS fails and standard utilities make the situation worse, trust the UK’s No.1 HDD and SSD recovery specialists. Our forensic approach to logical recovery allows us to reverse engineer complex damage scenarios and recover data that has been through multiple layers of corruption and repair attempts. Contact us for a free diagnostic.

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