Internal hard drives — the 3.5” drives in desktop PCs and servers, and the 2.5” drives in older laptops — arrive at our lab either still inside the machine or already removed by an owner or repair shop. Either is fine. Modern internals bring their own complications: self-encrypting drives (SED), locked diagnostic ports, helium-sealed enterprise drives, and firmware faults that make a healthy-looking drive unreadable — all recoverable with the right equipment, none of it with software.
If the data on the drive matters, recovery should only be attempted by a lab with the equipment and experience to do it safely — every power-up of a failing drive risks the data that’s still recoverable, and repeated attempts to read a mechanically failing drive are one of the most common ways data gets destroyed before it reaches us.
Dragon Data Recovery works on failed internal drives daily at our own laboratory — our bread and butter, including the drives that computer shops across the region pull from their customers’ machines and send to us — cases like this WD Caviar Green that arrived making ominous noises.
Listed below are some common signs that a hard drive is in trouble. Drives do plenty of strange things when they’re failing — if your symptom isn’t listed, describe it on our enquiry form and we’ll tell you what you’re dealing with.
Is your Hard Drive demonstrating any of these faults?
- Can you hear any strange clicking sounds when powering up the Hard Drive?
- Does the computer freeze or crash when opening certain files or folders?
- Does the Hard Drive make any unusual beeps or buzzing sounds when powered up?
- Is the Hard Drive completely dead? No life in it whatsoever?
- Has the Hard Drive become inaccessible?
- Is the Hard Drive noticeably slower in handling your files?
- Has the Hard Drive been formatted?
- Are your files disappearing?
- Has the Hard Drive been physically damaged?
- Has the Hard Drive been affected by a power surge or lightning strike?
- Do you get error messages stating ‘no hard drive found’?
- Is the Hard Drive not visible in a computers BIOS?
If your hard drive is doing any of the above, power it down and leave it off — start your enquiry here and we’ll reply with the likely pricing tier and clear next steps, with no obligation.
Typical Hard Drive Related Data Recoveries
- Buffalo
- Crucial
- Fujitsu
- G-Technology
- HGST
- Hitachi
- Iomega
- LaCie
- Maxtor
- Quantum
- Samsung
- Seagate
- Solid-State drive
- Toshiba
- Western Digital
Interfaces and Form Factors We Recover
- PATA (IDE)
- SATA
- mSATA
- 1.8”
- 2.5”
- 3.5”
Common Hard Drive Issues
Desktop and server drives often run around the clock for years, so wear, heat and age catch up with them — and a knock or power cut can finish the job in a second. From head crashes to corrupt file systems, these are some of the failures we recover from every week:
- HDD failure
- Failed SSD
- Click of death
- Read/write failure
- Printed circuit board (PCB) failure
- Corrupt file system (NTFS, APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT, FAT16, FAT32)
- SMART errors, warnings and failures
- Formatted hard drive
- Deleted or missing data / files
- Firmware or manufacturing faults
- Disk detected but not opening
- Disk not mounting
- Head crash
- Physical damage
- Hard drive clicking sound
- Hard drive beeping sound
- Hard drive buzzing sound
- Flashing folder icon containing a question mark
If you want to avoid further data loss at this stage, we recommend:
- Please stop attempting to access your defective Hard Drive device.
- Please do not dismantle your device in any way.
- Please never open the lid of any Hard Drive, they are sealed for a reason.
- Don’t run recovery software or repeated chkdsk passes against a drive that’s clicking or dropping offline — it forces a failing drive to keep working and destroys data.
- Start your enquiry here for a no-obligation assessment.
What does internal hard drive recovery cost?
Logical recoveries — corrupted, formatted or deleted data on a drive with no mechanical fault — start from £350 including VAT. Mechanically failed drives needing cleanroom work, such as clicking, seized or dropped drives, start from £450 including VAT. Send just the drive, or bring the whole machine — either works, and we’ll remove and refit the drive if you’d rather not. Every case gets a proper diagnosis first (typically 3–7 days), then a fixed written quote for your approval before any chargeable work begins — no upfront payment, and most completed recoveries are back with their owners within 6–10 days of approval. Drop off at our Moreton laboratory by appointment, courier collection, or Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed all work. If we can’t recover meaningful data, there’s no recovery fee.
About Our Data Recovery Laboratory
Dragon Data Recovery is a genuine recovery laboratory — not a shopfront that forwards drives on. Every recovery happens at our own lab on the Wirral, on professional equipment: Ace Laboratory PC-3000 systems, DeepSpar Disk Imagers and a class 100 clean room facility for mechanical work.
You deal directly with the engineers handling your case, you approve a fixed written quote before any chargeable work begins, and if we can’t recover meaningful data, there’s no fee to pay.
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