The Vault – Hard Drive Help & Advice

Welcome to Data Clinic’s regularly updated Help and Advice section. Here we discuss and provide links to various different types of hard drive problem and what can be done about them. Take a look below and see if you can find a problem similar to yours. If you can, great! – if you can’t, use the form to your right to contact us and tell us more about the issues you are having.

Further down this page we discuss current known issues with particular hard drives in the marketplace and have links to some case studies of recent RAID and server recovery work we have completed.

• To find our more about our services and capabilities, click on Data Recovery Services from the main menu above.
• To find your local Data Clinic lab go here: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/dataclinic-locations/
• Click for Data Clinic’s main data recovery homepage

Help and Advice

• January 2024: iPhone memory full and Samsung phone recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/iphone-stuck-on-apple-logo-and-samsung-phone-recovery/
• October 2023: Ethereum recovery – incorrect seed words: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovery-of-eth-from-inaccessible-wallet-due-to-wrong-seed-words/
• July 2023: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency – Recovering lost / missing seed words: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recover-lost-incorrect-seed-words/
• July 2023: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency – Recovering a lost / incorrect passphrase: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recover-lost-incorrect-wallet-passphrase/
• June 2023: SSD data recovery in London, Samsung phone recovery in Glasgow: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ssd-data-recovery-in-london-samsung-phone-recovery-in-glasgow/
• May 2023: Recovery of data from a severely rusted iPhone: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovery-of-a-heavily-rusted-iphone/
• May 2023: Maxtor & Lacie hard drive recovery and Metamask crypto recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/lacie-maxtor-rec…etamask-recovery/
• March 2023: Recover data from Dell Latitude and Sony Ericsson K800i: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recover-data-from-dell-latitude-and-sony-ericsson-k800i/
• March 2023: What is a hard drive and how do hard drives work?: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/how-does-a-hard-drive-work/
• December 2022: Data recovery from ReadyNAS, Surface Pro and Huawei water damaged phone: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/readynas-data-recovery-surface-pro-fault-water-damaged-huawei/
• November 2022: Water / Liquid Damaged Phone Recovery and Crypto Metamask recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/water-damaged-phone-and-crypto-recoveries-including-metamask/
• October 2022: iPhone Memory Full and Google Pixel Data Recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/iphone-memory-full-and-google-pixel-data-recovery/
• August 2022: Phone dropped in toilet water – data recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-dropped-in-toilet-water/
• June 2022: Eset, Bitlocker encryption and a water damaged S10: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/eset-encryption-bitlocker-and-water-damaged-samsung-s10/
• June 2022: Trezor One – Bitcoin recovery, seed words and private key recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/trezor-one-seed-words-and-private-key-recovery/
• May 2022: Data recovery from Microsoft Surface Pro’s: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/microsoft-surface-pro-data-recovery/
• April 2022: Some recent phone data recovery photos from the Data Clinic lab: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/various-phone-data-recovery-photos-from-our-lab/
• March 2022: iPhone water damage, CCTV DVR recovery, iomega hard drive recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/water-damaged-iphone-dvr-cctv-and-iomega-hard-drive-recovery/
• February 2022: Metamask wallets: Lost passwords and seed phrases: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/forgotten-password-and-lost-seed-words-on-a-metamask-wallet/
• February 2022: Recover a lost passphrase on a Trezor hardware wallet: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/passphrase-recovery-on-a-trezor-hardware-wallet/
• January 2022: Recovering the data from iPad / iPhone error 1110: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-iphone-error-1110/
• December 2021: Accessing the data on a Bitlocker encrypted hard drive: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/getting-access-to-a-hard-drive-encrypted-with-bitlocker/
• December 2021: Recovering a Bitcoin wallet from a broken hard drive: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-cryptocurrency-from-an-old-or-broken-hard-drive/
• November 2021: Latest data recovery enquiries from London, Bristol, Edinburgh and Southampton: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/latest-data-recovery-enquiries/
• November 2021: Recovering MetaMask crypto wallets: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovery-and-reconstruction-of-metamask-wallets/
• October 2021: Data recovery from Seagate Rosewood hard drives: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/seagate-rosewood-hard-drives-a-review/
• September 2021: iPhone and Samsung phone data recovery enquiries: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/samsung-and-iphone-data-recovery/
• March 2021: A case study of our Advanced Data Recovery service on a WD20NMVW hard drive: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/advanced-data-recovery-case-study-wd20nmvw-hard-drive/
• March 2021: Using non-Apple charging cables to charge for iPhone / iPad can cause damage: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/charging-apple-iphones-with-non-apple-charging-cables/
• March 2021: Some of the wonderful recoveries we’ve done on broken phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/some-of-the-wonderful-things-we-can-do-with-broken-phones/
• February 2021: New Data Clinic data recovery office located in Southampton, Basepoint, Anderson Road, Southampton SO14 5FE: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-and-hard-drive-recovery-southampton/
• February 2021: New Data Clinic data recovery office located in Bristol, Castlemead, Lower Castle Street, Bristol BS1 3AG: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-and-hard-drive-recovery-bristol/
• February 2021: New Data Clinic data recovery office located in Edinburgh, 9-10 St Andrews Square EH2 2AF: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-drive-repair-and-data-recovery-services-edinburgh/
• February 2021: RAID and server data recovery services across Greater Manchester and the North West of England: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/nas-raid-5-and-server-data-recovery-greater-manchester/
• February 2021: Seagate Backup Plus, Expansion and Barracuda hard drive data recovery in Greater Manchester: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/seagate-backup-plus-expansion-barracuda-data-recovery-manchester/
• February 2021: Phone data recovery from in and around Greater Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Bolton, Oldham etc: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/phone-data-recovery-manchester/
• February 2021: Western Digital My Passport / Elements hard drive data recovery in Greater Manchester, Stockport, Bolton, Oldham: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/wd-my-passport-elements-data-recovery-manchester/
• February 2021: Hard drive and phone recovery Q&A: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-drive-and-phone-recovery-qa/
• January 2021: NAS and hard drive recoveries: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/nas-and-hard-drive-data-recovery/
• October 2020: KenXinDa mobile phone data recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ken-xin-da-phone-data-recovery/
• October 2020: Nokia phones – “Unable to find a bootable option. Press any key to shut down“: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/nokia-phone-data-recovery/
• October 2020: Lenovo SSD data recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/lenovo-ssd-data-recovery/
• October 2020: SanDisk SSD hard drive data recovery: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/sandisk-ssd-data-recovery/
• August 2020: Page about recovering the data from liquid and water damaged phones: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-from-liquid-and-water-damaged-phones/
• July 2020: Two new Data Clinic data recovery locations in the UK – Leicester and Belfast: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/new-data-clinic-office-locations-belfast-leicester/
• June 2020: Data recovery from a broken and smashed iPhone 8: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-on-a-damaged-iphone-8/
• May 2020: Data recovery from Macbook’s with a soldered SSD and T2 security chip: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/soldered-macbook-ssds-and-the-t2-security-chip/
• March 2020: Teardown and data recovery of a water damaged iPhone XS: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-a-water-damaged-iphone-xs/
• February 2020: Recovering data from iPhones with error code 14: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/recovering-data-from-iphone-error-14/
• January 2020: Data Recovery from SSDs that use the TRIM feature: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-and-the-ssd-trim-feature/
• January 2020: Data Clinic hard drive, phone, RAID server and CCTV recovery in Bolton, Blackburn and Bradford: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-bolton-blackburn-and-bradford/

Known Issues & Case Studies

Data Clinic staff work on recovering the data from a severely damaged hard drive using a Spinstand in the clean room.

As the UK’s largest data recovery company we see lots of broken hard drives, servers and mobile phones that come in for recovery each week. Because we see so many faulty data storage devices, we are often aware of apparent problems early and in addition to documenting them, can identify ways to get around these problems and recover the data. Historically, Data Clinic were one of the first companies in the world to discover the firmware fault on the Seagate 7200.11 series of hard drives, and the serious Fujitsu MPG firmware fault several years before that.

On this page we’ve highlighted a few of the recent known issues we’ve seen with some current hard drives, as well as some interesting RAID and NAS data recovery case studies.

Current Known Issues

• Data loss problems on Samsung EVO SSD hard drives
• Western Digital Drives with USB interfaces on the hard drive’s motherboard
• Problems noticed with Seagate STxxxxDM001 series hard drives
• Issues with current Z7K500 series Hitachi/HGST hard drives
• Picture loss when upgrading Mac iPhoto and Photo Libraries.

> Information Link: Why It’s Not Possible to Repair A Faulty Hard Drive

RAID and NAS Data Recovery Case Studies

Due to it’s complexities, RAID and NAS devices provide some of the most interesting and challenging data recovery work that we do.

Samsung SRD-1670D CCTV Recovery (CCTV case study)

Thecus N7700 RAID 6 NAS
Netgear 4 disk NAS
Netgear server running RAID 5
Seagate 6 disk RAID 5 NAS
HP Proliant ML370 Series RAID 5
Dell Poweredge MD1000 series RAID 5
Dell FreeNAS 6 Disk RAID 0 running ZFS

Information Link: Three Tips To Avoid Data Loss When Your RAID / NAS / Server Fails

The Archive

As we are adding information to this site all the time we have developed an archive area that contains lots of useful links to articles we’ve written since 2002.

The archive contains both recent and older information on all aspects of hard drives and recovery that we don’t have room for elsewhere on the site.

Go to The Archive.