Bench-based plain English guides; what actually fails; what the first hour should involve; the honest answers to the questions we get so many calls about on the telephone. As our post box fills with new questions, new guides go up.
WD's oddities explained, from My Passport, Elements, My Book to Blues: hardware encryption, the SMR dilemma, and why it is about both the hard drive and its case.
// guideThe 3 no-risk tests, the fork in the road (that will decide your fate) and when DIY starts costing you data.
// straight answersWe repair failed drives here weekly, for just one read. Why repairing to reuse is a trap, and the 3 questions to ask any shop.
// symptom fileIn the order that we meet them on the bench, here are the five possible causes for a hard disk not showing up (cable, housing, file systems, firmware or mechanical failure), along with the one safe response to each.
// brand fileThe legacy of the 7200.11 firmware, fragile modern thin drives, Expansion bridge quirks and the beeping fault: era by era, honestly.
// brand fileFirmware damage on 840/860 EVO after loss of power, T-series portables running hotter than usual, and the Spinpoint veterans in your attic.
// error fileThe MFT translation, why it's a gamble when you run chkdsk on a drive that's going down, and how to copy data first without losing your shirt.
// straight answersOn a hard drive, a factory reset will get rid of less data than sellers hope; on a TRIM-era solid-state drive (SSD), more than regretters fear. There are both true ending points, as well as some edge cases that may make sense to check.
// boot errorsWho is speaking when the message "no bootable device found" appears? The sixty-second BIOS test that splits a setting fix from a dead disk, and the fixes that destroy your one last option.
// arraysEach level has to give something in order to achieve its goals of higher capacity, increased read/write speeds and better survivability. What your array had to sacrifice will explain exactly how that array will eventually die, and why rebuilding can be such an issue.
// nasA crashed volume, gone share, and the nice button row that will finish the job. What Synology, QNAP & WD devices are actually saying to you.
Much of the information that will be covered on this blog has already been created where you will need it. For example, every device page contains a list of common failure points for a device. In addition, the failure timeline, ransomware playbook, and deletion race are all guides in their own right, as they contain many of the same types of straight answers. In addition, the case files allow you to see how these patterns play out at the end-to-end level. The blog grows from real Glasgow questions. If yours isn't answered anywhere yet, ask us and it may become the next post.
The free diagnostic tells you what your actual drive needs, much faster than reading an article. Glasgow data recovery guides, written by those who do the recoveries.