Data Recovery Case File · Trust, Practice & Honest Limits · The Destination Question

Dropping a Drive Off: What to Bring and What Is Supplied

His enquiry was brisk and practical, and it asks something people wonder about constantly without asking. "I would like you to recover the data from a hard drive from a failed PC. I intend to drop it off at your office this afternoon. Do I need to provide a memory stick to save the recovered files to?" The short answer is no — verified media is supplied as part of the job and its cost sits inside the fixed figure rather than appearing afterwards. But the question deserves more than a one-word reply, because a memory stick is usually the wrong destination for a drive recovery, and understanding why is worth knowing before he buys one. This page covers what to bring, what not to, and what the recovered data should actually arrive on.

The decode: why not a memory stick, what to bring, and what not to

Why a memory stick is the wrong destination: three reasons, and the first is arithmetic. A desktop PC drive will hold hundreds of gigabytes or more, and a recovery can produce more data than the original held once earlier versions and duplicates surface — so a stick is very often simply too small, and discovering that at handover wastes everybody's time. The second is reliability: a flash stick is the least durable storage most people own, and this archive is substantially made of enquiries from people whose only copy was on one. The third is purpose — a stick is transport, designed to move things between places, not to be the home of an irreplaceable archive. Recovered data should arrive on something that can be its home for a while.

What is supplied: verified media appropriate to the recovered volume, included in the fixed figure rather than added as an extra afterwards. If he would prefer to supply his own drive — which is welcome — it needs to be healthy, genuinely empty, and comfortably larger than the source, and it is checked before anything is written to it.

What to bring with the drive: more useful than the drive alone. Its power supply and cable if it is an external unit, because the correct-specification supply matters and a generic substitute can cause damage. Any history: whether it was dropped, whether it was powered at the time, what noises it makes, what has already been tried and by whom. A priority list if some material matters more than the rest — that single sheet of paper genuinely changes how a job is sequenced on a failing drive. And, for an encrypted machine, whatever credentials or recovery keys exist, because without a lawful key even a perfect image is unreadable.

What not to bring: usually, the whole computer. If the drive is already out, the machine adds nothing to a data recovery — its screen, keyboard and mainboard play no part once the drive is read on separate equipment. The exception is machines with soldered storage, where the board is the only route to its own data and the whole device must come. If in doubt, ask before dismantling anything.

One practical note on drop-off: hand delivery is better than posting for a drive that has been dropped or is making a noise, because couriers are not gentle. If it must be posted, it travels immobilised and flat in a rigid box rather than loose in a padded envelope.

On the bench

The drive was logged against him on receipt, identified by make, model and serial, and its condition recorded — so that what arrived and what goes back are documented rather than remembered. It was assessed on diagnostic instruments without a single write to the media, and the fault, the realistic outcome and one fixed figure went to him in writing before anything chargeable began. The recovered contents were verified by opening rather than counted, and delivered on verified media sized comfortably above the recovered set — not on a memory stick — with the original drive returned to him alongside it.

The outcome

The data recovered, verified and delivered on appropriate media supplied within the figure, with the original returned. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; where a drive has to be opened or a chip removed, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The answers, for anyone about to drop a drive off: you do not need to supply media, and a memory stick is the wrong choice anyway — too small for a PC drive, the least durable storage you own, and designed as transport rather than as a home for an archive; bring the drive's own power supply if it is external, whatever history you have, a priority list if some material matters more, and any encryption credentials; leave the computer at home unless its storage is soldered to the board.

Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.