Data Recovery Case File · Desktop Externals & Aging Drives · Two Patients, One Delivery

Two Damaged Drives and Your Own Destination Drive

His enquiry was practical and well-scoped, and it contains one assumption worth testing before any figure is agreed. "I have two damaged external hard drives, which all the files are intact. One of these has 291GB and the other has 190GB. I want a quote for full extraction of all files and upload onto another drive which I can provide." Two useful things here. His offer to supply the destination drive is entirely welcome and worth explaining properly, because there are conditions that protect him rather than the bench. And the phrase "which all the files are intact" deserves a gentle examination — because on a damaged drive that is a hope rather than an observation, and the difference between the two is what a quotation has to be built on.

The decode: two jobs, one assumption, and the rules for supplied media

Why two drives are two jobs: not a commercial position but a practical one. Each drive has its own fault, its own condition and its own route, and one may be a straightforward logical recovery while the other needs mechanical work. So each is assessed and quoted independently, and he can accept either, both or neither. What should not happen is a single blended figure that obscures which drive is driving the cost — because it is entirely possible that one is inexpensive and the other is not, and that is information he needs in order to decide.

The assumption worth examining: "all the files are intact" is the thing everybody believes and nobody can know from outside. If a drive is damaged enough to be inaccessible, its contents cannot be inventoried until it has been imaged — and the honest position is that completeness is established by the recovery rather than promised before it. That is not pessimism: on many faults the contents genuinely are complete, and on logical faults they almost always are. But a quotation built on an assumption of completeness sets him up to feel short-changed by an honest partial result, whereas a quotation that says "here is the fault, here is the realistic expectation, and the completeness will be reported per file" does not. He should expect a manifest rather than a reassurance.

The rules for a supplied destination drive: his offer is sensible and it is accepted, with three conditions that exist for his benefit. It must be healthy — a recovery delivered onto a failing drive is a second problem waiting, so it is checked before anything is written to it. It must be empty, or at least contain nothing he needs, because it will be written to. And it must have room to spare: formatted capacity is meaningfully less than the label suggests, and where content carving is involved a recovery can produce more data than the original held, once earlier versions and duplicates surface. A combined 481GB of source therefore wants a comfortably larger destination, not a 500GB one.

One thing that never happens: recovered data is not written back onto either source drive. That is worth stating because it occasionally gets suggested as a way to save the cost of media — and writing to a drive you are recovering from destroys the evidence the recovery depends on.

On the bench

The two drives were treated as two patients: each assessed independently, its fault established and its own figure issued in writing, so that he could decide on each separately rather than on a blended total. Each was imaged write-blocked with per-sector timeouts enforced, healthy regions captured first and any struggling neighbourhoods revisited afterwards. His supplied destination drive was checked for health and capacity before anything was written to it, and confirmed as having room beyond the recovered total. The contents were verified by opening rather than counted, and delivered with a per-file manifest recording what came back complete, what came back partial and what did not come back at all.

The outcome

Both drives assessed and quoted separately, imaged under timeout control, and the contents verified and delivered to his own media with a written manifest. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT per drive; where a drive has to be opened, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The decode, for anyone sending more than one drive: insist on separate assessments and separate figures, because one may be cheap and the other expensive and that is what you need in order to decide; treat "all the files are intact" as a hope rather than a fact until a drive has been imaged, and ask for a per-file manifest instead of a reassurance; and if you supply the destination drive — which is welcome — make sure it is healthy, empty, and comfortably larger than the source, because carved recoveries can exceed the original.

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.