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

You May Not Need a Recovery Service

His enquiry was refreshingly proportionate and deserves an equally proportionate answer. An old desktop PC: "it has some photos on it that would be nice, but not critical, to access. The computer has power but is not booting up. I am sure that the hard disk is fine. How much would it likely cost to retrieve the photos onto a memory stick?" He has described his stakes honestly, made a sensible guess about the fault, and asked a fair question. So the honest reply starts somewhere unusual for a page on a data recovery site: on the facts as he describes them, this is probably not a data recovery job at all — and being told that is worth more to him than a quotation.

The decode: the difference between a failed drive and a failed computer

Why his guess is probably right: a PC that has power but will not boot usually fails for reasons that leave its storage completely intact — a corrupted operating system, a failed update, a power-supply or mainboard fault, a dead CMOS battery, or simply an old machine that has given up. In every one of those, the drive is a bystander. The pattern that suggests the drive has failed is different: a machine that starts and then cannot find a system to boot, or that reports drive errors, or a drive making noise, or one that has become audibly or visibly unwell.

What that means commercially, said plainly: specialist data recovery exists for drives that have failed — that click, that will not spin, that will not identify themselves, that have damaged surfaces or dead controllers. It involves instruments, donor parts and skilled labour, and it is priced accordingly. Taking a healthy drive out of a dead computer and copying files off it is not that. It requires a screwdriver and an adapter, and it is the kind of thing a competent local computer shop does inexpensively — or that he could do himself for the price of a cable. Quoting a specialist recovery figure for that job would be selling him the wrong thing.

How to find out which he has, for nothing: an assessment establishes whether the drive is sound or has genuinely failed, and it costs nothing. That is the sensible first step precisely because the answer determines whether he needs a specialist at all. If the drive is healthy, he should be told so and pointed at the cheap route. If it has failed, he will have a fixed figure in writing and can decide.

Two practical notes on his plan: first, a memory stick is the wrong destination for a decade of photographs — too small for a PC drive's contents, and the least durable storage he could choose. Something that can be a home for them, plus a second copy elsewhere, costs little more. Second, if he does open the machine, the photographs on an older PC are rarely only in the obvious folder — they scatter into application libraries, downloads, the desktop and folders left by previous migrations, so a quick copy of one folder often misses most of them.

Why this page exists: because "you probably do not need us" is a useful sentence and it is almost never said. His stakes are modest, his drive is probably fine, and the honest answer costs him nothing to obtain.

On the bench

The drive's condition was established before any route was proposed, since the whole question turns on whether this is a recovery or a copy. It was connected write-blocked rather than fitted into another machine, so that nothing could be written to it whatever its state proved to be, and its health and power-on behaviour were read directly. Where the drive proved sound — as the symptoms suggested — the finding was reported plainly along with the inexpensive route, and no specialist work was proposed. Where a drive in this position turns out to have genuinely failed, the fault is characterised and a fixed figure issued in writing before anything begins.

The outcome

The drive's condition established at no cost, the honest route identified, and specialist work proposed only where it was actually needed. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; 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 with a dead computer and photographs on it: a machine that powers but will not boot usually fails for reasons that leave the drive untouched, so your data is very probably intact; specialist recovery is for drives that have genuinely failed, and taking a healthy drive out of a dead PC to copy files off is a screwdriver-and-adapter job, not that; find out which you have with a free assessment before spending anything; and choose a proper destination rather than a memory stick, plus a second copy somewhere else.

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.