The drive holding the backup is so often the drive that fails. Knocked off a desk, jolted mid-transfer or simply refusing to show up any more — we recover external and portable USB drives from every maker, week in and week out, across Staines and Surrey.
Free diagnostic on every external drive job. One fixed quote in writing before any work begins.
No fix, no fee all jobs except electronic and mechanical failures, chip level work, DVR and Forensic jobs. Full pricing is on the free diagnostic page.
Every external drive job starts by matching the symptoms to the fault — these twelve cover almost everything that reaches the bench.
The classic external-drive death: heads fail on impact and every retry risks the platters.
USB bridge, electronics or firmware failure — the drive lives but can't speak.
File-system corruption from yanked cables and interrupted writes; the files sit beneath the error.
Stiction or a seized motor — the drive is trying and failing to spin. Stop powering it.
Dead electronics or bridge; imaging happens through or around the original board.
My Passport and Elements encrypt invisibly — a failed board doesn't lose the data, but DIY enclosure swaps hit gibberish.
My Book-style drives die with their power bricks — often the cheapest fault, sometimes the messiest.
Bad sectors spreading across the platters; hardware imagers read around them before it's too late.
Usually fully recoverable if the drive stops being used at once.
Platters survive more than people expect — treated, transplanted and imaged in the clean bench.
Seagate's slim portables fail heads after a knock and start clicking — donor heads are fitted before imaging.
Older Iomega and LaCie desktop units die with their power bricks or bridge chips while the disk inside survives untouched.
External drives lead rough lives: hauled around in bags, knocked off desks, unplugged mid-write. A drop while the platters are spinning is the classic killer — the heads touch down and the drive starts clicking. We recover WD My Passport and Elements, Seagate Expansion and Backup Plus, LaCie, Buffalo, Toshiba Canvio and every other brand, including models with encrypted or USB-soldered boards that can't simply be swapped into another enclosure.
Plenty of modern portable drives encrypt your data invisibly in hardware — the USB bridge board is part of the lock. Pull the bare disk out, connect it over SATA, and you're greeted with gibberish, which sends a lot of DIY attempts into a panic. It's completely normal, and it's routine for us: we recover through or around the original bridge so your files come back exactly as they were.
Externals are hard drives wearing a jacket — so the full drive bench applies, plus bridge-specific kit:
The industry-standard firmware bench — talks to drives in manufacturer service mode to repair translators, remap defects and unlock service areas.
Sector-by-sector imaging of unstable drives with per-head control, current monitoring and automatic retry strategies no software imager can match.
Filtered Class-100 airflow for open-drive work — head swaps and platter handling happen here, never on an open desk.
Precision combs and lifters for exchanging head stacks and migrating platter packs into donor chassis without contact damage.
Thousands of matched donor drives indexed by model, firmware family and site code — the right head stack or PCB is usually already on the shelf.
Original-bridge imaging and decryption for WD's hardware-encrypted portables and other SED enclosures.
Failed interface boards are matched from stock so encrypted drives keep their key chain intact.
Portable SSDs (T5/T7, SanDisk Extreme) are a growing share of the shelf — different insides, same free diagnostic. WD My Passport and Elements drives encrypt through the USB bridge, so a failed bridge locks the data until it's imaged through the original chain; Seagate Expansion and Backup Plus portables click after a knock; and older LaCie, Buffalo and Iomega desktop units tend to die with their power bricks or bridge chips while the disk inside survives.
Most customers post or courier their media to us.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Guildford Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee — start now or call the freephone.