Data Recovery Case File · Electrical & Environmental Damage · The Move Torn in Half
The pop killed one drive and orphaned the other: an interrupted move decoded — deleted-as-it-went on one side, unreadable on the other — and the full estate reunited from both
His letter laid out two failures; the decode's first job was to show him they were one incident. Drive one: a Sonnics 4TB, plugged into the mains through a surge-protected extension — "switched the main power on and heard a pop… there was a burning smell. Now will not switch on at all." Drive two: a G-Drive 4TB, and the sentence that defines the case: "I was transferring data and footage from the G-Drive to the Sonnics when suddenly, half way through a 'move', the G-Drive went offline. Now it cannot be read by any computer… however, it still switches on and runs fine." Both drives carry "data and footage needed to run my business." Read together: the electrical event at the destination tore the session down mid-operation, and the source — interrupted mid-housekeeping — came away with scrambled structures of its own. And because the operation was a move, not a copy, the estate itself was left divided: part already relocated onto the drive that died, part still on the drive that won't mount, and a seam of uncertainty in between. Recovering "both drives" was really one job: reuniting an estate across a tear.
| Media | Sonnics 4TB external (destination — electrically dead after a pop and burning smell) · G-Drive 4TB external (source — spins normally, mounts nowhere) · combined business data and footage |
| Reported incident | Mains switched on at a surge-protected extension · audible pop, burning smell, destination drive dead · a bulk "move" from source to destination severed at roughly the halfway mark · source offline since, though powering and running |
| Fault class | Electrical failure (destination) paired with interrupted-write structural corruption (source) — one incident, two damage classes |
| Equipment used | Board-level electrical service with calibration-data transfer (destination) · write-blocked imaging of both drives · on-image structure reconstruction (source) · cross-drive reconciliation of the moved and unmoved halves · verified, de-duplicated delivery |
The decode: why a torn move is worse than a torn copy — and what the pop did twice
The move, explained without mercy: a copy leaves the original standing; a move is a copy that deletes behind itself, file by file, as it goes. Sever one halfway and the estate is instantly in three states: files fully relocated (now existing only on the destination — the drive that died), files not yet touched (still safe on the source — the drive that won't mount), and possibly a file caught mid-flight, whole on neither. That is why "which drive matters more?" had no answer here. Until both sides were read, neither half was optional.
The pop, at the destination: a bang and a burning smell is a drive's electronics announcing their end — a protection component or supply stage letting go. Surge protection at the extension is a comfort, not a guarantee; some events originate on the drive's own board, beyond any extension lead's jurisdiction. The essential fact: electrical death at the board is a periphery failure. The platters behind it, and the freshly-moved files on them, don't burn with it.
The orphaning, at the source: when the session collapsed, the G-Drive was mid-housekeeping — updating its bookkeeping to record deletions and progress. Torn there, it kept spinning perfectly ever after while presenting structures no computer would trust. Runs fine, mounts nowhere: mechanical innocence, logical injury.
The recovery: two treatments, one reunion
The Sonnics received electrical service at the bench: its failed board dealt with the only way that truly works on modern drives — replacement matched with a transfer of the original board's unique calibration data, without which a donor board and a set of platters remain strangers. Restored to life, it was imaged write-blocked before anything else was asked of it. The G-Drive was imaged as it stood — no repairs to the patient — and its torn structures rebuilt on the copy, resurfacing the unmoved half with names and folders intact. Then the reunion: the two recovered halves reconciled against each other — moved set, unmoved set, the mid-flight seam checked file by file — de-duplicated and assembled into one verified estate.
The outcome
The business's data and footage delivered whole, on new media, with a manifest showing the reunited structure — and the seam accounted for: nothing lost between the halves. Free assessment covered both patients; the work was quoted as one fixed written figure including VAT; no recovery, no fee stood behind the lot. The extension lead was retired without honours.
A transfer died mid-"move" — or a drive popped on power-up
Stop both drives immediately and treat them as one case: after a torn move, neither side holds the whole estate, and improvising on either can close the seam permanently. Don't re-run the move, don't let anything "repair" the source, and never re-power a drive that has popped or smelled of burning — its board needs service before its platters are asked anything. For bulk relocations of data that matters, copy first and delete after verification: a torn copy is an inconvenience; a torn move is this page.
Both halves are usually recoverable — call Edinburgh Data Recovery on 0131 202 0491; reunited and verified, one written figure, no recovery, no fee.
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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.