A failing hard drive usually announces itself — you just need the translation. Clicking means heads, a beep means a seized spindle, a scrape means power off now, and silence means electronics or firmware. Whatever yours is saying, the Princes Street bench has heard it before: free diagnostic, fixed quote, no fix no fee on most jobs.
$ edr diagnose /dev/sdb → Device: Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB → Status: BUZZING — seized, not recognised → Client: confidential · Edinburgh $ edr engineer-working → Read-write heads: replaced from donor → Spindle: released, platters clean → Imaging: 98% · 72 hours $ edr verify → ✓ shoot_RAW — recovered → ✓ client_galleries — safe → ✓ drive — recovered
Rhythmic clicking is the read/write head assembly failing to find its bearings — mechanical, serious, and absolutely not improved by retry after retry. A beep or musical whine at power-on is usually a spindle that cannot turn: seized bearings or heads stuck to the platter surface after a knock. Scraping or squealing is the emergency — something is in contact with the platters, and every second of rotation grinds away the very surface your data lives on. Silence with no detection points at the printed circuit board or the drive’s firmware — often the best news on this list, and invisible from outside. The one universal move: power down and keep it down.
Nothing is recovered from a sick drive directly — that’s the house rule. First the fault is corrected to the point the drive can read: donor head assemblies transplanted under clean-air conditions, PCBs repaired with the original’s adaptive data carried across, firmware modules rebuilt where the drive’s own microcode has corrupted. Then the drive is imaged — cloned sector by sector, gently, weak areas last — and from that image your files are rebuilt and verified. The original does the minimum work possible; the copy does everything else. It’s slower than the shortcuts. It’s also why the shortcuts come to us afterwards.
The bench handles every manufacturer — Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Hitachi/HGST, Samsung legacy and the older names like Maxtor and IBM that still surface in cupboards holding one irreplaceable folder. Each family has its quirks (donor matching is stricter on some, firmware architectures differ), which is exactly the sort of knowledge 25 years accumulates. Desktop 3.5″, laptop 2.5″, drives from external enclosures and drives pulled from NAS bays all land on the same rig.
Usually, yes — clicking is a failed head assembly, and head transplants from matched donor drives are routine bench work here. What genuinely endangers the data is continuing to power the drive: each click is the heads failing over the platters. Off, drawer, call.
A drop typically damages heads or seizes the spindle; either can leave a drive undetected or clicking. Don't test it repeatedly and never open it to look — platter surfaces and open air don't mix. Dropped-drive recovery follows the same imaging discipline, priced after the free diagnostic.
Yes, with honest expectations — prior opening outside clean-air conditions can cost some recoverable surface, and we'll tell you at diagnostic exactly what remains realistic. Send everything they returned, including any loose parts.
A free diagnostic first, always — then a fixed written quote before any work begins. No surprises on the invoice, because there's no invoice until you've approved the number.
A representative selection of related work from the bench.
Getting a device onto this bench only takes two moves, and the clock on your free look starts the moment it lands.
Strip out cables, caddies and power bricks — none of it helps — wrap the device so it can't shift in transit, and either post it insured to 83 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 2ER or bring it in yourself. Tuck a note of what happened in with it, and enclose the shipping form if you've printed one.
Arrival gets confirmed, the diagnostic runs at no cost to you, and the call that follows names the fault and states a fixed price. The bench stays idle on your device until you say go.
£300 covers the recovery, VAT on top, and the look that decides whether you need it costs you nothing. Every make lands on the same bench, worked in-house from start to finish. Hearing clicks or grinding? Kill the power before you read another word.