A student dropped her laptop in halls near the university. It made strange noises when she turned it on afterwards and would not start. A housemate doing a computing degree told her the drive was broken, said he doubted anything could be got back, and told her to keep it switched off. He was wrong about the first part and completely right about the second. Her dissertation was on it.
| Media | A laptop dropped and no longer starting, making unusual noises when powered, its hard drive suspected by a knowledgeable acquaintance to be mechanically broken. |
| What was reported | Laptop, dropped, makes strange noises when turned on, will not start up, a housemate with a computing background identified the drive as broken and advised keeping it off, was sceptical about recovery, dissertation and coursework needed. |
| Fault class | Mechanical. The fall put the heads out of true and the drive could no longer read, which is why the machine would not start and why it made noise trying. The platters were unmarked. |
| On the bench | Kept off as advised. Drive removed from the laptop and profiled on a current-limited bench supply with the mechanism assessed, opened in clean air under laminar flow, head stack and platters inspected under a stereo microscope with the surfaces assessed for scoring, matched donor heads fitted and alignment set, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, coursework located in R-Studio and validated. |
The noise and the failure to start are the same fact. A laptop starts by reading its operating system off the drive. If the heads cannot read, there is nothing to start from, and the noise is the attempt to read failing over and over.
His advice was the valuable part. Keeping it off is genuinely the best thing anybody can do for a dropped drive, and it is the opposite of what most people do. Every start-up attempt is another few minutes of damaged heads moving over a surface holding a dissertation.
His scepticism was the wrong part. Head faults over sound platters are among the most routine jobs a recovery bench handles. Broken drive is a fair description. Unrecoverable is a different claim and needs the platters inspected before anybody can make it.
The drive comes out and goes on its own. Internal drives are not removed from machines here, so the drive was unscrewed at her end and posted by itself. It is a few minutes with a small screwdriver on most laptops and it makes the job possible.
It had been kept off since the fall, which is why this reads the way it does. The drive was removed and profiled on a current-limited bench supply, and the mechanism matched a head fault. It went into clean air under laminar flow.
The head stack was inspected under the stereo microscope and the platters assessed across their radius for scoring, which they did not show. Matched donor heads were fitted, alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. The dissertation, its drafts and the rest of her coursework were located in R-Studio and validated by opening them.
Heads replaced, drive imaged, dissertation recovered along with every draft behind it. The housemate's advice is a fair part of the reason it went that way, and he deserves the credit for the half he got right.
One drive, £300 + VAT, with 50% payable before the work began because the drive had to be opened in clean air. Mechanical work is excluded from no fix, no fee, and the figure was fixed in writing before the deposit was taken.
Leave it off. If somebody has already told you that, they have given you good advice and it is worth taking even if their prognosis was gloomy. Do not keep starting it to see whether it will get further this time, because each attempt runs damaged heads across the surface holding your work. Do not run a start-up repair or a boot-time disk check. Take the drive out yourself, put it in an antistatic bag, and post that on its own rather than sending the whole laptop, because internal drives are not removed from machines here. If your storage is soldered to the board, as it is in most ultraslim machines, say so, because that is outside what this lab takes in.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Liverpool, Merseyside and the wider North West, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each one gives the reasoning behind the diagnosis, the method the fault actually called for, and the equipment it was worked on.
An impacted drive has a head fault, and years of home attempts do not change what is sitting on the platters
A drive that needs the cable held at an angle has a failing joint at the port, and it always gets worse
A drive Windows offers to initialise is a drive that has not introduced itself properly, and initialising is the one thing you must not do
The diagnostic is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure is fixed in writing, and logical faults run on no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.