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CDR / Work we specialise in / Lenovo recovery

Lenovo laptops · ThinkPad to Legion

Lenovo data recovery, Cardiff. Error 2100, an unseen card, a locked disk — the files are usually still there.

One badge covers four very different machines, and what sits under the keyboard changes with the range and the year it was built. Four kinds of job come in from Cardiff and South Wales: a ThinkPad stopping at error 2100 with a healthy disk behind it, a Legion whose NVMe card disappears once the fans spin up, an IdeaPad with its storage soldered down, and a business laptop locked by a hard disk password nobody wrote down. Which of them you have decides the price, so it is settled before any figure is put to you. Disks and cards are imaged read-only first, and the tools only ever see the copy.

No files back, no fee on most jobs One fixed price, after a free diagnosis It comes to us by post from Barry, Pontypridd or Newport

Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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What each symptom is telling you.

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What shows upWhat has gone wrongDo this now
2100: Detection error on HDD0The BIOS gets no answer from the main diskTake the drive out and send that
The BIOS list comes up emptyThe M.2 controller has stopped answering, so nothing is offered to bootSend the card on its own, bagged
Ticking, or a slow repeated knockHeads have touched down and are damagedKeep the power off from now on
The BIOS asks for a hard disk passwordThe disk locked itselfFind the password before posting
An IdeaPad with soldered storageThe chip is part of the mainboardThen the whole machine has to travel
A Windows reinstall has been startedRecovery media writes over your filesStop and ring
Posting it to us: post it tracked and fully insured to the intake lab, and the journey back is on us; ring first if you would like an engineer to check how it is packed before you seal the box. Every stage is set out on the posting guide.

Four Lenovo ranges, four kinds of job.

ThinkPad, the fleet machineThe line Lenovo bought from IBM in 2005, and still the one bought by the dozen. Older ones hold a 2.5in disk on a small interposer cable; newer ones an M.2 card. These are the ones that arrive with a password on the disk.
IdeaPad, the home oneBuilt to a price, and the price shows in the storage. The cheaper models solder their flash straight to the mainboard, so there is nothing to unplug and the board has to come in with the machine. The rest take an ordinary M.2 card.
Yoga, and the hinges it turns onThin, sealed and full of ribbon cable. A convertible spends its life being folded, and what fails is usually the hinge, the display cable or the board rather than the disk behind them. Getting inside one is slow work, and it is worth having done at a bench rather than over a kitchen table.
Legion, and the heat it makesGaming machines run hot, live in bags and often carry two M.2 slots, one of them holding everything the owner cares about. The failure we see most is an NVMe controller that stops answering part-way through a session, then comes back cold and drops out again as the fans spin up. Those go on in short cold sessions, the easiest regions first, and the rest of the card follows.

From the parcel to your files coming back.

Cases we have logged →
01

A case number, and a diagnosis at no cost Free

The diagnosis costs you nothing. Every item that arrives is logged under a case number of its own, and an engineer works out what has actually failed — then tells you plainly which files can come back and which cannot. The price follows that: one fixed figure, in writing, and no work begins until you have read it and said go ahead.

Diagnosis at no chargeOne fixed figure in writingNothing owed yet
02

The disk comes out first

Nothing here gets repeated power-ups in the hope it catches. Where a card or a 2.5in disk can be lifted out, it goes onto a write-blocked port of ours, and the first question is answered in minutes: is the fault the machine, or the storage under it?

Tested on our own portMachine or disk, in minutes
03

Imaged in short cold runs

All of it happens on the image, never on your drive. A spinning ThinkPad disk with damaged heads is opened under clean air against a matched donor; an NVMe card that heats up is imaged in short bursts, cooled between each one, with the difficult regions left until last.

Clean air for the spinnersShort bursts for cards
04

Opened and read before it goes

Nothing leaves the bench on our word alone. The recovered files are opened here — photos, documents, mailboxes — the folder tree is checked against what you described, and anything you named as critical is read through in full.

Opened, not just listedYour named folders read first
05

You approve it, then it goes back

Nothing is billed while you are still deciding. A complete listing of what came off the drive reaches you first, and the invoice only follows your yes. Files travel back on media bought new for the job, return postage ours, and we do not close it here until every one of them opens on the machine you will use.

The file list is yours to approveBack on media bought newThe postage back is on us

What we usually find first

  • 2100 names the disk, not the fault — the code tells you the BIOS could not identify HDD0, which is as true of a tired connector or a failed interposer cable as it is of a dead disk. Both are cheap to rule out.
  • One slot, two card lengths — an 80mm slot will often hold a 42mm card on a bracket, and neither the label nor the spec sheet always says whether it is SATA or NVMe. Say which came out, and which slot held it.
  • The drop sensor buys milliseconds — it parks the heads on a fall it detects in time. A knock while the disk is writing is a different matter, and a card has no heads at all.
  • Hard disk passwords outlive the people who set them — fleet ThinkPads get handed on, and the password often sits with whoever built the machine years ago. Ask them before the parcel goes.

Where this one stops: a drive that encrypts inside its own controller is genuinely shut without its password, and no bench, ours included, opens it. Soldered storage has a second hard edge: the controller sits in the same chip as the cells, so if it fails there is no way in. Both are said plainly at the diagnosis, before anything is payable.

Straight out of the casebook.

CF · CDF-2026-0851LOGGED ✓

The IdeaPad passed its own health check and failed the long scan

He ran Lenovo's built-in diagnostics before wiping the machine for a buyer and got two answers that cannot both be right: the health check said the disk was fine, the extended test stopped on an error every time. The counters underneath told the real story — reallocations climbing month on month across most of a year, a second list of addresses still awaiting a decision, and one band of platter giving its data up many times more slowly than the surface either side. Fetching the three folders he wanted would have sent the heads darting across all of that, so the disk was imaged in one even sweep instead, the difficult band left until last. Every file was opened rather than counted, and none of the sectors that would not read fell inside his folders.

All three folders returnedFull image banked first

Before you send it off.

Start with these

  • Power it down at once and leave the charger out
  • Note the code on screen, digit for digit
  • Say which range it is: ThinkPad, Yoga, Legion
  • Post the drive by itself, in an antistatic bag

What to avoid

  • Restarting it to see if 2100 clears
  • Booting Lenovo recovery media over the top
  • Running chkdsk on a clicking disk
  • Putting anything new onto the failing drive

What we get asked, week in, week out.

ThinkPad error 2100, a detection error on HDD0. What happens next?

Leave it off. The code means the BIOS asked the main disk to identify itself and got nothing usable back, so the fault sits in the drive, its connector or the short cable between them. Powering it up over and over to see whether the message clears is what turns a readable disk into a scrapped one. Take the drive out, note the slot, send that alone.

The card out of my ThinkPad is 42mm, not 80mm. Does that matter?

Not to the bench, but it matters if you buy a replacement. Lenovo fits both lengths, and a chassis with an 80mm slot will often carry a 42mm card on a bracket, so what comes out is not always what the spec sheet promised. The label also rarely says whether the card is SATA or NVMe. Send it as it is, say which slot it sat in, and we work out the rest.

I set a hard disk password years ago and lost it.

It depends on the drive. A ThinkPad hard disk password sits in the disk's own controller, not in Windows, and Lenovo cannot clear it. If that drive encrypts in hardware — Opal and the like — the password is the key, and losing it loses the contents. Where it does not, lock and encryption are separate. Tell us the model and the diagnosis says which you have.

It was dropped. Does the drop sensor not stop that?

It parks the heads when it feels the machine falling, and on a short drop onto carpet it often works. A corner-first landing on a hard floor, a knock while the disk is mid-write, or a fall it reads too late are past its help. It does nothing for an M.2 card, which has no heads to park. If a Lenovo has been dropped and now ticks or has gone quiet, leave the power off: every restart drags damaged heads across the surface you want back.

Pages people often read next.

Servers that stop → Crypto wallets → Encrypted by ransomware → Devices we take in →

An unplugged drive keeps whatever it still holds.

A failing drive has only so many starts left in it. Spend none of them. Keep the power off, and the free diagnosis will tell you what is still readable.

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Get it checked Where to post it