Devices · laptops and desktop PCs
One phrase covers two very different faults. More often than not, a machine that will not start has lost its screen, its board or its charging circuit while the storage behind them sits untouched; a disk that has genuinely failed is a separate job. Either way, the drive is what we come for, and machines reach us from across Cardiff and South Wales.
Describe the symptoms to an engineer
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| What shows up | What has gone wrong | Do this now |
|---|---|---|
| HP: Hard Disk 1 (301), a SMART Hard Disk Error | Its own SMART data has condemned the disk, and the BIOS will not boot it | Believe it. Image it straight away |
| HP: Boot Device Not Found (3F0) | No bootable device is being seen | A connector adrift, or a drive that is dead |
| Dell: Error Code 2000-0142 | ePSA has condemned the drive, usually the head stack | Do not run the test twice |
| Dell: Error Code 2000-0146 | The drive's log has been collecting errors for some time | Today is not when this began |
| Lenovo BIOS 2100: a detection error on HDD0 (Main HDD) | Nothing answers on that port: a cable, or a disk that has gone | Image first; check the cabling afterwards |
| A disk read error occurred — hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart | The boot sector will not read, and possibly nor will the rest | Another restart fixes nothing |
| Reboot and Select proper Boot Device | The BIOS can see nothing to start from | Diagnose before anyone reinstalls |
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.
Anything that unclips is lifted straight out, and the empty shell waits on a shelf until the end. Soldered flash offers nothing to unplug: from there the mainboard is the job, and each chip gets read in place.
A drive that has truly failed joins the normal HDD or SSD work. A sound one stuck inside a dead machine needs an image taken, and nothing beyond that.
Documents, desktops, mail stores and user profiles go back into the folders they came from, on fresh media, and nothing is invoiced until you have signed off the listing.
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.
What arrives here from Cardiff, Caerphilly and the Valleys tells the same story: when a manufacturer's own test puts the blame on the storage, the storage has generally gone, and the loose lead everybody hopes for is the rare exception. After that it is an ordinary disk job, handled just as the hard drive and SSD pages set out.
The laptop was scrap by the time it got to us, and the disk inside was clicking. Donor heads went in, the imaging crawled, and three days later she had back five years of lesson plans, reports and marks.
Where the drive comes out on a caddy or one screw, send only the drive: postage is cheaper and a small parcel survives the trip better than a boxed-up laptop. Any repair shop will free one in a couple of minutes. When the storage is soldered down, or you simply cannot tell, put the whole machine in the box.
Usually, yes. Far more laptops are finished off by a screen, a mainboard or a charging circuit than by the drive itself, and getting an intact disk out of a laptop that has stopped for good is among the gentlest jobs on this bench.
Only if it arrives without the key. Send the password or the recovery key along with the drive and an encrypted volume is routine work here, several a week. With neither, it stays closed, exactly as Microsoft intended, so find yours before you pack the parcel.
Often a good deal. An install writes over some of the disk and never touches the rest, but every hour of use since then eats further into what remains — so stop using the machine and put it to one side.
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.