Hard drive data recovery

Hard drive recovery from a lab that does the work in-house

Recover My Lost Data (RMLD) recovers data from desktop, laptop, external, NAS and server hard drives on every interface: SATA, SAS, SCSI and older IDE/EIDE. We work on all brands, including Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung and Hitachi/HGST.

Every case starts with a free evaluation. You get a diagnosis and a firm quote before any paid work begins, so the decision is yours with no risk. Our success rate for file recovery is above 95%, and rush cases can be turned around in 6 to 8 hours when the fault allows it.

What has changed inside hard drives

A hard drive built in 2026 is a very different machine from the one in a ten-year-old PC, and recovery methods have had to follow.

Helium-sealed drives

Most 3.5-inch drives from about 10TB upward are welded shut and filled with helium, with up to ten platters and twenty heads. Opening one and matching donor parts takes dedicated tooling and an exact donor.

Shingled recording (SMR)

Most 2.5-inch laptop and portable drives, and many desktop models, overlap their tracks. The drive keeps a second translation layer in its firmware. When that layer is damaged the drive reads as empty or returns zeros even though the data is still on the platters.

HAMR and 30TB+ capacities

Seagate's heat-assisted Mozaic drives passed 30TB in 2025 and reached 44TB for data centers in 2026. WD and Toshiba ship drives above 20TB using energy-assisted recording. Each head now carries more data than a whole drive used to, so one weak head matters more.

TRIM on shingled drives

Many SMR drives accept the TRIM command. After a delete or a quick format the drive may start discarding the old data in the background. Powering down straight away gives the best chance.

USB-native and encrypted boards

Many portable drives have the USB port soldered to the drive's own circuit board and encrypt everything in hardware. See external drive recovery.

How hard drives fail

Logical faults

Deleted files, formatted or lost partitions, file system corruption, a failed operating system update. The drive is healthy and the data is still there until something overwrites it.

Firmware faults

The drive spins but reports the wrong capacity or model name, or stays busy. The service area the drive uses to run itself is damaged and has to be repaired with manufacturer-level tools.

Electronic faults

A power surge or the wrong power adapter burns the circuit board. Modern boards hold calibration data unique to that drive, so a board swap only works when that data is transferred too.

Mechanical faults

Clicking, beeping, grinding or no spin. The heads have failed or stuck to the platters, or the motor has seized. The drive needs donor parts fitted in a clean room.

Media damage

Bad sectors or scratched platters, usually after a drop or after a drive with failed heads was left running.

How we recover the data

1. Diagnose. We identify the fault without stressing the drive and tell you what the recovery involves.
2. Stabilize. Firmware is repaired, or failed heads, boards or motors are replaced with matched donor parts in our ISO 5 (Class 100) clean room.
3. Image. The drive is copied sector by sector to healthy storage using hardware imagers that control each head. Damaged areas are skipped first, then revisited with slower, gentler reads.
4. Rebuild. Files and folders are reconstructed from the image, never on your original drive.
5. Verify and return. You review the list of recovered files before paying. Data goes back on a new drive or by encrypted transfer.

Models we recover, 2013 to 2026

Examples of the model numbers we see most often, grouped by the years each range was sold. Look at the printed label on the top face of the drive: the model number sits beside "Model", "MDL" or "Model No.", close to the serial number and capacity.

Not listed? These are examples, not limits. If your model is missing we almost certainly still recover it. Give us the number when you start a case.

Your hard drive data can be saved

If data was lost through a logical fault it is still on the drive, and the first steps you take matter. A failed do-it-yourself attempt can overwrite the very files you want back. With a mechanical fault the drive is in a more delicate state. Parts may need to be replaced before anything can be read, and every extra power-up risks damage that cannot be undone.