If the heads issue on your drive requires a head swap procedure, our cleanroom hard disk data recovery cost is a $699 flat rate fee. While we are not the cheapest hard drive recovery service, I believe we offer the best value in the industry. Our safe data recovery methods coupled with years of experience and the best tools possible make our HDD data recovery cost very reasonable.
Cleanroom Hard Disk Data Recovery Cost
This drive came into us from a shop in Wichita that has been sending us drives that they have not been able to recover themselves. We have been working with this shop for about a year now, and have a very good success rate with the drives they send. They attempt very basic recovery techniques but don’t do any of the risky or unsafe data recovery procedures that so many repair shops attempt.
The shop likes that our HDD data recovery cost allows their clients to get their data back without spending $1000’s as they had to before when they would send the recovery out to one of the big recovery companies. We do work with repair shops of all sizes, so if you would like to refer clients to us or utilize our white label recovery service, we would be happy to work with you!
Western Digital WD20EARX Diagnosis
The Western Digital WD20EARX hard drive had just stopped working for the client, and the repair shop had diagnosed it as likely having an internal heads issue as it was making unusual noises. The drive would not mount on any of their computers and would stop responding when they attempted to run software-based recovery on it. I discussed the hard disk data recovery cost with the client and they agreed to bring it to us.
Whenever a drive is reported to be making weird noises, I always like to start with an inspection to verify there isn’t any damage on the platters or a failed internal part that is causing damage. I opened the drive in my cleanroom environment and checked the heads under a microscope, the heads looked great and there wasn’t any damage on the platters at all. There was some debris inside the drive around the sides. While unusual, I do find drives that are dirty inside once in a while. After I had cleaned up the debris and reassembled the drive, I continued on to the diagnosis.
1 Bad Head Recovery Project
My PC-3000 data recovery tool recognized the drive and the drive got RDY and ID’d without issue. I noted right away that the drive was running slowly, so I checked and backed up the firmware modules. The common Module 32 issue with some Western Digital drives was not an issue in this case, so I continued on to a heads test. I found that the last head had failed and was not reading the data from the bottom of the third platter as it should be.
This drive has 3 platters inside and 6 heads, one for each side of the platters. In this case, I could get everything from the top platter, everything from the middle platter, and everything on one side of the 3rd platter. But I would not be able to get any of the data from the bottom of the third platter without replacing the head stack with a donor head stack.
I turned off the 6th head and recovered the 83% that I could from the working heads. I was able to run a report of the files that would be successfully recovered if I stopped here and sent that report over to the client to see if they wanted to stay at the Standard+ level and just get 83% back, or if they wanted to move forward with the more expensive Lab Recovery level and swap out the head stack.
Cheap Cleanroom Data Recovery
When it comes to hard disk data recovery cost, our most expensive tier, Lab Recovery, is actually about $1000 less than the midrange of most other data recovery companies. So while we are a cheap data recovery service as far as lab recovery goes, it is still a lot of money to spend! In this case, the customer was very pleased with the 83% that had been recovered already, but really wanted to try to get as much back as possible, so they approved the Lab recovery. I got the donor part on order right away and let them know it would be about a week of waiting for the part to arrive.
Sometimes sourcing a drive for a head swap can be difficult when the drive was not very common. This Caviar Green model was a very common drive so it was easy to source one with the same head stack as the original. The hard disk data recovery cost includes the donor parts as long as those parts aren’t super expensive.
Once the donor parts arrived I opened the drive back up in my cleanroom and continued with the data recovery process. The head swap went beautifully and the last head was reading from the bottom of the third platter as it should! I ran the imager on a gentle pass and went back over a few times to get the maximum amount of data possible. The final amount of sectors recovered was 99.99%, which equated to all the data the client was after.
My Affordable Data Recovery Service
If you have a Western Digital Caviar Green drive or any hard drive that you need data recovered from, please contact me and let me help recover your data. While my affordable data recovery services may not be the cheapest hard drive recovery service, I believe we are the best data recovery value on the market. I offer my services nationwide via my mail-in repair service. Just fill out my data recovery form to start the recovery process, or my quick quote form to get the hard disk data recovery cost! I look forward to helping you get your data back.
Drive info: Western Digital WD20EARX-00PASB0, WWN: 50014EE206DAA434, DATE 13 APR 2012, DCM: HHRCNVJCAB, DCX: 1P05A85S4, R/N: 771698, WD Caviar Green
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