Hard Drive Recovery

Hard Drive Data Recovery

No Fix - No Fee!

With 25 years of experience in the field of data recovery, our highly trained experts can easily recover your valuable data from corrupted hard disk. We can also guide you through the data recovery process and recover your data that might be considered lost.
Hard Drive Recovery

Software Fault £199

2-3 Days

Mechanical Fault £299

2-3 Days

Critical Service £795

1 Day

Need help recovering your data?

Call us on 0151 3050365 or use the form below to make an enquiry.
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Monday-Friday: 9am-6pm
  • seagate
  • western-digital
  • maxtor
  • ibm
  • hitachi
  • samsung

Liverpool Data Recovery – Liverpool’s No.1 Hard Disk Recovery Specialists (25+ Years)

With 25+ years of engineering-led expertise, Liverpool Data Recovery restores data from all hard drives and SSDs—consumer, enterprise and OEM—across Windows, macOS and Linux. We support every major manufacturer and interface, from legacy PATA/IDE to high-performance NVMe.

Free diagnostics. Forensically safe workflow (image-first, no writes to originals). Clear options before work begins.

Interfaces We Support (legacy → enterprise → modern flash)

  • Parallel/Serial drive buses: PATA/IDE, SATA I/II/III, SAS, Parallel SCSI (Ultra160/Ultra320), Fibre Channel (FC/SCA).

  • PCIe/NVMe form factors: M.2 (B/M/M+B key) SATA & NVMe, U.2 (SFF-8639), PCIe add-in card (AIC).

  • External/bridge transports: USB 2.0/3.x (BOT/UASP), eSATA, FireWire 400/800, Thunderbolt (bridge enclosures).

  • Small form factor/legacy: 1.8″ ZIF/LIF, mSATA, Micro SATA.

  • Appliance/array contexts: JBOD, iSCSI LUNs (on NAS/SAN), hardware/software RAID members.

25 Storage Brands We Commonly See in UK Recoveries (with representative models)

(These are the models we most frequently encounter in-lab—useful as a guide to what fails in the field.)

  1. Seagate – BarraCuda ST2000DM008, IronWolf ST8000VN004, SkyHawk ST4000VX series

  2. Western Digital (WD) – Blue WD10EZEX, Red/Red Plus WD40EFZX, Red Pro WD201KFGX, Black WD2003FZEX

  3. Toshiba – P300 HDWD1xx, X300 HDWR4xx, N300 HDWG series; 2.5″ MQ01/MQ04

  4. Samsung – SATA SSD 870 EVO, 860 EVO; NVMe 980/990 PRO

  5. Hitachi/HGST (legacy/enterprise) – Deskstar HDS7210 series, Ultrastar 7K/He families

  6. Crucial (Micron) – MX500, BX500 (SATA); P3/P5/P5 Plus (NVMe)

  7. SanDisk (WD) – Ultra 3D, Extreme PRO SATA SSD; portable Extreme (USB)

  8. Kingston – A400 (SATA), KC600 (SATA), NV2, KC3000 (NVMe)

  9. ADATA – SU800/SU650 (SATA), SX8200 Pro (NVMe)

  10. Corsair – MP510/MP600 (NVMe)

  11. PNY – CS900 (SATA), CS2140/CS3140 (NVMe)

  12. Sabrent – Rocket / Rocket 4.0 / 4 Plus (NVMe)

  13. TeamGroup – GX2 (SATA), MP34/MP33 (NVMe)

  14. Transcend – SSD230S (SATA), MTE220S (NVMe)

  15. Intel (legacy client & enterprise) – 660p/670p (NVMe), S3500/S3700 (SATA)

  16. LaCie (Seagate enclosures) – d2, 5big, Rugged (USB/TB bridges)

  17. G-Technology / G-Drive (WD) – G-Drive USB/TB desktop (WD Red/Ultrastar internals)

  18. Fujitsu (legacy 2.5″) – MHZ2/MJA2 series (older laptops/NVRs)

  19. Maxtor (legacy Seagate) – DiamondMax, Maxtor Basics externals

  20. SK hynix – Gold S31 (SATA), Gold P31 (NVMe)

  21. Mushkin – Source (SATA), Pilot-E (NVMe)

  22. Patriot – Burst (SATA), Viper VPN100 (NVMe)

  23. Lexar – NS100 (SATA), NM710/NM800 (NVMe)

  24. OWC – Mercury series (SATA/NVMe, Mac-oriented)

  25. Verbatim – Vi7000/NVMe & Vx500/SATA (value SSDs)

What We Recover (Physical, Electronic, Logical & System-Level)

Our engineers handle mechanical failures (head crashes, spindle faults, platter damage), electronics/firmware issues (PCB short, ROM/SA corruption), media degradation (bad sectors, surface wear, NAND wear), logical faults (deletion, format, partition loss, FS damage, encryption), and system issues (not detected, BIOS errors, overheating, failed rebuilds, CCTV/NVR ring-buffer overwrites).

Professional Recovery Process (high level)

  • Diagnostics & Imaging: Stabilise and clone with PC-3000, DeepSpar, Atola (head-map, reverse reads, adaptive timeouts).

  • Firmware & Electronics Repair: ROM transfers, SA module patching, translator rebuilds, donor PCB where required.

  • Mechanical Interventions: Head-stack changes, platter/motor swaps, alignment, followed by controlled imaging.

  • Logical/Data Recovery: File system reconstruction (NTFS, exFAT, APFS, HFS+, EXT, XFS, ReFS), metadata repair, targeted carving.

  • Verification & Delivery: Hash manifests, sample-open of priority files, secure handover.

50 Hard Disk / SSD Faults We Recover — and How We Resolve Them

A. Mechanical (HDD)

  1. Head crash / clicking: Donor HSA swap → ROM/adaptive calibration → per-head imaging (slow zones, soft ECC).

  2. Slider stiction (heads stuck): Controlled release to ramp, brief spin windows, immediate cloning.

  3. Spindle seizure / bearing lock: Platter/hub transplant to matched chassis → full image.

  4. Off-track reads (servo drift): Adjust adaptives/servo gain, reduce seek amplitude, head-select imaging.

  5. Platter surface scoring: Head isolation, read around scar with narrow track profile; accept partials.

  6. Contamination after shock: Internal clean, head swap, staged imaging (outer to inner cylinders).

  7. Parking ramp damage: Mechanical rebuild of ramp/limiters, then conservative imaging.

  8. Deformed top cover (impact): Lid swap, shim calibration to restore flying height, then image.

B. Electronics / Firmware (HDD)

  1. PCB failure / TVS short: Replace TVS/fuse or donor PCB + ROM transfer; verify rails; clone.

  2. Burnt motor driver (SMOOTH/MJ): Donor PCB + ROM; short spin windows; image.

  3. Corrupt ROM adaptives: Reconstruct from SA copies; re-program; initialise to stable state; clone.

  4. Service Area (SA) module corruption: Patch modules (DIR, ATA, overlay), rebuild translator; unlock LBA; image.

  5. Reallocated/pending sector storms: Head-map imaging, high-latency retries, reverse LBA sweeps.

  6. G-list overflow / SMART lockup: Freeze G-list in RAM, temporary disable reallocation, stabilised cloning.

  7. Firmware bug (busy state): Vendor terminal fixes (e.g., Seagate BSY), clear logs, image offline.

C. Media Degradation (HDD)

  1. Bad sector clusters: Multi-pass with adaptive timeouts; read-retry patterns; build error map.

  2. Weak servo wedges: Lower RPM imaging (where supported), reduced seek; head-specific passes.

  3. Thermal asperities: Throttled duty cycles; cooldown cycles; targeted re-reads.

  4. Magnetic decay (old archives): Longer settle times, multiple sample reads, majority voting.

D. SSD / NVMe Specific

  1. Controller failure (no enumerate): Vendor/test-mode access; if removable NAND: chip-off, ECC/XOR, FTL rebuild → LBA export.

  2. FTL/translator corruption: Parse metadata, rebuild L2P map, recover logical space.

  3. NAND wear / high BER: LDPC/BCH soft-decode, Vth read-retry tuning, temperature-assisted reads.

  4. Power-loss during GC/writes: Rebuild mapping table from journal; salvage valid blocks, ignore half-programmed pages.

  5. Trimmed data: Acknowledge trimmed LBAs are gone by design; recover only extents still resident in valid blocks.

  6. SED / Opal encryption: Requires valid keys/passwords; once unlocked, image plaintext device.

  7. NVMe namespace faults: Namespace table rebuild; export LBAs via vendor access.

E. Cables, Bridges, Enclosures

  1. USB-SATA bridge failure (ASM/JMS): Bypass enclosure, direct-attach SATA; or swap bridge PCB (same rev).

  2. Bridge auto-encryption (WD/Samsung portables): Use donor bridge with matching key store; decrypt stream during imaging.

  3. Thunderbolt/FireWire cases: Replace bridge; direct media access; image raw device.

F. Logical / Filesystem

  1. Partition table (MBR/GPT) loss: Signature scan; rebuild GPT/MBR; mount RO; extract.

  2. NTFS $MFT/$MFTMirr corruption: Rebuild from mirror, $LogFile analysis; orphan enumeration; record repair.

  3. EXT4 superblock/journal damage: Use backup superblocks; fsck with journal replay on image copy.

  4. XFS log corruption: xfs_repair with log zero/rollback on clone; recover inodes/dirs.

  5. APFS container issues: Choose healthy checkpoint, rebuild B-trees, extract volumes/snapshots.

  6. HFS+ catalog/extent tree damage: Rebuild catalog B-tree; salvage extents; carve missing.

  7. ExFAT bitmap corruption: Recreate allocation bitmap from directory extents and FAT hints.

G. User / OS Events

  1. Accidental deletion: Metadata-first restore; minimal carving to retain names/timestamps.

  2. Quick/Full format: Deep scan previous FS; reconstruct structures; selective carve for gaps.

  3. BitLocker/FileVault/LUKS volumes: Decrypt with provided key; reconstruct inner FS; if header damaged—use backup headers/wallets.

  4. OS “drive not initialised”: Do not initialise; rebuild partitioning virtually, mount image.

H. System-Level / RAID / Virtual

  1. Drive not recognised in BIOS/UEFI: SA/ROM recovery or head swap; once enumerated through tools, image.

  2. SMART trip / imminent failure: Read-only clone with reduced queue depth; avoid in-OS mounts.

  3. RAID member failed: Clone member; virtually reassemble array; parity/mirror logic to restore volume.

  4. Failed rebuild (NAS/RAID): Image all members; detect rebuild cut-over; parity reconcile; mount volume.

  5. iSCSI/NAS LUN corruption: After array reconstruction, mount LUN images; recover inner FS/VMs.

  6. VM disk (VMDK/VHDX) corruption: Treat as raw image; repair container map; mount guest FS to extract data.

I. Power / Environment / Security

  1. Power surge / brownout: Replace TVS/regulators; clone; fix FS inconsistencies caused by partial writes.

  2. Overheating throttling / thermal shutdown: Staged imaging with controlled temp and duty cycle.

  3. Malware/ransomware on drive: Clean imaging; recover clean shadow/previous versions; decrypt where feasible with keys.

  4. CCTV/NVR overwritten data: Recover segments from ring buffer (H.264/H.265 GOP carving), prioritise unallocated tails; overwritten frames are unrecoverable—we maximise intact spans and rebuild playable clips.

Why Choose Liverpool Data Recovery

  • 25 years in business; thousands of successful recoveries across HDDs, SSDs and arrays

  • Multi-vendor expertise from consumer portables to enterprise SAS/NVMe

  • Advanced tooling (PC-3000, DeepSpar, Atola) and extensive donor/parts inventory

  • Free diagnostics with transparent options and engineer-to-engineer communication

Send-in / Drop-off

Place the drive in an anti-static bag inside a small padded box or envelope with your contact details and a brief fault description. Post or drop off in person—both accepted. Tell us your highest-priority folders/files so we can validate them first.

Ready to start? Contact Liverpool Data Recovery for free diagnostics today.

Contact Us

Tell us about your issue and we'll get back to you.

Richard Chester, Preston

Liverpool Data Recovery saved me from a huge bill and from a sleepless night! My External Hard Drive packed up with all my backups. It never occurred to me to back up my back ups, so there you go. Decades of music and photo’s lost. I simply had to pop the HDD in the post, and in under a week I pretty much all my files recovered and on a USB stick. Thank you Anthony and Liverpool Data Recovery.

Richard Chester, Preston

Mark Bolton, Southport

Tony and the rest of the Liverpool Data Recovery team did an excellent job of recovering data that was considered to be unrecoverable by 4 other companies.

Mark Bolton, Southport

Emmanuel Johnson, St Helens

Thanks for the hard drive recovery! The charity organisation (Oxfam) is very pleased with the quick turn around and service provided.

Emmanuel Johnson, St Helens

Luke Watts, Bootle

I am happy to report that you have been able to recover all of my missing and deleted data.

Luke Watts, Bootle

Andrew Nolan, Sefton

Many thanks to Liverpool Data Recovery and your data recovery engineers on the recent recovery of the HP RAID-5 data belonging to our client.

Andrew Nolan, Sefton

Ian Wilcox, Wirral

Great result guys. You truly delivered as promised. I got a no way to recover my files anywhere else. But you guys recovered the data for me.

Ian Wilcox, Wirral

Christian Donelon, Wigan

Thank you very much for your help. You recovered 100% of our precious data. It’s been a pleasure to deal with yourselves.

Christian Donelon, Wigan

Susan Byrne, Blackpool

Liverpool Data Recovery saved the data on a sd card recovery after our camera fell into the bath (don’t ask!). Of course the camera was covered by insurance, but I lost all the pictures of my new baby. I pinned my hopes on a free data recovery software but it didn’t work so I considered some things are worth more than money. I cannot explain the joy at getting a USD stick with all my precious photos back.

Susan Byrne, Blackpool

Elliot Budd, Chester

Gutted when my PC crashed and of course all my backups were outdated. Liverpool Data Recovery talked me through the easy steps, and back it came a few days later with all files recovered. Boss service.

Elliot Budd, Chester