Lost photos, documents or files? Don't panic — I can often recover data from failing or damaged drives.
Losing important files is stressful — especially family photos, work documents, or years of memories. But in many cases, data that seems lost can actually be recovered. The key is acting quickly and not making things worse.
I recover data from failing hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, and memory cards. Whether you've accidentally deleted files, your drive has stopped being recognised, or you've formatted something by mistake, there's often a good chance of getting your data back.
The most important thing you can do is stop using the affected drive immediately. Every time you write new data to it, you reduce the chances of recovery. Turn the computer off, don't try to reinstall Windows on it, and get in touch.
For logical failures — accidental deletion, corruption, formatting — I can usually recover files at a fraction of what clean room data recovery services charge. If the drive has a physical fault that's beyond what I can handle, I'll tell you honestly and point you in the right direction.
Emptied the recycle bin or shift-deleted something important? If you act fast and haven't written new data, recovery is usually possible.
Hard drive making clicking noises or not showing up in Windows? This could be a mechanical failure — but data can often still be recovered.
Accidentally formatted the wrong drive or partition? The data is usually still there — formatting just clears the index, not the actual files.
If your PC won't start but you need files off it, I can pull the drive and recover your data even if Windows is completely broken.
USB stick or SD card asking to be formatted, or showing as empty? Corruption is common and data can often be recovered.
Deleted photos from a camera, phone, or computer? Photo recovery is one of the most successful types of data recovery — always worth trying.
Most people picture data recovery as some kind of magic — a technician opens the drive up, pulls the files off, hands them back. The reality is more nuanced, and understanding the basics helps you make better decisions when something goes wrong. There are two broad categories of failure, and they need completely different approaches.
Logical failures are the most common, and the good news is they're also the most recoverable. The data is still physically present on the drive — on the spinning platters of a mechanical disk, or in the NAND chips of an SSD. What's broken is the map. The file allocation table has been corrupted, the partition has gone missing, or the files have been "deleted" — which sounds final but actually just removes the pointer telling Windows where the file lives. The file itself sits there until something else writes over it. Specialist recovery software can rebuild the file system, scan the raw sectors, and pull the data off intact. This is the bulk of what I do, and the success rate on logical failures caught early is genuinely high.
Physical failures are harder. A clicking noise usually means the read head has crashed onto the platter, or the platters themselves are scored. A drive that won't spin up at all may have a dead motor or a fried circuit board. In some cases I can image the drive — make a sector-by-sector copy onto a healthy disk — even if it's struggling, which buys time and gets the data off before things get worse. But true clean-room work, where a drive is opened in a dust-free environment and the read heads are physically swapped, is beyond what any local technician can do. That kind of recovery costs £500 to £2,000 and only a handful of UK labs do it properly.
SSDs add another wrinkle. Modern SSDs use a feature called TRIM, which actively erases deleted data in the background to keep the drive performing well. That's great for speed but terrible for recovery — on an SSD with TRIM, deleted files can become genuinely unrecoverable within hours. If you've lost something off an SSD, every minute counts.
I'll always have a proper look first and tell you honestly what I think the chances are. If the drive needs a clean room, I'll say so rather than charge you for an attempt I know won't work.
The single biggest factor in whether your data comes back is what happens in the first few hours after you realise it's gone. Every time a failing mechanical drive spins up, the damaged head drags across the platter and risks turning a recoverable problem into a catastrophic one. Every write to an SSD with TRIM enabled is potentially overwriting the very data you're trying to save. The drive doesn't know which sectors matter to you.
The mistakes I see most often, in order of how much they hurt: trying to reinstall Windows on the affected drive (this overwrites the file table immediately), running chkdsk repeatedly hoping it'll "fix" things (chkdsk can mark recoverable sectors as bad and make them genuinely unreadable), and copying gigabytes of data onto the drive trying to rescue files manually without the right tools.
The right move is the simplest one. Power the machine off at the wall. Don't plug the drive back in. Don't try one more reboot to see if it works this time. Get in touch and bring it over, or I'll come and collect it. If the drive is still mostly readable and the failure is purely logical, I can sometimes work remotely over a secure connection — saves you a trip and gets things moving the same evening.
Data recovery is the one job where I'd genuinely rather you didn't wait for a convenient evening callout. The longer a failing drive sits, especially if it's been knocked or dropped, the worse the odds get. Most people drop the drive off at the workshop in Laffak — it's quick, straightforward, and means I can get started on it the same evening rather than waiting for a slot in my diary.
If dropping off isn't practical I can collect, and I cover the whole local area for that — Haydock, Newton-le-Willows, Billinge, Rainhill, Eccleston, Prescot, Rainford, Sutton, Thatto Heath, Parr and the rest of St Helens. For data recovery specifically I try to fit collections in fast rather than scheduling them for the next available evening, because every day a failing drive sits unused is a day the situation can get worse. A short drive across town today is worth far more than a perfectly timed callout next week.
Once the drive is with me I'll have a quick look that same evening, give you an honest assessment of what I'm seeing, and only push ahead with a full recovery attempt once you've agreed. No surprise bills, no work done without your say-so.
Honestly, it depends entirely on what's gone wrong. For accidentally deleted files where you've stopped using the drive straight away, the chances are very high — often 90% or better. For a formatted drive with no new data written over it, similar story. For a mechanical drive making clicking noises, it's a coin flip and it depends how bad the damage is. For an SSD where TRIM has been running for hours since the deletion, chances drop fast. I'll have a proper look and tell you what I genuinely think before charging for a full attempt.
For straightforward logical recovery — deleted files, formatted drives, corrupted partitions — I keep prices well below what specialist labs charge. We're talking tens of pounds rather than hundreds. If the drive needs clean room work I can't do, I'll tell you honestly so you can decide whether the £500–£2,000 a proper recovery lab charges is worth it. For most people the data isn't worth thousands, and that's a perfectly fair conclusion to reach. I'd rather you make that decision with the real numbers in front of you.
Not necessarily, but it's serious and you need to stop using it now. Clicking usually means the read head is hitting something it shouldn't — either the parking ramp because the drive can't initialise properly, or worse, the platter itself. Sometimes the drive will still cooperate long enough for me to image it onto a healthy disk and pull the files off that copy. Sometimes it's already too far gone for anything other than a clean room. Either way, every spin-up makes it worse, so power it off and bring it over.
Usually yes. If the laptop itself is dead but the drive inside it is fine, I can pull the drive out and read the files off it directly using my own equipment. That covers a lot of "my laptop died and I need the photos" situations. If the drive itself has failed at the same time, then it becomes a recovery job rather than a simple file transfer — but I'll know which one I'm dealing with within an hour of looking at it.
Three things, in order of importance. First, an external backup drive that you actually plug in regularly — once a month is better than never. Second, a cloud backup for the irreplaceable stuff like photos: OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, whichever you already use. Third, don't keep important files only on a USB stick or memory card — they're convenient but they fail without warning. The rule I follow personally is that if losing a file would genuinely upset me, it lives in at least two places. Happy to set proper backups up for you if you want a hand getting started.
Stop using the drive and get in touch. The sooner you act, the better the chances of recovery.