Data Recovery Portsmouth — Hard Drives, SSDs, RAID, SD Cards & Flash

There is a fixed £20 non-refundable diagnostic fee for all devices — this covers the expert inspection. In-house recovery (which covers the majority of cases including deleted files, SSD faults, corrupted drives, and SD cards) starts from £69.95. For mechanically failed hard drives requiring cleanroom recovery, there is an additional £80 dispatch fee followed by a specialist quote based on the file listing. You always know the full cost before you commit to anything.

The £20 diagnostic fee is non-refundable. It is the cost of having one of our engineers professionally assess your device — identifying the exact fault type, confirming whether recovery is feasible, and determining whether it can be handled in-house or requires specialist cleanroom recovery. This fee is charged regardless of the outcome of the assessment. You will always receive a clear written explanation of what we found before any further costs are discussed.

No. If we attempt in-house recovery and it is unsuccessful, you will not be charged for the recovery attempt itself — only the £20 diagnostic fee. The vast majority of recoveries are completed in-house, so this scenario is uncommon, but our commitment is clear: if we can't get your data back in-house, we don't charge you for trying.

If the diagnostic confirms your hard drive has a mechanical failure requiring a dust-controlled cleanroom environment, we will explain this clearly. There is then an £80 preparation and dispatch fee to have your drive professionally processed and sent to our specialist cleanroom partner. Once the cleanroom team has worked on your drive, you will receive a full listing of every recoverable file — you can review exactly what data is available before committing to the full recovery. If you cannot find the files you need in the listing, we can request a rescan of the drive to attempt to locate additional data. You only approve the final recovery quote — and only pay the specialist fee — when you are satisfied with what is recoverable.

Stop using it immediately and do not power it on again. Clicking and grinding are signs of mechanical failure — the read/write heads have typically failed and are making contact with the magnetic platters. Every additional power cycle causes further physical damage to the platter surface, which holds your data. Do not run data recovery software on a clicking drive — this accelerates the damage. Bring it to us at our Portsmouth office as soon as possible. Mechanical recovery is still achievable in many cases, but time and further power cycles are your enemies.

Yes, in most cases. A drive not being detected can indicate several different fault types — a failed PCB (circuit board), firmware corruption, electronic component failure, or in the case of an SSD, a failed controller chip. Most of these faults can be addressed in-house using specialist hardware. The £20 diagnostic will identify exactly which type of fault is preventing detection and confirm the recovery path.

Probably not — but stop using the drive immediately. When you delete a file or format a drive, the data is not instantly destroyed. The operating system marks the space as available for new data, but the original data remains until it is overwritten. The more you continue to use the drive after deletion or formatting, the higher the chance of new data overwriting what you need. Bring it to us as soon as possible — the sooner we see it, the better the recovery chances. Logical recoveries like this are among our most successful and typically handled entirely in-house from £69.95.

Often yes — but the single most important rule is: do not power the device on after water damage. Water itself does not destroy stored data, but powering on a wet device causes electrical short circuits that can destroy components permanently. If your device has been water damaged: remove the battery if possible, do not use a hairdryer or apply heat, seal it in a bag, and bring it to us immediately. We assess water-damaged hard drives, SSDs, laptops, phones, tablets, USB drives and SD cards.

Yes. SSD failures are entirely electronic — there are no moving parts, so failures are caused by controller failure, firmware corruption, power surges, NAND wear, or electrical component failure. Unlike hard drives, SSDs often fail without warning. Recovery typically involves bypassing the failed controller to access the raw NAND flash chips that actually store your data. This is specialist work requiring dedicated SSD recovery hardware, and it is handled entirely in-house from £69.95. We recover SATA SSDs, M.2 NVMe, M.2 SATA, and MacBook SSDs.

Yes. SD cards, microSD cards, CompactFlash, XQD, CFexpress and USB flash drives all store data on NAND flash chips and fail in similar ways to SSDs — accidental deletion, accidental format, file system corruption, physical damage to the connector, or NAND wear. We recover from all of these scenarios. For physically broken cards or drives (a snapped SD card, a damaged USB connector), chip-level recovery techniques allow us to access the data directly from the NAND chips even when the device cannot be plugged in normally.

Photos are among the most common and most important files we recover — and one of the things our engineers care most about getting right. JPEG, RAW, PNG, video files (MP4, MOV, AVI) are all recoverable from healthy to severely damaged media in the right circumstances. Stop using the device immediately, do not take any new photos on the card or overwrite any data, and bring it to us. The sooner we see it, the better your chances. We will always tell you honestly what is and isn't recoverable before you commit to any cost.

It depends on the specific ransomware strain and whether the original files still exist on the drive alongside the encrypted versions. Some ransomware variants delete the originals before encrypting — others do not, meaning the unencrypted originals may still be present on the drive and recoverable using logical recovery techniques. We assess ransomware-affected drives as part of our standard diagnostic. We do not pay ransom demands on your behalf, but we will tell you honestly whether independent recovery without the decryption key is feasible in your specific case.

In-house recovery uses specialist hardware and software to recover data without physically opening the storage device. This covers logical faults (deleted files, corrupted file systems, formatted drives), firmware and electronic faults on hard drives, and all SSD, SD card and flash storage failures — the vast majority of cases we see. Cleanroom recovery is specifically for mechanically failed hard drives where the internal components need to be physically accessed. Hard drive platters spin at thousands of RPM with heads floating nanometres above the surface — even a single speck of dust can cause catastrophic damage if the drive is opened in a normal environment. Cleanroom facilities maintain a dust-controlled environment to allow safe physical disassembly and component replacement.

In-house logical and electronic recovery is typically completed within 1–3 working days from drop-off. The diagnostic assessment itself is usually same-day or next-day. Cleanroom recovery takes longer — typically 5–10 working days from the point of dispatch, depending on the complexity of the mechanical fault. Emergency priority service is available for business-critical situations — call us directly to discuss turnaround requirements and we will do our best to accommodate.

Yes. We accept postal drop-offs from customers across Hampshire and beyond. Call us on 02392 733 174 before sending — we will advise on safe packaging to prevent further damage in transit (particularly important for mechanically failing hard drives). For clicking or otherwise physically damaged drives, we strongly recommend hand-delivering rather than posting wherever possible, as transit vibration can worsen mechanical damage. Once we have received and assessed your device, we communicate by phone or email with our findings and quote before doing anything further.