Anatomy of a Hard Drive

Anatomy of a Hard Drive

Why did my Hard Drive Fail?

Why did my Hard Drive Fail?

A-Z of Data Recovery

A-Z of Data Recovery

Send Us a Drive

Send Us Your Drive

Data Recovery Guides

Data Recovery Guide

Data Recovery Guide Volumn 2

External Hard Drive Recovery

Since 2007, Drive Rescue (Dublin) has been recovering external hard disks for our customers throughout Ireland with excellent success rates. We recover from corrupt or failed external hard disks which are no longer being recognised by your PC or Mac. Even if your external disk is making a clicking, beeping or buzzing noise, or is totally dead - we can help you recover its data.

Our data recovery service caters for most 2.5” and 3.5” external (rotational and SSD) drives which use USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, USB-C and Thunderbolt connections. We recover from disks of most sizes, including 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB (1000GB), 2TB, 3TB and 4TB. (We also retrieve data from larger RAID-based external disk models such as WD MyCloud, LaCie ThunderBolt and G-RAID.

  • Toshiba Canvio or Stor E (DTB305, DTB310, DTB410, V63600-C, V63700)

  • Seagate (Basic, Expansion, Backup Plus, Free Agent, OneTouch SSD)

  • WD (Elements, My Passport, My Book, My Cloud)

  • Verbatim (53021, 53023, 53029, 53071)

  • Adata (HD330, HD650, HD680, HD710, HD720, HD770)

  • LaCie (Rugged USB 3.0, Rugged Mini, Rugged USB-C, Rugged Thunderbolt and Porsche Design, Mobile SSD)

  • Maxtor M3 USB Portable 2.5”

  • Samsung M3 Portable (HX-M101TCB/G, HX-M201TCB) and Samsung T5 and T7 SSD.

  • Transcend Storejet (25M3, 25H3, 25A3, 25C3S, 35T3) and Transcend JetDrive (520,720,820,855)

  • G-Technology (G-Drive, G-Drive Mobile, G-RAID)

  • ClearCrypt (Secure HDD)

  • Hitachi Touro (Touro Mobile and Touro S)

  • Iomega External Disk (RPHD-U and LPHD-UP)

  • Intenso 2.5” Memory Case

We recover from external disks formatted for use with Windows, Apple and Linux file systems.

We have extensive experience of successfully recovering data from Windows formatted (e.g. NTFS and exFAT) and Apple formatted (HFS+ and APFS), as well as Linux (EXT3/4, XFS) formatted external disks.

There is a multitude of incidents which can result in the data stored on your external drive becoming corrupt or inaccessible. Typical data loss scenarios we recover from include:

  • External disks which have fallen or which have dropped accidentally and are now making a beeping, clicking, grinding or buzzing sound.

  • Your external disk has stopped being recognised by your PC or Mac for no apparent reason.

  • You have accidentally formatted your USB external drive with a new partition. (e.g. NTFS, exFAT, HFS+ or APFS)

  • Spilt liquid events - where water, coffee, tea or beer has been spilt on your external drive resulting in your drive’s data becoming inaccessible or has resulted in your drive failing to turn on.

  • The USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB-C or ThunderBolt connection port on your drive appears to be loose or physically damaged.

  • Your disk does not show up (drive letter not showing up) in Windows Explorer or in MacOS Finder. Or, your external hard disk appears as “unallocated” in Windows’ Disk Management.

  • Your 2.5” or 3.5” external disk seems to have experienced a power surge after having been connected to a device such as a smart TV, PC or DVR.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you recovery data from encrypted external disks?

Even if your external hard disk is encrypted with an application such as BitLocker, VeraCrypt, FileVault or uses hardware encryption (such as ClearCrypt), data recovery is still possible. We have extensive experience of recovering from encrypted portable and 3.5” disks. (However, you will need to provide us with a valid encryption key)

What is the best data recovery software to recover data from a non-working external hard drive?

Unfortunately, there is no “best data recovery software” for retrieving data from external hard disks. If you have accidentally deleted files from your (Seagate, Toshiba, Adata etc.) USB external disk, you could try a data recovery application such as Recuva. But it is important to remember that data recovery software is designed to work with healthy drives. For users with external disks which are not reading properly, not being recognised by a computer or for disks which are clicking, data recovery software will often cause more harm than good. This is because such software forces the disk-heads to perform read-read retries. And if your disk is already damaged or malfunctioning, this is the equivalent of torture for your disk. Professional data recovery companies such as Drive Rescue invest considerable resources in equipment and skills to handle such disks the correct way. This maximises your probability of getting all your important business files, work projects or photos back.

I don’t need data recovery. I just need my (WD, Transcend, LaCie etc.) external hard drive fixed?

In most cases, external hard drive repair and data recovery are more or less the same thing. As data recovery professionals, we need to repair your disk before we can access its data. Of course, we can repair disk connectors such as USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB-C, RJ-45 and ThunderBolt but in a lot of these cases, a damaged connector is often indicative of other internal damage (esp. if the drive has taken a fall).

Common error messages generated by failing or failed external hard disks.

“A disk read error occurred”

“The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable”

“F: \ is not accessible. Data error (cyclic redundancy check)”

“The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error”

“MacOS can’t repair the disk [your disk model here]”