An HP Pavilion started clicking intermittently and then wouldn't boot, one of its drive's read-write heads having failed. A modern drive has several heads, and losing one doesn't lose everything. We imaged the surfaces the good heads could still reach, then replaced the failed head to recover the rest.
The Pavilion had been clicking on and off before it finally refused to boot, taking a family's photos and documents with it. There was no backup. Intermittent clicking that becomes constant is a sign of a head problem developing, and every attempt to boot a drive in that state risks spreading the damage — so the machine was shut down and the drive brought in rather than being run repeatedly.
A hard drive stores data on a stack of platters, each surface served by its own read-write head. Those heads are wired together as an assembly, but they don't all fail at once — often a single head degrades or crashes while the others still work. When that happens the surfaces served by the good heads can still be read, while the data on the failed head's surface is temporarily out of reach until the head is replaced. Recognising a single-head failure — rather than treating the whole drive as dead — shapes the safest recovery.
In controlled clean-air conditions the drive was assessed and the failed head identified. The strategy was to secure what could be read before any physical work: the healthy heads were used to image their surfaces first, so the bulk of the data was safely captured while the drive was still turning. Only then was the risk of a head swap introduced.
With the good surfaces imaged, the failed head was replaced with a matched donor part, restoring access to the remaining surface. The drive was then imaged again to capture the previously unreachable data, and the two sets of reads combined into a complete image. Working from that image, the file system was rebuilt and the photos and documents extracted with their names and folders intact.
Files were opened across the recovered set to confirm they were usable, then returned on fresh media. About 98% came back, the small remainder tied to the worst of the damage on the failed head's surface. A drive that clicks even occasionally is warning you — backing up at the first sign, and stopping use, is what keeps a single-head fault from becoming a total loss.
Clean-air head-stack replacement with matched donor parts · by-head adaptive imaging · file-system reconstruction. Physical work and imaging carried out in-house in Belfast.
Send it to us for a free, no-obligation diagnostic. We’ll tell you what can be recovered and put a fixed price in writing before any work starts — and on most jobs, if we can’t get your data back, there’s nothing to pay. Post your device in, or drop it to us by appointment.
Very possibly. Intermittent clicking often means a head is starting to fail. Back up anything important immediately and stop using the drive — if it fails, a single-head fault is usually very recoverable when handled properly.
Frequently, yes — and often almost completely. The surfaces served by healthy heads are read first, then the failed head is replaced to reach the rest. It's routine physical recovery work for us.
Single-drive physical recoveries start from £300 plus VAT, with a fixed written quote after a free diagnostic. Physical work carries a deposit toward donor parts and bench time, with the balance due only on success.