Is your hard drive making noise, no longer recognised, or has it been dropped? Our technicians work in an ISO 5 cleanroom.
SOS-DISQUE has an office in Paris. Technical work is carried out by a specialist partner laboratory in Romania, using our shipping service. We do not offer in-person drop-off or cleanroom visits.
Each symptom has a specific cause. Identifying the problem is the first step towards recovery.
Repeated clicking signals a read-head problem. The arm tries to position itself, fails and starts again. Each click worsens the damage.
Understand the clicking What should you do if your drive clicks?Your computer no longer detects the drive? Electronic failure, corrupted firmware or mechanical damage may be involved. Diagnosis identifies the exact cause.
Causes and solutions Drive not recognised: complete guideA physical impact can displace the read heads and damage the platters. Opening the drive in a cleanroom is essential.
The impact of a drop Dropped hard drive: what to doAn unusually slow drive often indicates bad sectors or deteriorating read heads. The fault is progressing.
Warning signsA power surge or poor contact? The PCB may be damaged. Replacement alone is not enough: firmware is unique to each drive.
Electronic failureDeleted data or a partition formatted by mistake? Files are often recoverable as long as the drive has not been overwritten.
Recovery may be possible Accidental formatting: what should you do?A rigorous process in our partner laboratory's ISO 5 cleanroom
Initial online assessment within one hour. New cases: O, A, B and B+ have €30 initial postage and no investigation fee; C and C+ have €130 initial investigation. The initial amount is deducted once from the recovery price on success and retained on failure; no recovery balance is due on failure.
Opening the drive in an ISO 5 environment. Read-head replacement if needed, firmware repair and sector-by-sector imaging.
Your data is copied to a healthy device and returned through secure cloud storage or on a physical device. Balance payable only if recovery succeeds.
A hard drive contains platters spinning at 7,200 rpm. Its read heads fly over these platters at a distance of less than 10 nanometres , around 5,000 times smaller than a human hair.
A single dust particle can cause a head crash and irreversibly scratch the platters. This is why hard drives should be opened in an ISO 5 environment.
Our partner laboratory uses professional equipment:
Every wrong action reduces the chances of recovery
Testdisk, Recuva, EaseUS... These tools write to the drive and worsen mechanical faults.
Why this is dangerousA scan forces the read heads across the entire drive, including damaged areas.
The risks of scanningDIY videos leave out the environmental requirements. Opening a drive can destroy it.
Why tutorials can misleadNew cases: O, A, B and B+ have €30 initial postage and no investigation fee; C and C+ have €130 initial investigation. The initial amount is deducted once from the recovery price on success and retained on failure; no recovery balance is due on failure.View our prices
Yes, this is a sign of mechanical read-head failure. Switch the drive off immediately and do not reconnect it. Each click worsens the damage. Learn more
All brands: Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi/HGST, Samsung, Maxtor. Internal, external and portable drives. Our spare-parts stock covers all common models.
New cases: O, A, B and B+ have €30 initial postage and no investigation fee; C and C+ have €130 initial investigation. The initial amount is deducted once from the recovery price on success and retained on failure; no recovery balance is due on failure.View our prices
The initial online assessment is within one hour; the laboratory investigation timescale is confirmed after receipt. Recovery itself depends on the fault and takes 2 to 10 days on average. We keep you informed at every stage.
Initial online assessment within one hour. New cases: O, A, B and B+ have €30 initial postage and no investigation fee; C and C+ have €130 initial investigation. The initial amount is deducted once from the recovery price on success and retained on failure; no recovery balance is due on failure.