Do not give up on the drive yet
A clicky hard drive, a phone that will not turn on, an SD card that suddenly asks to be formatted — these are stressful, but they are also everyday bench work for us. Power down the device if it is making mechanical noises, and bring it in before more writes damage the remaining data.
We recover from spinning hard drives, SSDs, USB sticks, camera cards, and many phones and tablets. Success depends on the failure mode, but we are honest up front about what is realistic.
Common failure modes we see
Physical damage — drops, water, bent connectors, and cards that were forced into the wrong slot
File system corruption — the OS can no longer see folders even though the chips still hold bits
Accidental deletion and quick formats — often recoverable if you stop using the device immediately
Failed boot drives — the computer will not start, but the data volume may still be readable in our shop
Recovery, then prevention
Getting files back is only half the story. After a recovery we can copy your data to fresh media, set up a simple backup you will actually use, or design redundancy for a small business that cannot afford another outage.
We assume parts will fail. Backups, spare storage, and a plan for “the drive dies on Friday” are how you sleep at night — and we will help you build that without jargon.