IDE and PATA hard drive recovery

The wide grey ribbon cable era: desktop and laptop drives from 1996 to about 2007.

Ask about data recovery Call 020 7237 6805

About these devices

IDE, later called PATA, was the standard hard drive connection in home and office computers until SATA replaced it. Capacities ran from a few hundred megabytes to 500GB. Nothing sold today connects to these drives directly.

They are also at the age where mechanical faults are the norm. Heads stick to the platters after long storage, spindle bearings dry out, and some model lines had well-known weaknesses of their own.

How these drives fail

Stiction

The heads have stuck to the platter surface. The drive hums or buzzes and does not spin. Forcing it tears the heads off.

Failed electronics

Controller chips on some model lines failed in large numbers. The board is repaired or replaced, with its drive-specific data transferred.

Bad sectors and weak heads

The drive is detected but reads slowly or stops. It is copied under PC-3000 control, working around the damage.

Firmware faults

The drive reports the wrong model name or size, or stays busy. The firmware is repaired before copying.

Data on these drives is typically stored as FAT16, FAT32, early NTFS or Mac HFS, and all of these are recovered. File formats are another matter: we recover the files, and can advise on opening old document types.

Sending older storage

Do not power it up "to see if it still works". Old drives often have one start left in them.
Send any cables, power supplies, enclosures or cartridges that belong with it.
Tell us what computer and system it was used with: Windows 98, Mac OS 9, a server, a camera.
If there are several disks or drives, number them and keep them in order.

Recovery starts with a professional evaluation, charged at £94.80. It tells you what has failed and what can be recovered, and you then receive a fixed price for the recovery itself.

We collect drives and devices by insured courier from anywhere in the UK, or you can post yours tracked and insured, or bring it to the workshop in London SE1. See how to send a drive safely.

Common questions

The drive worked ten years ago. Will it still work?

It may, but do not test it yourself. If the heads have stuck, the first attempt to spin it does the damage.

Can data be recovered from a drive that was in a Windows 95 or 98 PC?

Yes. The file systems of that period are fully supported.

Get a price from a technician

Tell us the make, the model and what has gone wrong. A technician replies with a price and the quickest way to get your laptop to us – normally the same working day.

020 7237 6805

Creative IT workshop
Unit 1, 80 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SY
Monday to Saturday, 9am–6pm