Norwich Data Recovery – Norwich’s No.1 Hard-Disk & SSD Specialists (25+ Years)

We deliver forensically-safe, image-first data recovery for failed HDDs, SSDs, NAS/DAS and external drives used by consumers, SMB, and enterprise. Tooling includes PC-3000, DeepSpar, Atola, vendor NVMe utilities, and in-house firmware/FTL parsers. We never write to your original device—all work is performed on hardware clones and controlled images.

Manufacturers we support (with representative models we frequently see)

(Representative of UK lab intake; not a sales ranking)

1. Seagate — BarraCuda, IronWolf/Pro, SkyHawk, Exos

2. Western Digital (WD) — Blue, Black, Red/Red Pro, Purple, Ultrastar DC

3. Toshiba — P300/X300, N300, MG-Series

4. Samsung — 860/870 EVO (SATA), 980/990 PRO (NVMe), T5/T7/T9 (portable)

5. HGST — Ultrastar He/7K (enterprise legacy)

6. Crucial (Micron) — MX500/BX500 (SATA), P3/P5/P5 Plus (NVMe)

7. SanDisk — Ultra/Extreme SATA, Extreme/Extreme Pro Portable SSD

8. Kingston — A400/KC600 (SATA), NV2/KC3000 (NVMe)

9. ADATA/XPG — SU800 (SATA), SX8200 Pro/S70 Blade (NVMe)

10. Corsair — MP510/MP600 (NVMe)

11. Intel (legacy) — 660p/670p (NVMe), S35x0/S37x0 (SATA enterprise)

12. Sabrent — Rocket 4/4 Plus/5 (NVMe), Rocket Nano (portable)

13. PNY — CS900 (SATA), CS2140/CS3140 (NVMe)

14. TeamGroup — GX2 (SATA), MP34/Cardea A440 (NVMe)

15. LaCie — Rugged/Mobile/d2 (Seagate internals)

16. Transcend — SSD230S (SATA), MTE220S (NVMe), StoreJet (externals)

17. SK hynix — Gold S31 (SATA), Gold P31/Platinum P41 (NVMe)

18. Lexar — NS100 (SATA), NM710/NM790 (NVMe)

19. OWC — Mercury (SATA), Envoy Pro (TB/USB-C NVMe)

20. Silicon Power — A55 (SATA), UD90 (NVMe)

Interfaces & form factors we recover

• SATA I/II/III (2.5″/3.5″ HDD & SATA SSD), eSATA

• PATA/IDE (3.5″ & 2.5″ incl. ZIF/LIF ribbon)

• SAS 3/6/12 Gb/s; Parallel SCSI (Ultra160/Ultra320)

• NVMe/PCIe: M.2 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 (B/M/M-key), U.2/U.3 (SFF-8639), AIC (HHHL)

• External/legacy buses: USB 2/3 BOT & UASP, USB-C, Thunderbolt 2/3/4, FireWire 400/800

• mSATA, micro-SATA, and Fibre-Channel HDDs via bridges

What goes wrong—and how we fix it (lab-grade detail)

Below are the common faults we see, how we diagnose them, and the exact recovery path we use. All diagnostics are non-destructive; cloning is hardware-assisted with persistent error maps.

1) Mechanical issues (HDD)

Problems: head crash/clicking, stiction (heads stuck), spindle/motor seizure, platter surface damage.
Diagnosis: acoustic & current signatures, spin-up telemetry, head-map read tests, SA access, microscope inspection if opened.
Resolution:

• Head-stack replacement (HSA): matched donor (microcode/DCM/head map), head-comb swap, ROM/adaptives verification, then per-head zoned imaging with conservative seek amplitude and reverse passes.

• Stiction release: controlled disengagement to ramp, immediate low-duty clone to avoid re-adhesion.

• Spindle seizure: platter-stack transplant to a donor base using concentric locking jigs (servo alignment preserved); original PCB/ROM retained; image.

• Media scoring: short-window reads around scars, prioritise metadata LBAs (boot/MFT/superblocks) and client priority folders; never force remap on patient.

2) Electronics & firmware (HDD)

Problems: PCB/TVS/motor driver burn, preamp bias faults, SA module/translator corruption, SMR latency storms, USB-native bridge quirks.
Diagnosis: rail integrity, TVS diode tests, ROM dump, SA module read, terminal logs, NCQ error analysis.
Resolution:

• PCB donor + ROM/NVRAM transfer; preamp tests before full spin.

• SA repair/translator rebuild (P/G-lists), restore LBA access, then clone.

• SMR drives: disable background relocation, QD=1 sequential imaging, zone-aware strategy.

• USB-native with hardware encryption (WD/SanDisk): retain original bridge for on-the-fly decryption; if bridge dead, transplant identical crypto revision.

3) Media degradation (HDD)

Problems: bad-sector clusters, weak servo, aging magnetic decay.
Diagnosis: error heat-maps, rising UNC/pending counts, unstable head performance.
Resolution: multi-pass cloning (fast good-area sweep → reverse → targeted retries over metadata), adaptive timeouts, head-select imaging; gaps left as is (no writes to patient).

4) SSD/NVMe & flash faults

Problems: no-enumerate controllers, corrupt FTL (translator), worn NAND (high BER), power-loss during GC/journals, SED/OPAL encryption.
Diagnosis: vendor/test modes, SMART/NVMe logs, controller UART where available, NAND ID & layout discovery, ECC parity checks.
Resolution:

• Vendor/test-mode export; if removable NAND: chip-off → ECC/BCH/LDPC soft-decode, XOR/interleave, FTL/L2P rebuild → logical LBA image.

• Read-retry voltage curves, temperature tuning, majority-vote reads for worn NAND.

• OPAL/BitLocker: decrypt on the image with keys/PSID; then repair inner filesystem.

• TRIM note: TRIMmed and re-used LBAs are unrecoverable on modern SSDs.

5) Logical faults (any media)

Problems: accidental deletion, quick format, partition loss, unsupported/changed filesystems, encryption/key issues.
Diagnosis: sector-level scan for signatures, boot/VBR checks, secondary headers (GPT/APFS), journal analysis.
Resolution:

• NTFS: rebuild $MFT from $MFTMirr, replay $LogFile, fix indexes; minimal carving to keep filenames/timestamps.

• exFAT: rebuild allocation from directory chains; regenerate upcase table.

• APFS/HFS+: choose healthy checkpoint (TXID); rebuild B-trees & spacemaps.

• EXT/XFS/Btrfs: fsck/xfs_repair/btrfs tree rebuilds run only on images.

• ReFS: salvage object/stream maps; export valid streams.

• Encryption: preserve original bridge (if hardware crypto); for software crypto recover via keys, escrow, or pass-through.

6) Software-level / system issues

Problems: not recognised in OS/BIOS, overheating resets, bad USB/UASP behavior, DVR/CCTV overwrites, failed RAID/NAS rebuilds.
Diagnosis: bus-level enumeration (USB BOT/UASP), controller logs, temperature/thermal throttling, mdadm/Storage Spaces metadata, DVR FS identification.
Resolution:

• Not recognised/BIOS errors: restore SA/ROM/translator (HDD) or vendor mode (SSD), then image via native bus.

• Overheating/instability: bench PSU, thermal management, reduced queue depth, duty-cycled reads.

• USB/UASP flaps: force BOT mode/USB2 readers; stabilise link; or bypass bridge to native SATA/NVMe while retaining decryption path if required.

• RAID/NAS: clone every member, reconstruct geometry (order/chunk/parity/mirror) off-host, fix FS on array image (see below).

• CCTV/DVR: cyclic buffers overwrite oldest footage—overwritten data cannot be recovered; we decode proprietary DVR filesystems, rebuild clip indexes, and carve non-overwritten spans and exported containers (e.g., synthesise MP4/MOV moov atoms).

Professional Recovery Process

1. Stabilise & Triage — Identify device/firmware, capture SMART/NVMe logs, check power rails. Zero writes to patient.

2. Electronics/Firmware/Mechanical — ROM transfers, SA/translator repair, donor PCB/HSA, spindle/platter work as needed.

3. Forensic Imaging — Hardware cloning with head maps, adaptive timeouts, persistent error maps (PC-3000/DeepSpar/Atola).

4. Logical/Data Recovery — Filesystem reconstruction for NTFS, exFAT, APFS, HFS+, EXT, XFS, Btrfs, ReFS, plus containers/DB repair (PST, SQLite, VM images).

5. Verification & Delivery — SHA-256 hash manifest, sample-file open tests (e.g., CAD, media, VMs, DBs), and secure transfer (encrypted drive or managed download).

6. Reporting — Clear engineering summary: root cause, actions taken, imaging statistics, and any unreadable LBAs (if applicable).

Why Choose Norwich Data Recovery

• 25+ years and thousands of successful HDD/SSD/NAS recoveries

• Multi-vendor expertise (consumer, enterprise, NVMe/flash)

• Advanced donor inventory and controller/FTL/firmware tooling to maximise recovery yield

• Free diagnostics with clear recovery options before work begins

Next steps: Tell us the device model, symptoms, and your highest-priority folders. Package the drive in an anti-static bag inside a small padded box or envelope, then post or drop it in. We’ll stabilise, image, and recover—safely.