A donor drive is a healthy hard drive of exactly the same model as a failed one. When a drive has crashed heads, a burnt circuit board or a seized motor, our engineers take the matching part from the donor and fit it to your drive, just long enough to make a full image of the data with PC-3000. The donor is a source of spare parts; your data never goes onto it.
For a head, PCB or platter transplant to work, the parts must match exactly. Two drives with the same capacity and brand can still have different heads, firmware, preamp or adaptive data. The model number is only the start: the firmware version, PCB number, site code and production date usually have to match too. A close but wrong match can fail to read the platters, or scratch them and make the recovery much harder. Enter the label details of your drive and a possible donor below to see how closely they match.
Before you try a transplant yourself
A DIY transplant outside a cleanroom can destroy the data for good. A single speck of dust or a fingerprint on the platters can crash the new heads and scrape the magnetic surface, and swapping a PCB without moving the ROM chip can make things worse. If your drive is clicking, beeping or not spinning, switch it off and ask one of our engineers before you open it or buy a donor. We source and match donor drives ourselves and do all head and platter work in our ISO-certified Class 100 cleanroom.
For a free inspection and a fixed quote, call us on 020 7394 2525, email info@londondatarecovery.uk or book a data recovery online.
You can also bring the drive to our lab in Central London: Unit 1, 80 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SY, Monday to Saturday, 9am to 6pm.