Upon immediate arrival at the Data Clinic lab your device is unpacked, booked in and given a unique identification number which will be used to track your drive whilst it is with us (confirmation that Dataclinic received your drive and the identification number will be given to you over the phone or by email).
An initial diagnostic examination is performed upon the hard disk drive to quickly identify the nature of the fault. Faults can be categorized into the following 5 categories:

Electronic
Mechanical
Bad Sector
Media Degradation
Firmware

A combination of 2 or more of these faults is also possible and the initial diagnostic examination will determine what recovery path your drive will follow. Here is how all drives received by Dataclinic are initially processed:

• Physical Examination of the drive is performed in order to see if any physical damage is evident.

• Analysis of the Drive Electronics including an attempt to read the drive firmware (software the drive uses to be recognized and communicate with the computer).

• Before Powering Up the drive, to ensure no further damage to the disk surface of the drive, it is taken into a Class 100 Clean Cabinet where a technician cleans the chassis (casing of the drive) using a special compound designed to remove contaminants from the outside of the drive.

• The unopened drive is then transported to a Full Class 100 Clean Room with special anti-static precautions to prevent Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) from causing damage to the sensitive components within the drive.

The above steps are standard and applicable to all of the drives we receive. Next, the technician consults the information provided by the customer (e.g. error messages, clicking noises, blue screens etc) to save time in selecting what action to take. The drives are then repaired according to the nature of the problem, be it:

1. Electronic > replace circuit board or component on circuit board
2. Mechanical > replace heads or replace spindle
3. Bad Sector > run software application > connect to Dataclinic's EMAK product
4. Media Degradation > run software application
5. Firmware > re-install original version of firmware

Once the drive has been repaired we will then create a Clone (an exact copy of the data on your disk drive) where the cloned copy is saved to a Dataclinic disk drive. All recovery of data then takes place on the cloned copy as this is more reliable than using the repaired disk drive from the customer.

Using software tools (and hardware tools if necessary) the cloned drive is read and a File Structure produced. This file structure (e.g. My Documents, My Pictures, Accounts) is then shared with the customer to ensure Dataclinic recovers all of the important data that you need.

Finally, after the important data has been identified and recovered to either CDs, DVDs or a replacement hard disk drive, Dataclinic will post the recovered data back to you. Dataclinic will retain your original disk drive for 14 days just in case there is a problem with the data we returned to you or it gets lost in the post. Following the 14 days we will either return the original disk to you or eliminate the data on it and recycle it for parts.