Emergency
CCTV recorder grinding
If your CCTV recorder is making a grinding noise, the most useful thing on this page is above this paragraph, and it is free. What follows is what the fault usually turns out to be, how recoverable this class of failure is, and what it would cost, including the cases we would tell you to take elsewhere.
What this usually turns out to be
Recorders write in a manufacturer's own format and loop over the oldest footage continuously. The clock on a CCTV job is retention, not hardware.
Head crash
The heads have come down onto the platters and are scraping the magnetic surface away as the stack spins.
Debris circulating inside the drive
Material shed by a previous failure is being dragged between head and platter, scoring the surface on every rotation.
Collapsed bearing
The platter stack is no longer turning true, bringing the surface into the head's path.
How recoverable this is
The narrowest and least optimistic of any symptom here, and the fair framing is that outcome is decided largely by how long it ran making that noise. Where scoring is confined to regions your files do not occupy, recovery of the rest is realistic. Where it has cut through the area holding them, that part is not recoverable by anyone, and you should be sceptical of a lab that says otherwise.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- How long it was left running while grinding, which is the single biggest factor
- Which regions of the surface were scored, and whether your files live there
- Whether debris has contaminated otherwise intact surfaces
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
Assessed free, then referred at no charge
Cleanroom mechanical work
Clicking, seized or head-crashed drives need internal mechanical work in a controlled environment. We don't have one, so we assess it, tell you what we found in writing, and refer it on. That referral costs you nothing here.
Nothing is charged until you have seen a fixed quote for your actual device and agreed to it, and the assessment that produces it is free.
Not quite your situation?
Pick the device and what it is doing, and this gives you the same answer for that combination instead.