One thing to know first
Not an emergency, but don't let anything try to fix it yet.
A device that is silent and cool is not degrading while it sits there, so there is no clock running on the hardware. The risk here is the next action rather than the passage of time: initialising the disk when prompted, letting a repair tool write a new partition table, or reformatting to make it usable will each overwrite the map to your files. Decline every offer to fix, repair or initialise until you know which fault you have.
Often fixable yourself
Phone not showing up
A phone in this state is very often something you can resolve yourself, at no cost, and this page tells you how before it tells you anything about us. Where that doesn't work, the rest explains what the fault usually is and what recovery involves.
What this usually turns out to be
A phone that does not appear on a computer is usually a phone that has not been told to. Android defaults to charging only when connected, and presenting the filesystem requires selecting file transfer from the notification that appears on the phone itself; an iPhone shows nothing until the trust prompt on its screen has been accepted. Both of those need the phone to be unlocked, which is also the underlying reason this fault is different from every other device here: the storage is soldered down and encrypted against the passcode, so the screen is not merely an interface but part of the lock.
Storage is soldered to the board and encrypted by default. That makes the passcode half of every phone recovery, and a factory reset instantly permanent.
Cable, port or enclosure faultbetter news
The single commonest cause, and entirely benign. The device behind the failed connection is untouched.
Partition table or boot sector damagebetter news
The drive is healthy and the files are all present, but the index that points to them is corrupt, so the operating system sees unallocated space.
Filesystem the operating system doesn't recognisebetter news
A drive formatted on a Mac, a Linux box, or a NAS will often appear unreadable or empty on Windows while being perfectly intact.
Controller or translation-layer failure
On flash media, the controller that maps files onto the memory has failed. The memory is intact but nothing can reach it without specialist work.
Degrading or failing media
The device is present but cannot complete the reads needed to identify itself. This is the case where time and power do matter.
What to check first on a phone
- Unlock the phone first, then look at its screen for a connection prompt. On Android choose file transfer rather than charging; on iPhone accept the request to trust the computer.
- Change the cable for one you know carries data. Charging cables that carry no data are extremely common and produce exactly this.
- Check whether the phone charges normally, which tells you the port and board are alive even if data is not passing.
What not to do
Do not factory reset it, and do not accept any offer to restore it as a way of making it work again. On an encrypted phone a reset discards the keys, and that is not a recoverable operation by anyone at any price. If you have forgotten the passcode, say so before anything else happens rather than working through attempts.
Try this before you pay anyone
Almost all of these are the phone not being told to present its files
- Unlock the phone before you do anything else. Nothing is offered to a computer until it is unlocked, and this alone resolves most of these.
- Look at the phone's own screen for a prompt. On Android, pull down the notification and change USB use from charging to file transfer. On iPhone, accept the request to trust this computer.
- Change the cable for one you know carries data. A great many cables charge only, and a charge-only cable produces exactly this with nothing wrong at either end.
- Try a different port and a different computer before concluding anything about the phone.
If the phone will not unlock, stop here rather than working through attempts. Phone storage is encrypted against the passcode, and repeated wrong entries can trigger the same wipe a factory reset would. There is no equivalent of taking the disk out and reading it elsewhere, because without the phone's own security hardware and your code the memory contains nothing usable.
How recoverable this is
The most optimistic group on this page taken as a whole. A large share are connection or filesystem faults where the data was never in danger, and a good number of those the reader resolves themselves in ten minutes at no cost. The cases that are genuinely media or controller failures are a different job, and the checks below separate them without risk.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- Whether the phone is seen as a charging device only, as a media device, or not at all
- Whether anything has already written to it, including an initialise or a repair
- Whether the underlying media is healthy or degrading
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
from $249
USB sticks and memory cards
Cameras, dashcams, drones, phones. Includes carving for cards that no longer present a filesystem.
What moves a job within its band: capacity, how much of the media is unstable, whether the filesystem is encrypted, and how much of the drive has to be read before the files you need are reachable. You get one fixed figure after the assessment and it does not move afterwards. If we can’t recover what matters to you, there is no recovery fee.
Other faults on a phone
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.