When a hard drive starts acting up — clicking, failing to boot, or just plain disappearing from your computer — it’s natural to panic. Your data is personal, irreplaceable, and often more valuable than the hardware itself. At Lyme PC Repair, we get that. And we want to be clear about what we can realistically do, what’s too risky, and how to give yourself the best chance at saving your files.
What We Can Help With:
- External drives that won’t open but are still detected
- Mac-formatted drives that need to be read from Windows (with tools like HFSExplorer)
- Accidental deletions (if caught early, this can still be an impossible task)
- Transfers from old hard drives to a new computer
What We Don’t Handle In-House:
- Drives making loud clicking or grinding noises
- Physically damaged drives (from drops, fires, or water)
- Flash drives or SSDs with dead controllers
- Anything that requires opening the drive in a cleanroom environment
For those cases, we refer out to professional labs. These jobs often run $800 to $2,000+ depending on severity. That’s not markup — it’s the cost of the specialized tools, equipment, and technicians needed to physically extract data from damaged storage media. We try to keep our pricing on the low end for basic data transfers (such as needing to remove an external hard drive from an enclosure because the power went bad, not the drive). But data recovery is expensive for us once it goes beyond that, so quotes for $300-$600 aren’t unheard of.
Before You Try Anything…
- Don’t keep retrying the drive if it’s acting erratic — it can make things worse.
- Don’t run “repair” tools unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re doing.
- Don’t try to clone a failing drive unless it’s readable and stable enough to make it through.
Instead, shut it down and get in touch. Even if it’s just for an opinion, we’re happy to walk you through what options you might still have. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your data is to stop messing with it until someone can take a proper look.