Data Recovery Case File · Desktop Externals & Aging Drives · What You Actually Get Back

Broken USB Port: Copying the Drive Onto a New One

His enquiry described the fault in one line and then asked something more useful than most technical questions. A 1TB WD Elements external drive whose "USB port has broken, so I can't transfer or see the video files", holding "irreplaceable family videos and photos". Then: "can this drive be downloaded onto another 1TB drive?" That is the deliverable question, and it is asked far too rarely — people commission recoveries without establishing what they will actually receive, on what, and whether they need to supply anything. So this page answers it properly: what comes back, in what form, whose media it arrives on, and one sizing trap that catches people who assume a 1TB source needs a 1TB destination.

The decode: what you get, on what, and the sizing trap

What recovery actually delivers: a copy of your data on separate media — never written back to the drive it came from, because writing to the source is precisely what destroys the evidence a recovery depends on. Where the filesystem can be rebuilt, the copy preserves the original folder structure, filenames and dates, so it looks like the drive did. Where it cannot, files are recovered by content and arrive without their original names, organised by type — which is why filesystem reconstruction is always attempted first. For an archive of family video, structure matters: a folder tree of holidays by year is usable, and ten thousand files named by number is not.

Whose media it arrives on: verified media is supplied as part of the job, and its cost sits inside the single fixed figure rather than appearing afterwards as an extra. If he would rather supply his own drive — a perfectly reasonable preference, especially if he has one — that is welcome; it needs to be healthy, empty and large enough, and it is checked before anything is written to it. What should never happen is delivery onto media nobody has verified, or onto the original drive.

The sizing trap: and this is the part his question invites. A 1TB source does not reliably fit onto a 1TB destination, for two reasons. First, a 1TB drive does not hold a full terabyte once formatted — the usable capacity is meaningfully less, and two drives of the same nominal size can differ. Second, and more significant, where content carving is involved a recovery can produce more data than the original held: carved files may include earlier deleted versions, duplicates recovered from unallocated space, and fragments that turn out to be partial copies. That is a good problem — it means more has been recovered — but it means a same-size destination can run out. The practical rule is to allow comfortably more capacity than the source, and to be told the recovered set's actual size before delivery media is chosen.

And validation, which is the part that matters for video: a recovered video file that exists and will not play is not a recovery. Video is validated by playback rather than by file size — opened and run — because a truncated or partially recovered clip looks entirely healthy in a file listing. For an archive of family footage that check is the whole point.

On the bench

The connector was repaired at board level, deliberately preserving the drive's own electronics rather than attempting to read the bare disk elsewhere, and on first successful connection the drive was imaged completely on the Atola TaskForce 2 — a repaired joint being exactly the kind of thing not to rely on twice. The filesystem was rebuilt from the image so that the family's folder structure, names and dates came back as they had been; the video files were validated by playback rather than by size, and the photographs by rendering. The recovered set's true size was measured before media was chosen, and everything was delivered on verified media with room to spare, with the original drive returned alongside it.

The outcome

The connector repaired, the archive imaged and delivered with its structure intact and every video checked by playing it. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT; where a drive has to be opened or a chip removed, 50% of parts and labour is payable upfront with the balance only on success — otherwise no recovery, no fee. The deliverable question, answered for everyone who forgets to ask: recovered data comes back on separate verified media, never onto the original drive, with the folder structure preserved wherever the filesystem can be rebuilt; supplied media is included in the figure, and your own drive is welcome if it is healthy, empty and checked first; allow more destination capacity than the source, because formatted capacity is smaller than the label and carving can produce more data than the original held; and insist that video is validated by playback rather than by file size.

Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.