Data recovery, explained

What "recovery" means on a modern phone

The storage in a modern phone is a chip soldered to the board, and on every recent phone it is encrypted with a key that lives on that same board. That has one large consequence: the data is not recovered by pulling the chip out and reading it somewhere else. It is recovered by getting the phone's own board working, or working for long enough, to unlock and copy the data out through the phone's normal backup path. Almost all phone data recovery is therefore repair: finding what stopped the board from running, fixing that, and then backing up before anything else is touched.

That is also why we do recovery first, before any repair that could risk the board. A phone that has been in water, or that failed after a drop, is worked on with the data as the priority. If the board can be made stable for an hour, that hour goes into the backup.

What we can usually get back

A phone with a broken screen and a working board is the easy case: the display is replaced, or a temporary one is connected on the bench, and the phone is backed up normally with your passcode. A phone that will not charge because of a port or battery fault is the same story once that is fixed. A phone that has been in liquid depends on how quickly it was turned off and brought in; the board is cleaned first and if it comes up, the backup happens before anything else. A phone with a board fault that can be repaired at component level, which is a longer job, is recovered once that repair holds.

What we cannot

A phone whose board is destroyed, where the storage chip itself or the security chip beside it is physically damaged, is beyond what a counter can do and usually beyond what anyone can do at a reasonable cost. We will tell you that rather than take a fee for trying. A phone that has been reset, or an account that has been wiped remotely, cannot have that data recovered by us. And we cannot recover anything without your passcode or account details; the encryption is the point, and it does not have a back door for repair shops.

The cases we see most

Most recovery jobs arrive in one of four shapes, and knowing which is yours helps you decide quickly. The most common is a phone with a smashed screen that still buzzes when it is plugged in: the board is fine, a screen goes on, the phone is backed up and you decide afterwards whether to keep the new screen or move to a new phone. The second is a phone that stopped charging and ran flat; a port or a battery gets it running and the backup follows. The third is liquid, where the clock is the enemy and the clean has to happen before the corrosion does its work. The fourth is a phone that simply died with no story behind it, which is usually a board fault and the slowest, least certain of the four. We tell you which one you have at the counter, before you spend anything.

Laptops and drives

Laptop and desktop storage is a different case, because the drive is a separate part and is often not encrypted. A drive from a machine that will not start can usually be read on the bench and the files copied off, and a failing mechanical drive can often be imaged before it stops entirely. If a drive is clicking, turn the machine off and bring it in; every start on a failing mechanical drive makes it worse. Encrypted laptop drives need the password, the same as a phone.

The odds, before you decide

We look at the device, tell you what we think happened and what the realistic chance of getting the data back is, and we tell you the price of the attempt before you commit. If the honest chance is poor, we say so. If we get nothing back, there is no repair charge. What we will not do is promise a result before we have looked.

What to bring

The device, and the charger you normally use. If the phone has been in water, leave it off. Your passcode or the account details for the device, because nothing comes off without them. And tell us what matters most: the photos, the messages, a particular app. It changes the order we work in.

Afterwards

Your data stays yours. We copy it to your own new device, your own drive or your own cloud account, and nothing is kept on the bench after handover. Then, and this is the part everybody promises themselves, turn on automatic backup so the next time is a ten-minute inconvenience rather than a trip to us.