Most of our customers never visit a lab. They pack their drive into a box and mail it. That works well, but the trip itself is a risk: a drive that already has a mechanical fault can be pushed past the point of recovery by a hard knock in transit, and a few common packing mistakes can make recovery harder than it needs to be. Here is how to get a hard drive or SSD to a recovery lab in the same condition it left you.
Before you pack: stop using the drive
The best thing you can do for a failing drive is to leave it switched off. Every time a clicking or grinding hard drive spins up, the heads can do more damage to the surface the data lives on. An SSD that keeps disconnecting may be erasing blocks in the background while it is powered. So once you have decided on professional recovery:
- don’t keep reconnecting it “one more time” to see if it comes back;
- don’t run disk repair tools, chkdsk, or recovery software on it;
- don’t open a hard drive to look inside. Opening the sealed case outside a clean environment lets dust onto the platters.
Get a free evaluation request in first, through our contact page, so we know the drive is coming and what happened to it.
What exactly to send
Internal hard drives and SSDs: send the bare drive if you can remove it safely. Leave mounting brackets on if they’re hard to take off.
External USB drives: send the whole thing, enclosure included, not just the drive inside. Several popular external drives encrypt data on the small circuit board in the enclosure. Separate the drive from that board, or lose the board, and the data can become unreadable even if the drive is healthy.
Laptops and Macs with soldered storage: on many current laptops, including Apple silicon Macs, the storage chips are part of the main board and can’t be removed. In that case the whole computer needs to come in. Ask us first if you’re not sure which you have.
RAID arrays and NAS boxes: send every drive from the array, including any you think are healthy, and label each one with its bay number before you remove it. A small piece of tape with “Bay 1”, “Bay 2” and so on is enough. The order matters for rebuilding the array. Our server and RAID recovery page explains why.
Water-damaged drives: don’t try to dry the drive out or switch it on. Seal it in a zip-top bag as it is and send it promptly. Drying can leave mineral deposits and corrosion on the platters and electronics.
How to pack it
- Anti-static bag first. Put the drive in an anti-static bag. A new drive’s bag is ideal. If you don’t have one, a clean zip-top bag is better than nothing.
- Wrap it well. Wrap the bagged drive in at least two inches of bubble wrap or foam on every side. It should not be able to touch the walls of the box.
- Use a sturdy box with room around the drive. A padded envelope is not enough for a hard drive: it offers almost no protection against a drop. The best method is a box inside a box, with padding between the two.
- Fill the gaps. Shake the closed box. If you can feel the drive move, add more padding. Loose packing peanuts on their own let a heavy drive sink to the bottom and hit the box wall, so use them only around a well-wrapped inner box.
- Don’t add extras. Leave out power adapters, cables and USB sticks unless we ask for them. Loose items rattle against the drive.
What to put in the box
Add a sheet of paper, in its own bag, with:
- your name, phone number and email;
- a short description of what happened (dropped, clicking, not detected, deleted files, water) and when;
- the folders or file types that matter most, such as “Photos 2015 to 2024” or “QuickBooks company file”. This helps us check the right data first;
- whether the drive was encrypted (BitLocker, FileVault, or a drive’s own password). Don’t write passwords on the sheet; we’ll ask for them securely if needed.
Choosing a shipping service
Use a tracked service from USPS, UPS or FedEx so you can see where the package is, and keep the tracking number. It is worth adding insurance, but be aware that carriers only cover the value of the hardware, not the value of the data on it. That is why the packing matters more than the label. Avoid shipping over a weekend or holiday if you can, so the box spends less time sitting in a depot.
What happens when it arrives
Once your drive reaches us, we evaluate it and tell you what has failed and what recovery will involve. We give you an upfront quote before any recovery work starts, and if we can’t recover your data, you don’t pay for the recovery. You can read more about the process for hard drive data recovery and SSD recovery.
Ready to send a drive?
Call us on (213) 986-4855 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm Pacific), email support@creativeitusa.com, or start a free evaluation online. We accept mail-in drives from anywhere in the USA, and offer pickup in Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire and Ventura County.