Top Tips to Avoid More Damage
✅ Stop using the device immediately. If the problem is getting worse, we need to catch it early.
✅ Call us. We never hard-sell, and will always help you avoid making things worse.
🚫 Don’t download ANYTHING to the disk (especially recovery software). It will overwrite over the files you’re trying to recover!
🚫 Don’t blindly follow something you’ve seen on YouTube and hope for the best. Without a proper diagnosis, you are almost certainly risking further permanent damage.
🚫 Don’t try to scan, repair or fix any errors unless you have backups of the data. A failed repair process can damage the files beyond recovery.
🚫 Don’t re-install, restore, or factory reset the computer. It may get the machine running again, but your data will be lost in the process.
✅ If you can access your files at any point, make a copy to another drive as soon as you can. It may be a fluke, and could be the last time you see the files. Don’t reboot expecting to see them again.
✅ If the files are really important then you should consider getting the disk professionally recovered. We’ve spent years making our process as safe as possible to maximise our chances of success.
✅ If you’ve asked somebody else to look at your disk, make sure they don’t run it for days if it’s not going well. We can often salvage drives if we catch them early enough, but not if they’ve been thrashed to dust.
© 2000 – 2026 Dataquest International Ltd
Dataquest – Don’t Quit
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