Fire Damaged Data Recovery
Recovery from Heat, Smoke, & Soot Damage
Fire damage looks catastrophic, but your data is often safe inside the platters. While high heat can demagnetize platters, the sealed chassis often protects data from brief exposure to high temperatures. Even if the electronics are melted and the case is charred,
Fire & Smoke Remediation
Handling Fire Damaged Drives
- 1.DO NOT clean it. Soot is acidic and abrasive. Trying to wipe it off can drive particles into the breathing holes of the drive.
- 2.DO NOT power it on. The electronics are likely shorted or melted.
- 3.DO NOT remove the PCB. The seal between the board and the drive body protects the platters.
- 4.DO handle gently. Fire makes metal brittle and plastic seals fragile. Pack with extra cushioning.
Our Fire Recovery Process
1. Decontamination
We carefully remove external soot and melted plastic in our 0.02 micron ULPA-filtered clean bench to ensure no contaminants enter the drive assembly.
2. PCB Reconstruction
The electronics are usually destroyed. This is similar to PCB failure recovery: we source an exact-match donor board and physically move the unique ROM chip (if survived) or rebuild adaptive parameters using PC-3000 if the ROM is damaged.
3. Platter Transplant
If the drive seal was breached, we perform a platter swap. We move the data platters into a healthy donor chassis to bypass the damaged motor and bearings.
What Fire Damage Recovery Costs
Fire damage prices the same way as any other hard drive failure: by what the drive actually needs, not by how bad the outside looks. A melted or shorted board reads as firmware-tier board & ROM work; a breached seal that forces a platter transplant reads as the head swap or surface-damage tiers. You pay nothing if we can't recover your data, & the quote you get after the free evaluation is the price you pay.
- Low complexity
Simple Copy
Your drive works, you just need the data moved off it
Functional drive; data transfer to new media
Rush available: +$100
$100
3-5 business days
- Low complexity
File System Recovery
Your drive isn't recognized by your computer, but it's not making unusual sounds
File system corruption. Accessible with professional recovery software but not by the OS
Starting price; final depends on complexity
From $250
2-4 weeks
- Medium complexity
Firmware Repair
Your drive is completely inaccessible. It may be detected but shows the wrong size or won't respond
Firmware corruption: ROM, modules, or translator tables corrupted; requires PC-3000 terminal access
CMR drive: $600. SMR drive: $900.
$600–$900
3-6 weeks
- High complexity
Most Common
Head Swap
Your drive is clicking, beeping, or won't spin. The internal read/write heads have failed
Head stack assembly failure. Transplanting heads from a matching donor drive on a clean bench
50% deposit required. CMR: $1,200-$1,500 + donor. SMR: $1,500 + donor.
50% deposit required
$1,200–$1,500
4-8 weeks
- High complexity
Surface / Platter Damage
Your drive was dropped, has visible damage, or a head crash scraped the platters
Platter scoring or contamination. Requires platter cleaning and head swap
50% deposit required. Donor parts are consumed in the repair. Most difficult recovery type.
50% deposit required
$2,000
4-8 weeks
Hardware Repair vs. Software Locks
Our "no data, no fee" policy applies to hardware recovery. We do not bill for unsuccessful physical repairs. If we replace a hard drive read/write head assembly or repair a liquid-damaged logic board to a bootable state, the hardware repair is complete and standard rates apply. If data remains inaccessible due to user-configured software locks, a forgotten passcode, or a remote wipe command, the physical repair is still billable. We cannot bypass user encryption or activation locks.
No data, no fee. Free evaluation and firm quote before any paid work. Full guarantee details. Head swap and surface damage require a 50% deposit because donor parts are consumed in the attempt.
- Rush fee
- +$100 rush fee to move to the front of the queue
- Donor drives
- Donor drives are matching drives used for parts. Typical donor cost: $50–$150 for common drives, $200–$400 for rare or high-capacity models. We source the cheapest compatible donor available.
- Target drive
- The destination drive we copy recovered data onto. You can supply your own or we provide one at cost plus a small markup. For larger capacities (8TB, 10TB, 16TB and above), target drives cost $400+ extra. All prices are plus applicable tax.
The prices above are for standard hard drives, which covers most jobs. Helium-sealed drives (for example WD or HGST Ultrastar He and Seagate Exos X) must be resealed and refilled with helium in-house after the chamber is opened, so they price higher, in the $200–$5,000+ range. See helium drive pricing.
Understanding Fire Damage
Heat Damage
Hard drives can lose data if heated above their Curie point (where magnetic properties change). However, unless the drive was directly in the heart of the fire for a long time, the platters often survive.
Smoke & Soot
Smoke particles are microscopic and can bypass some filters. Soot is acidic and corrosive. Water from fire hoses also complicates recovery. We treat fire drives as liquid damage cases too.
Recoverable vs Non-Recoverable Heat Exposure
Most fire-damaged drives that reach our bench survived the heat. Not because the fire spared them, but because the sealed head disk assembly & its internal air gap buffer the platters from short exposure.
Soot & smoke stay on the outside of the aluminum casing. Most residential fires reach 600 to 800 degrees Celsius up at the ceiling, yet the enclosed chassis & that air gap keep the recording surface well under the outside temperature during brief exposure.
The failure line is the recording layer. Platters store data as magnetic orientation in a thin cobalt-based alloy with high coercivity. Heat that layer past its Curie point & the magnetic domains randomize; the data is demagnetized permanently, & no lab can bring it back.
Sustained direct flame does that. Brief exposure through a sealed chassis usually does not.
Two conditions we can't recover from: a recording layer heated past the Curie point, & platters that warped or delaminated under sustained heat. A warped platter can't fly a head at a stable clearance, so there is nothing to image.
We tell you which case you have at the free evaluation, before you pay anything. Everything short of that line we open on the 0.02 micron ULPA-filtered clean bench.
Melted Chassis & Seized Motors: Platter Transplant to a Donor
When fire seizes the spindle motor or warps the chassis, the platters still hold the data; the drive just can't spin them. We source an exact-match donor matched by model, firmware revision, & head map, then move the platter stack into the healthy donor chassis on the clean bench.
This is a platter transplant, not a repair of the burned drive. The original drive never spins again; we're moving the data-bearing platters to hardware that can.
A fire-destroyed board needs the drive's unique adaptive parameters, not just a new board. The 8-pin SPI NOR flash ROM carries calibration data specific to that drive.
We desolder (or clip-read) that ROM & transplant it onto the matching donor PCB. If the ROM chip itself is incinerated past reading, we rebuild the adaptive parameters with PC-3000 before the donor board can talk to the heads.
Fire-hose water turns a heat case into a combined liquid case. We decontaminate & ultrasonically clean the board before any power is applied, then transfer the ROM.
FLIR thermal cameras flag short-circuit hotspots on the exposed PCB so we replace only the components that shorted. Then we image read-only with a DeepSpar Disk Imager or PC-3000, pulling data sector by sector. We're extracting your data, not returning the drive to service.
Data Recovery Standards & Verification
Our Austin lab operates on a transparency-first model. We use industry-standard recovery tools, including PC-3000 and DeepSpar, combined with strict environmental controls to maintain drive integrity. This approach allows us to serve clients nationwide with consistent technical standards.
Open-drive work is performed in a ULPA-filtered laminar-flow bench, validated to 0.02 µm particle count, verified using TSI P-Trak instrumentation.
Transparent History
Serving clients nationwide via mail-in service since 2008. Our lead engineer holds PC-3000 and HEX Akademia certifications for hard drive firmware repair and mechanical recovery.
Media Coverage
Our repair work has been covered by The Wall Street Journal and Business Insider, with CBC News reporting on our pricing transparency. Louis Rossmann has testified in Right to Repair hearings in multiple states and founded the Repair Preservation Group.
Aligned Incentives
Our "No Data, No Charge" policy means we assume the risk of the recovery attempt, not the client.
Technical Oversight
Louis Rossmann
Our engineers review all lab protocols to maintain technical accuracy and honest service. Since 2008, his focus has been on clear technical communication and accurate diagnostics rather than sales-driven explanations.
We believe in proving standards rather than just stating them. We use TSI P-Trak instrumentation to verify that clean-air benchmarks are met before any drive is opened.
See our clean bench validation data and particle test videoFire Damage Recovery Questions
My drive looks charred. Is there any chance of recovery?
Why shouldn't I clean the soot off my fire-damaged drive?
The electronics are melted. Can you still get my data?
Water from fire hoses got on my drive. Does that make it worse?
How should I pack and ship a fire-damaged drive?
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We have recovered data from drives that looked like charcoal briquettes. Don't give up.