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R3 Provide data recovery throughout the British Isles, Northern Ireland, Eire, Europe, US & Worldwide.

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How To Package Your Hard Drive and Why Is Packaging Important?

Data loss can happen at any time and can happen in the most unexpected ways. As long as your device hasn't been stolen (we're not that good 🙂), we can recover your data from the most unlikely disasters.

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★★★★★

Efficient-Rapid-Sucessful! I don't know how bad my external hard drive was but I know I needed the data recovered. I tried a local company and they were no help at all. These guys had the job sussed in a matter of days and a cost-effective proposal that suited me perfectly. Once agreed, the job was completed quickly and I'm back in touch with all my data. Thanks very much!

Chris from Ilkeston, United Kingdom


Every week at R3 Data Recovery there are many hard drives delivered for recovery.

Each drive can have different faults, generally they are mechanical or media degradation.

In the hurry to get the drive into the R3 lab for recovery to begin and the lost data to be recovered, the last thing on the mind of a customer is how adequately they should package the drive.

This sometimes can be a fatal and costly thing to overlook.

A drive with a fault such as media degradation can turn into a mechanical fault.

This can happen by neglecting something as simple as wrapping the drive up in a few layers of bubble wrap. Or packaging the hard drive without a cardboard box. Many drives over the course of a year are delivered to the lab in jiffy bags fit only for a USB stick at best. Or in extreme cases wrapped in a single sheet of newspaper inside a plastic bag from a supermarket.

Hard drive courier collection

Hard drive in a plastic bag

This may seem outlandish but is in fact more common than you would believe. And even before the hard drive has arrived at the R3 lab for diagnosis, its chances of recovery has been drastically reduced.

Hard drive in card box

All that is needed to ensure that your hard drive has a healthy and fair chance of recovery is to take a little extra care and thought, and package your hard drive securely. Use an anti-static bag for internal drives or ones removed from enclosures, use a generous but not extravagant amount of bubble wrap and make sure the hard drive is not free to move around inside its package.

Following these simple guidelines can make more of a difference than you realise. And allow the engineers at R3 Data Recovery an improved chance to recover the hard drive.

Ultimately this is what everyone involved wants.