Legacy Hitachi 3.5″ IDE hard drives were commonly used in industrial factory machines to store specialized software and operating instructions. When a PC freezes during startup, it often indicates hard drive failure or overheating, making critical business data inaccessible.
This case study details how we successfully cloned and restored an old Hitachi 3.5″ IDE 40GB hard drive from a factory machine, ensuring the business could continue operations without paying £25,000 for new software.
As Oxford Data Recovery, with 25 years of forensic data recovery experience, we used legacy hardware support, bad sector bypassing, and drive cloning techniques to restore the lost system.
The Challenge: Hitachi IDE Hard Drive Freezing PC During Startup
A factory owner contacted us after their industrial machine stopped working, with the following issues:
- The PC froze at the BIOS screen and failed to load the operating system.
- The Hitachi 3.5” IDE 40GB hard drive was running hotter than usual.
- Attempts to access the drive externally resulted in slow performance and crashes.
- The hard drive contained factory control software worth £25,000, making replacement impractical.
Since this type of software is often proprietary and tied to specific hardware, an exact sector-by-sector clone was required to ensure the new drive would function identically.
Diagnosis & Evaluation
When the Hitachi 3.5″ IDE hard drive arrived at our cleanroom facility, we conducted a full hardware and sector-level diagnostic. Our findings:
- Bad sectors in critical boot areas – Preventing the operating system from loading.
- Overheating drive motor – Indicating the drive was nearing total failure.
- No mechanical damage to platters – Making a full clone possible before complete breakdown.
Since cloning was necessary to preserve the original software, we prioritized hardware stabilization and data extraction.
The Recovery Process
1. Cooling & Stabilising the Hard Drive
Since heat can accelerate drive failure, we:
- Used specialized cooling techniques to reduce thermal stress.
- Disabled non-essential processes to avoid further damage.
2. Creating a Sector-by-Sector Clone
Since bad sectors were present, we:
- Used professional imaging tools to create an exact 1:1 copy of the drive.
- Bypassed unreadable sectors while preserving boot-critical areas.
3. Testing & Verifying the Cloned Drive on the Factory Machine
Once cloning was complete, we:
- Installed the cloned drive into the factory machine.
- Confirmed that the machine booted successfully and software functioned as expected.
The Results: 100% Data Recovery & Successful Drive Cloning
Thanks to our bad sector bypassing and cloning techniques, we successfully created an identical working copy of the factory hard drive, preserving:
✅ Factory control software worth £25,000
✅ Machine operating system and configuration files
✅ All business-critical settings and stored data
The factory was able to continue operations without interruption, saving thousands in replacement costs.
Why Choose Us?
With 25 years of experience and tens of thousands of successful recoveries, we are the leading industrial machine hard drive recovery specialists in Oxford and the UK. Our expertise includes:
✔ Legacy IDE hard drive cloning & restoration
✔ Bad sector recovery & system boot repair
✔ Industrial & factory software preservation
✔ Secure & confidential business data retrieval
If your factory machine hard drive is failing, overheating, or preventing system startup, do not attempt DIY recovery—contact us for expert drive cloning and data recovery.