How To Diagnose And Fix A Dead Hard

Drive To Recover Data

Written by Tina SieberJuly 24, 2013
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-diagnose-and-fix-a-dead-hard-drive-to-recover-data/

Several years ago, I experienced a hard drive failure. I was at work when my laptop suddenly
started to act particularly strange. First, I thought it was because I had too many windows
open and the RAM was full, but when the problems persisted after a reboot, I knew it was
more than that. I immediately started to back up recent files. About half an hour later, the hard
drive failed audibly and the laptop wouldnt boot anymore.
Thank God I had backups! Except that I didnt have backups of everything. Just weeks earlier
my backup drive had reached capacity. To back up important work files, I had decided to
delete my personal photos. The irony was that I had already purchased a new external drive,
but had not taken the time to back up my photos. Now they were lost and I was devastated.
Over the next couple of weeks I researched ways to recover the data and considered doing
everything under the sun and did most of it to revive the old hard drive. I eventually did
recover my data, but not in the way you would expect. If your hard drive has failed physically,
maybe this little guide can help you or at least give you some hope. So roll up your sleeves
and get to work.

External Hard Drive? Check Whether The IDE / SATA to USB Enclosure Is
OK!
When your external hard drive fails, it can do so for all the same reasons an internal drive can
fail. Sometimes, however, its not the drive that stops working, but a connection within the
enclosure! And in that case, the drive is easy to revive.
Before you open up any hardware, be sure to discharge your bodys static electricity,
i.e. ground yourself. Remove the hard drive from its casing and use a IDE / SATA data
cable and power connector to install the drive internally on your desktop computer.
Alternatively, you can get an IDE / SATA to USB adapter or a new USB enclosure, so you can
hook the drive up externally via USB.

The image above shows a SATA connector (left) and an IDE connector (right).
Once you re-connected the external drive to your computer, given the enclosure was the
culprit, Windows should recognize it and assign a drive letter. If this doesnt happen, you can
try to manually find your drive to further narrow down the issue; the process is described
further down.

Internal Hard Drive? Make Sure The Hard Drive Connections Are OK!
Sometimes, its not the drive that failed, but the physical connection of cables that connect the
drive with the computers motherboard. You can only wish that this is your problem! So
before you hire an expensive technician, make sure the data and power cables are firmly
connected on both ends.

To prevent hazards to your health, its essential to turn off the computer and unplug the power
cord. As mentioned above, you also need to discharge your bodys static electricity, i.e.
ground yourself before you get working on your computers internals. Then open up the case
and make sure all connections are OK. Our guide on how to physically install an internal hard
drive shows which connections to watch out for.
Once you have made sure the connections are OK, boot the computer again. If you have a
desktop computer, you can leave the case open, but stay clear of its interior.

Whats That Sound?

As you are trying to get the hard drive to run, listen to the sound it is making. Is it completely
dead? Or is it still spinning? What exactly does it sound like? Compare your sound to the list
of hard drive sounds provided by Data Cent. This will help you diagnose the type of damage.

The damage can be either internal or external. A clicking sound, for example, is suggestive of
a malfunctioning head, i.e. internal damage. A completely dead drive, on the other hand, could
be due to a faulty printed circuit board (PCB), which would be external damage.

Is The Hard Drive Recognized?

Sometimes, you can hear your drive spinning, but it never pops up. Or maybe its completely
dead. To pinpoint the type of damage, try to manually check whether or not the drive is
recognized by your computer.
You can do this via the BIOS in case its the primary hard drive and your computer no longer
boots. After you turn on the computer, enter the BIOS by pressing a trigger key, which could
be [DEL], [ESC], [F2], or [F10], depending on the manufacturer. Within the BIOS, navigate
through the available menus to find where it lists which types of drives are connected to the
computer. Usually, this information is found under the Advanced menu, but you might also
find it indirectly under Boot settings.

If you have hooked up the drive to another computer, you dont need to access the BIOS at
all. In Windows, click the key combination [Windows] + [R], which will launch the Run
input window. Type cmd into the field and hit [Enter]. This will open the Command Prompt.
Here type diskpart and hit [Enter], to open the respective tool. In the diskpart window,
type list volume and hit [Enter] to show all drives connected to your computer.

If the drive is recognized and thus appears in the list above, but doesnt show up as an
accessible drive, chances are Windows only recognizes the PCB, but the drive itself is
damaged (internal damage). In other words, if the drive is recognized in any shape or form,
the PCB is most likely working and replacing it will not fix the hard drive!
Is The Printed Circuit Board Broken?
As mentioned previously, your drive can be damaged internally or externally. The external
PCB, if damaged, is relatively easy to replace. However, data recovery specialists warn
that swapping the PCB can ruin the drive and cause you to lose all data on it. So if you do
care about your data, better err on the side of caution.

Even if you can see that your PCB is damaged, there might still be internal damage.
Moreover, as mentioned above, replacing the circuit board yourself can damage your drive
further, which reduces your chances of recovering your data. Now that you have been warned
extensively, here is a video that explains how to swap the PCB.
Note that many websites now sell PCBs and provide guides to find exactly the right circuit
board for your drive. You can easily find them on Google. So if you really cant or dont want
to afford professional help and are certain that (only) the PCB is damaged, those resources
might save you a lot of money and your data if youre lucky. Or not.

Witchcraft & Wizardry

When my hard drive failed, the PCB was fine; the drive was still recognized and spinning, but
it didnt show up in Windows, meaning I could not access it, and nosoftware recovery
tool could help me, either. So I put my last hope into some of those obscure tricks that youll
find floating around the Internet, like shaking the drive, hitting it onto a hard surface,
exposing it to dry heat in the oven, or sticking it in the freezer overnight. If you have any idea
how a hard drive works, then any of these methods should give you the shivers!

Well, I didnt dare to melt my drive, but my suspicion was that the head was stuck. So I did
shake it, but to no avail. Since I could follow the reasoning, I also wrapped my drive in an
airtight Ziploc back and stuck it in the freezer overnight. The idea is that the low temperatures
cause metals to shrink and contract. So if the head was stuck, the cold might get it unstuck. In
practice, that didnt work either. And I probably caused condensation to settle on the hard
drive platter, which could have caused a lot more damage. I eventually gave up and stored the
drive for a future in which I was hoping to be able to afford professional data recovery.

Backup Strategy Advice

One last thought about the weird methods above: If they do work, they will only work
temporarily! So be prepared. Know exactly what you want to back up and how. Have the
right software to quickly back up your data and have enough storage space available. If you
want to copy files manually, only copy one set of files at a time! If you make the head jump
back and forth between too many files by kicking off multiple copy and paste processes, you
will slow down the overall backup process and increase the likelihood of a fatal head crash.

Consult A Specialist For Professional Data Recovery

If you can afford professional help or simply cannot afford to wait for a miracle, do consult a
specialist. My recommendation is to go with a reputable company. They should work with

professional technicians and tools, be able to open your hard drive in clean rooms or under
dust free conditions, follow industry standards, and have solid credentials, as well as excellent
recommendations. After all, you will trust them with your private data.
Kroll Ontrack, one of the more reputable companies in the market, has an extensive and welldesigned compendium of consumer myths in regards to data recovery, that will help you pick
the right candidate. We have also had a discussion on Answers, where several data recovery
companies were recommended.

Before you pick a company, be sure you understand the conditions! Most charge just for
looking at the drive and making a recommendation. They will charge extra for actually
attempting to recover the data. Some will charge a full recovery fee, even if they failed to
recover the data.

Conclusion
Diagnosing and fixing a broken hard drive is serious business. Do take it seriously, but also
try to exclude some of the more simple to fix culprits before you fork out hundreds of dollars
to a so-called specialist. The more informed you are, the better. How far you go to diagnose
and fix your hard drive will depend on how important the data is for you.
You probably wonder what happened with my hard drive. Well, one fine day, when I was
dissolving my apartment, I decided to give it one last chance and then let go of it. More than
two years after I had tried everything I dared to get it to work, again and again for weeks, I
just plugged it in and it simply worked. I recovered all my data and the drive is working until
this day, almost six years after it failed initially. Call me lucky!
Have you ever experienced such a miracle? What helped you revive a hard drive in the past?
And how did you recover the data?
Image credit: Hard Drive PCB via Shutterstock, Frozen Hard Drive via Shutterstock, Dead
HDD via Flickr

Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive?
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/133294-raising-the-dead-can-a-regular-personrepair-a-damaged-hard-drive

By Joel Hruska on July 27, 2012 at 9:54 am

181 Comments
Edit: This story was written to
detail the options a user has when
a
hard
drive
with important data
dies
unexpectedly. Many of you have
left comments advocating the
freezer trick, stating that used as
a Hail Mary, youve had good
results. I do not dispute that the
freezer trick *can* work. If you
have a hard drive you dont
really care about, and youre curious to see if you can get the data, by all means, freeze it.
If you do need your data back to the point that youre considering paying someone to retrieve
it, do not freeze the drive, even as a Hail Mary. You may very well make the problem worse
and end up costing yourself money.
On June 22, 2012, my primary hard drive, a Samsung HD103SI, quietly passed away. There
was no warning no grinding, no clicks, clacks, or sudden bang. One moment, I was
working on a story, the next, I wasnt.
It quickly became clear that something more serious than a simple system lock had happened.
Post-reboot, the HDD would spin up smoothly, beep 12 times, and then spin down. The drive
was never recognized in BIOS, which nixed any chance of using disk recovery software to
extract data.
This is a story of my efforts to repair the drive myself, my research into the question of
whether or not users can repair modern hard drives, and the results of my efforts. If your drive
is still detected in BIOS, you may be able to use software tools to retrieve your data. Here,
were going to focus exclusively on hardware-related failures, and what your options are.
Part of the reason for writing this story is that data recovery is difficult to accurately research
unless youre fairly versed in it to start with. There are dozens of data recovery firms, all
promising clean rooms, the latest tools, and highly trained professional staff. Many firms
refuse to publish their prices online, which makes comparisons difficult, and its apparently
common for small companies to farm tough jobs out to larger ones.

This one, for example, is pretty much toast

Step 1: Broadly identify the type of problem
There are two broad categories of problems that can nuke a drive: PCB issues and internal
component failures. If the problem is inside the drive, skip down to Step 3. If the problem is
on the PCB, there is a glimmer of hope.

Original image courtesy of mdproductions.ca

The best kind of PCB problem to have is a blown Transient Voltage Supressor (TVS) diode,
as shown above. According to Seagates FAQ, a TVS diode protects a sensitive circuit by
diverting damaging overvoltages and spikes away from the load. When a spike occurs, the
diode blows. Because the diode is no longer functional, the drive wont power up. Snip the
diode off, and the drive will function normally, albeit in an unprotected fashion. Copy your
data over to a functional unit, toss the old one, and count yourself lucky.
My hard drive unfortunately didnt die this way. There was no visible damage to the PCB but
when I removed the board and flipped it over I found a burned-out contact point.
Step 2: Understand your options
From here, youve got two choices. You can opt for a replacement PCB, or you can buy an
entire donor drive. Its important to secure as close a match as possible between the original
HDD and the donor drive/board. In my case, that meant finding an HD103SI PCB that
matched my drives make/model number, PCB number, board revision, and drive family
(Trinity, in this case).

The drive controller model number and PCB codes are outlined in red.

Understand this: Simply replacing the PCB almost certainly wont fix a dead drive. If it does,
youve gotten lucky. Each drive ROM contains parameters and data unique to that particular
device if the parameters for your dead drive are different from those contained on the
donor PCB, it wont function.
In my case, I opted for just a PCB. In retrospect, a full drive might have been the better
option, but the purchase only set me back $22 and ~14 days while my part took the slowboat
from China. Swapping out the PCB eliminated the 12 beeps, but accomplished nothing else.
Beep-less, my drive sat mute spinning, but unrecognized in BIOS.
Your options at this point depend on what sort of HDD you have. Some hard drives have an
externally mounted ROM/NVRAM chip that can be removed and soldered on to a new PCB.
Other drives, like mine, incorporate the ROM into the controller. The only way to find out is
to go digging for information online, and youve got to apply a strong sort filter to estimate
the value of what youll find. A number of dubious websites advertise a PC3000 PCI card,
for example, but this is almost always a Chinese clone of the original product, and is far too
old to handle modern drives in any case. The real PC3000 UDMA test kit runs over $4000
far more than the typical cost of a data recovery.
After my simple PCB swap didnt work, I decided to try to repair the burned contacts on the
original board. Here, your options are to either buy a conductive ink pen or to use something a
bit more humble. I took the humble option, trotted over to an auto parts store, and picked up a
rear window defroster repair kit. I taped off the damaged contact, applied the conductive ink,
gave it 12 hours of drying time, fired up the drive

My repaired PCB. The burned contact is at the far lower right of the group
And nothing had changed. The drive still spun up, emitted twelve beeps, and spun back down.
That was my second major disappointment and it leads directly to the next step
Next page: Resist the urge to do something stupid
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/133294-raising-the-dead-can-a-regular-personrepair-a-damaged-hard-drive/2

Step 3: Resist the urge to do something stupid

Surf the internet for more than two minutes, and youll find people who recommend you do
one of the following things:

Stick your hard drive in the freezer

Pop your hard drive into the oven
Give it a few taps with a hammer or rubber mallet
People will swear by these options and promise you that theyve revived 15 drives just this
way. Dont listen. Im not claiming that no person ever brought a disk back to life by jamming
in amongst the frozen peas, but this strategy is far more likely to cause irreparable damage
than it is to miraculously affect repairs. Keeping the drive in a ziplock bag while in the freezer
wont help; condensation will form on the drive when you remove it from the bag prior to
firing it up again.

This is what happens when you take a drive out of a freezer whether you bagged it or not
Leaving the drive in the bag until its returned to ambient air temperature might prevent
condensation from forming on the platters or heads, but the point of the freezer trick is to run
the drive at a lower temperature.

Every repair attempt you make should be balanced against the chance of doing additional
damage. To that end, never open the enclosure. If putting your hard drive in the freezer is a
bad idea, opening it is infinitely worse. You are not qualified to adjust the alignment of heads
or platters that normally spin at 75 mph and are aligned to tolerances measured in
micrometers.
Step 4: Hire a professional
This is where I ended up. I talked to a number of data retrieval companies, including Datacent
and Secure Data Recovery Services. Datacent quoted me a $750 rate for drive head
replacement; Secure Data Recovery was less certain of the cause, but believed repair would
likely run between $1,200-$1,500. As of this writing, I havent decided what to do. Even after
extensive research, my objective visibility on Datacent (or any other data recovery firm) is
just about nil. If I opt for repair, Ill certainly report back on my experience, but ultimately I
have no way of knowing how difficult it will be for a properly equipped facility to recover my
files, how long it will take, or what constitutes a fair market rate.
With all of that said, heres a few tips on what to look for (and what to avoid).

No data, no fee: Avoid companies that insist on charging you for the privilege of
failing to provide a useful service.
Low-cost evaluation + return fee: Many firms offer a free diagnosis but will
charge relatively high postage to send the drive back. $25-$30 for an evaluation+postage
seems fairly reasonable, wed be cautious of companies charging $50 or more for the two
services combined.
Avoid broad estimates: No firm can completely diagnose a hard drive by remote,
but that doesnt mean they cant get an idea for whats wrong. Beware of companies that offer
estimates broad enough to buy a car with. At the very least, ask for estimates that fit the
typical cost of specific problems
Check the price of parts: The quotes we received typically included the cost of
replacement parts. Most companies also note, however, that difficult-to-find hardware may
still add additional cost. It doesnt hurt to see if you can self-source the part, particularly when
the cost of a donor drive or PCB is a very small fraction of the total recovery fee.
Step 5: Get a (better) backup solution

Ive learned two important lessons from this

failure. The first is that different models of hard drive are more and less user-friendly; careful
selection on my part when I bought the drive four years ago wouldve made it much easier to
recover my data. The second is that a better backup strategy wouldve made the first point
moot. Because I had a basic, episodic backup solution, much of my older data is safe. The
only data I lost was all the data related to ongoing projects that hadnt been published yet.
That stung. The difficulty of recovering my information in the intervening month only made
the situation that much more frustrating.

If you dont have a backup solution and you actually care about your data, get one. Theres no
guaranteed solution once the drive has failed and, unless you get lucky with a TVS burnout,
no easy fixes. A burned out drive is your ticket to a whole lot of website surfing, information
sifting, and one enormous headache from trying to separate My cousins uncles friends
neighbors dog knew a dude who threw his hard drive in a pool and it worked great from
real, reliable, data.
The forums and information at HDDGuru are a good place to start checking for information,
but dont be surprised if you have to check other places just to get an idea of what the problem
might be. These waters are largely uncharted, and dragons lurk in the deep.
PS. Dont do the freezer thing. Really.
Read: How ExtremeTechs authors back up, how to make your own NAS, and how to make
your own Windows Time Capsule

Home: latest software and reviews

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http://www.hddguru.com/
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How to repair a dead hard drive

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/storage/how-to-repair-a-dead-hard-drive-1037695
By Nick Odantzis November 19, 2011 Storage

Recover your hard drive: it's easier and cheaper than you think

PAGE 1 OF 2:
REPAIR A DEAD HARD DRIVE: WHERE TO START

When a hard drive goes bad, the first thing you'll probably do is have a good old curse at the
platter gods for picking on you. You then might decide to have a bit of a panic when you
realise that you didn't back up your files.
Shortly after sweating out a few pounds, you'll probably have a go at fixing it. Well, it's worth
a shot after all. But chances are, unless you know exactly what the problem is and have the
skills necessary to fix it, you're pretty much up poop alley.
If you're lucky and the disk head or motor hasn't been damaged, the problem could lie in the
controller board or printed circuit board (PCB). Often, when there's a power surge or the drive
overheats, it can damage the board. If this happens, then you can quite easily replace the PCB
with one that is working and bring your hard drive back to life.
A common sign that a PCB has been in the wars is a scorch mark, but sometimes there are no
visual cues to give the game away.

First things first

The PCB might not be the problem after all, then, but it's the one area of the drive that you
should tackle first when something goes wrong. After all, a replacement PCB from a specialist
like www.hdd-parts.com will set you back around 25 delivered to your door, so it's a
relatively inexpensive way of fixing your drive.

If you were feeling plucky, you could just go to a data specialist and get a man in a white coat
in a lab to carefully take your entire hard drive apart and put it all back together, in the hope
of rescuing your drive, but you'll be looking at a bill for at least 1,000. Unless you really,
really need the files on that drive, you'll avoid this route and go down the PCB road first.

Back to life
Does it really work? Well, we tried it on a drive that had suddenly stopped working one day.
There were no horrible clicking sounds, it simply wouldn't power on the thing was lifeless.
So, we replaced the PCB with an identical working one and managed to get it working again.
This wasn't after trying it on many different drives this was the first one we'd worked on, so
it wasn't a fluke.
It's worth mentioning that if this works for you, and there's a pretty good chance that it will,
once it's up and running again, don't get lazy and put it back in your PC. If it failed once,
there's a probability that it will fail again. Our advice is to transfer all your sacred files to
another drive and then bin it or pop it in the trophy cabinet.
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/storage/how-to-repair-a-dead-harddrive-1037695/2
PAGE 2 OF 2:
STEP-BY-STEP: FIX YOUR HARD DRIVE

1. Take drive details down

Get a replacement PCB identical to your current one, otherwise it won't work. Note down the
model number (below the S/N), the P/N, the Firmware code, Date code and Site code, as well
as the Main Controller IC number, which is located on the main square black chip in the
middle of the actual PCB. In our case it was the six-digit code near the top, above the word
'SEAGATE'.

2. Search for it online

Go to hdd-parts.com and enter the model of the dead drive (in our case, it's the 11-digit code
two lines down from the top of the drive) into the search box at the top of the page. This won't
give you the exact model, but look through the list of results and find the drive that matches
all the numbers you noted down in the first step. Now, buy it!

3. Check your parts

The new PCB should take about six to 10 working days to arrive through the post. When the
mail man comes round, you should receive a box with a replacement working PCB inside, as
well as a torx screwdriver and installation instructions not that you'll need this last bit. If
something is amiss, email the company and they will get back to you within a couple of days.

4. Remove the old PCB

On top of the PCB you'll see five screws connecting it to the hard drive. Undo them using the
torx screwdriver included in the kit, making sure that you don't lose any of them. They're
pretty tiny, so once you've managed to remove them all, place them into a zip-lock bag so
they don't go astray if you decide to have a break between now and the next step.

5. Attach new PCB

Make sure you ground yourself an easy way of doing this is to put on an anti-static wrist
band and then carefully take the replacement PCB out of its anti-static bag. Pop it onto your

old hard drive, making sure you line it up with the original screw holes. Take the screws from
your zip-lock bag and screw the PCB down, ensuring each screw is reasonably tight.

6. Try out your drive

Turn on your PC. Then connect your hard drive to your dock, plug it into the PC and power it
up. If the problem with your old drive was due to a faulty PCB, replacing it should now allow
your drive to be recognised properly. Access the fi les you need, then copy them to your PC.
Don't attempt to use the drive once this is done: chances are it might turn faulty in the future.

Hard Drive Repair Software to Solve Drive Data

Loss Problems
http://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/other-recovery-software/hard-drive-repair-software.htm

How Hard Drive Data Get Lost?

When hard drive data is lost, the first thing that you must check is whether it is a physical hard
drive problem to stop you from accessing the data, or just a logical problem to cause the data loss
like deletion, format or hard drive partition loss, etc. In fact, the latter situation can be simply
repaired by best hdd repair software. While to repair the former, you need to send your hard drive
to the data recovery service.
Why can data lost from hard drive be recovered? Lost data was not really damaged, even if you
have already emptied the Recycle Bin, used Shift Delete, or the hard disk has been standard/quick
formatted, or partition is corrupted or lost. Only file system is changed in the disk. Like in a huge
library, the books are still on the shelves, only the catalog which recorded the location of books is
lost. And the library is the hard drive, the catalog is the file system of operating system, books are
the clusters of hard disk.

check and repair disk error in Windows 10

Before trying a third-party hard drive repair software to recover data from a corrupted hard drive,
we recommend you to try Windows built-in tool to check and repair disk error first. If it works,
you can easily access your data. Heres how to do it in Windows 10:
1. Open Computer, right-click the partition or drive that you want to check and click Properties.
2. Click Tools, under Error-checking, click Check now to see whether there exist any errors in
your
drive.
3. Select Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of back
sectors.
4. Click Start.

Data Recovery Software to Repair Hard Drive Data Loss

Problems
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional is a best hard drive data recovery software to solve
all data loss problems including software crash, raw file system, formatted or damaged hard disk,
virus attack, lost partitions and other unknown reasons under Windows. It recovers data from
formatted partitions with original file names and storage paths.
Win
Mac

DownloadWin Version Buy It Now$69.95 $89.95

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and select the file types you want to recover. Then
click "Next" button to move to the next step.

Step 2. Select the disk where you lost your data and click "Scan" button, the software will quickly
scan the selected disk to find all your target files. If you lost your partition, select "Lost Disk
Drives" and "Scan" to continue the recovery process.

Step 3. After scan, you can preview all the listed recoverable files one by one and select out those
you want. Then, click "Recover" button to get them back once. Here you should save all the
recovered files on another disk to avoid data overwriting.

Win
Mac

DownloadWin Version Buy It Now$69.95 $89.95

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