Nearly all faults fall into one of 4 fault categories and the category of fault you have dictates everything about recovering your data, including whether to leave the device connected; whether any recovery software can assist with the process; and what will be required to complete the recovery of your data.
The faults that worsen with time as long as they remain powered on are mechanical faults; however, logical faults don’t worsen with time as long as they remain powered on. The reason so much recoverable data becomes irrecoverably lost when a user fails to identify the type of fault their device is suffering from is because users treat both mechanical & logical faults as being identical in terms of worsening over time.
The moving parts. A “click” on your hard disk drive (HDD) is often due to a failure of one or more of the heads. This can happen when the servo system fails and the heads cannot locate their position on the platter. When this occurs, it will create a rhythmic clicking sound. A ‘head crash’ (the heads contact the platter, usually after an impact while spinning) creates either a scraping or grinding noise. The more times you hear the noise, the greater the damage to the surface of the platters will be. A ‘stuck’ spindle motor or “stiction” also causes a buzzing or whining noise as the spindle motor attempts to start.
These failures require immediate action. Once the hard disk begins to click, shut down the drive as quickly as possible. The reason for this is because each revolution of the drive’s platters continues to cause damage until the drive is turned off. Therefore, once you have shut down the drive, do not attempt to use recovery techniques. All forms of recovery will need to take place within the confines of the hard drive itself; i.e., replacing one or all of the heads with donor heads, transplanting a working motor into the failing drive and/or a replacement platter, and then using imaging software in controlled small passes to recover the user’s data.
A failure on the printed circuit board can be caused by an electrical surge, a failed component or just normal ageing. Failure symptoms include silence: no spinning, no lights, and the computer detects nothing. There can be a visible burn mark and/or a smell present.
Board faults are among the more recoverable, but modern drives’ circuit boards have an “adaptive” section (unique to each individual drive) that includes the firmware configuration stored in a Read-Only Memory (ROM) chip. The adaptive data in the ROM is what uniquely identifies the original drive’s settings. So, a simple swap of a donor circuit board from another identical drive will not work unless you also transfer the original ROM data to the new circuit board. That is why most people who tried swapping out their drive’s circuit boards at home (a technique popularised by DIY enthusiasts a decade ago) were unsuccessful, and some actually made the problem worse than when they started.
Each drive contains firmware modules within a service area located on the disk’s surface. In some cases, these modules become corrupted which prevents access to them. If this occurs, your drive may appear as if it is working normally and will spin up properly, will produce all normal operational sounds but will report either no capacity available, report a model number string (that is blank), or report a size (in MB/GB) that doesn’t make sense. Seagate is often identified as a manufacturer whose drives exhibit this behaviour, however all manufacturers develop similar problems with their respective products.
Fortunately the users’ data has not been touched. Repairing or replacing faulty modules (through the drive’s diagnostic interface) until the device is detected properly will allow an image to be made of the device. Troubleshooting by repeatedly powering the device on/off is the greatest risk in recovery.
No physical damage occurred whatsoever. A deleted file, a corrupted partition table, a formatted disk/volume, a corrupted file system, a failed update. The disk is perfectly fine, however, the disk’s description structure regarding where everything lives is broken. In this category alone would we consider using software, and here the urgency arises because of the potential to overwrite your data rather than losing your data due to a failing disk.
Regardless of what category you fall into, one drive will cost from £300 +VAT after a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic and a written quotation, and the diagnostic exists solely to provide a determination of which of the categories you are experiencing prior to spending any money.
Four: mechanical (head, motor, platters), electronic (circuit board), firmware (drive’s service area code) and logical (files deleted from drive, corrupt partition, damaged file system). The first three are hardware related issues while the fourth is an issue which can be resolved by software.
Just listen to your hard drive. If you hear clicking or ticking sounds then the heads cannot read servo data. Grinding or scraping sounds mean the heads have made contact with the platters. A buzzing noise when there should be spinning indicates that the motor is faulty. Any one of those signs indicates mechanical failure and gets progressively worse as long as you continue to run the unit on power. In all cases switch off your hard drive immediately.
Most often, yes; board failures are typically amongst the more recoverable types of failure. However, modern boards contain adaptive data unique to each specific hard disk in a ROM chip, therefore simply swapping a donor board for the failed board will usually fail because you must transfer the original ROM from the old board.
That is a firmware problem. The drive will read its own firmware from a reserved area called the service area. If this can’t be read because a firmware module is damaged, it can’t provide a correct description of itself. Thus it usually reports zero bytes or some other incorrect amount, while reporting no problems at all. Data stored on the disk should be mostly intact.
Hard drives (not solid state) start from £300 + VAT, and this price is fixed once we complete our free 48-hour diagnosis. This test tells us what sort of problem you have with your failed unit and then we give you a written quote. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data; for donor work we get paid a 50% deposit once you’ve decided to let us attempt to recover your files, and the balance is paid only once successful.