Dead hard drive

[Drive Blind]

Hi,

I was asked to look at a laptop for a mate. It wont boot cos the hdd isnt recognised at bios level. Tried it in another PC and it was still not recognised.

Is it worth opening up for a look at the heads - maybe stuck heads? - or is it more likely a fault on the pcb? I've heard of swapping pcb's bring a drive back to life.

The fact it's not even recognised at bios level makes me think it's a lost cause.

There are many years of family pics that they havent backed up on the drive.
Its a Hitachi 2.5inch 120Gb sata drive.

Any advice much appreciated

[Morningside]

There is a recovery expert on here but I understand that some require the correct torque on the screws otherwise it warps and will not start up again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CAn22TiVV0

[TheExcession]

Can you hear/feel the platter motor spin up? I'm assuming you hear no clicking from the drive once the system tries to boot?

A you say the BIOS issue points towards the control circuitry, I wouldn't open it all up just yet.

A control PCB swap might be all you need to get you up and running.

If the motor spins and you hear clicking then the freezer/oven route might get you going, other than that sounds like a control pcb issue.

[Drive Blind]

not sure if the platters are spinning - i'll need to hook it up again and listen more closely
definitely making clicking noises

[Magic919]

I recovered a similarly dead drive by buying a used one off eBay and swapping the PCB. Cost me about a tenner.

[Bobley]

My six month old Acer has just done the same thing. I dropped it back in a PC world for warranty repair and as expected they'll just fit a new hard drive. They did offer to recover the contents of the drive though for £80? I've said to give it a try.

Has anyone got any experience of re installing Office? I just paid through the nose on line when I turned the PC on for the first time. I've got no disks or paperwork but I guess the installation will be logged on my Microsoft user account?

[Drive Blind]

Morningside said:

There is a recovery expert on here but I understand that some require the correct torque on the screws otherwise it warps and will not start up again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CAn22TiVV0

at 2:25 in that video, it sounds the same as that

[marshalla]

Magic919 said:

I recovered a similarly dead drive by buying a used one off eBay and swapping the PCB. Cost me about a tenner.

Doesn't work very well on newer drives due to changes in the way the firmware maps bad blocks and holds alignment data.

[otherman]

I wouldn't open it up. Get any dust in there and it's done anyway. When you put it in another machine was that as a boot drive, or just as a secondary? It might just read on a machine that's booting from a good drive.

[Drive Blind]

otherman said:

I wouldn't open it up. Get any dust in there and it's done anyway. When you put it in another machine was that as a boot drive, or just as a secondary? It might just read on a machine that's booting from a good drive.

as a secondary on my own pc.

[Funk]

My advice would be "Don't fk about with it any further". There are specialist companies who can get the data back for you - most will only charge if successful.

A colleague of mine gave me a disk that wasn't working and asked if I could do anything to get the data back. I'm pretty good with most things and suspected a dead caddy - usually taking it out and putting the disk in a machine or another caddy will allow you to get the data. I was partly right but the second I saw this I put it back together and told her to go to a specialist...

Inside the caddy:



Power connector:



The connector on the disk:





It's worth knowing your limits, especially where precious (un-backed-up) data is concerned!

(They got her data back....cost? £400. Wedding photos should be saved in more than one place...!)

[TheExcession]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I have experience of doing exactly this, it was with an IBM DeskStar drive (Death Star), it had the click of death.

I froze the drive and with it cold I could get anywhere between 1 to 3 minutes of read access off it.

The key is knowing exactly where to go on the drive to get the data you need. In this case it was for a mate who ran a farm business, so all I went for were the database accounts files.

It took me about 3 days of freezing-reading-oven/freezing-reading-oven/freezing-reading-oven etc etc, but eventually I managed to get all the important data off it.

It's a massive pain in the arse to perform, so if you can afford it give it to a pro, if not then prepare to have the case open on your desktop PC, all the cables hanging out ready.

Grab the drive out of the freezer, run to your PC, plug it in, boot up, go straight to the drive, select what you want and try to copy over to the PC. Once it fails, lob it in the oven for 20 mins at gas mark something to dry off all the condensation then back in the freezer again.

Each time take a close look at the files you copied off and then next time carry on where you left off.

It really is an utter nightmare, but you might get somewhere with this approach.

[Drive Blind]

i did a bit of googling and you tubing last night so I've gained a few ideas if required. Also found a similar dead hitachi drive at work that i took the cover off to see what i'm dealing with.

The ball's now back in my mates court, if he's willing to stump up for a pro to recover his data or if he wants to risk my amateur attempt at it.

I'll let you know how i get on,

[Funk]

Do not open the disk itself up, you'll fk it totally.