Hard Drive Recovery

[yorky321]

Long story short my sisters 2.5" 500GB drive out of her laptop failed and of course no matter how many times I said to back up her data...she did'nt. So the data recovery fun begins (as it has/had University assignments on it)

 

So far this is what has gone down:

 

- Plugged drive into my PC

- Makes "Ticking/Beeping" sound approx 4-5 times before giving up

- Drive shows up in Disk Management as "Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialized" 

- Fails to initialize if I try, comes up with I/O Error

- Tried multiple pieces of data recovery software but as the drive can't be detected in "my computer" I cant select it

 

Therefore I opened it up to check if the head assembly was stuck but unfortunately it was in the proper "park" position, and all heads were accounted for.

 

I then removed the PCB and found that the connections had oxidation on them so I cleaned them up with an eraser (Now silver and shiny). After doing all this I plugged it back in only to hear the same sound and same results in windows.

 

I have now resorted to the freezer trick(had it in a zip bag for 4 hours) with again no such luck. 

 

The last thing I can think of trying is to find a donor pcb to replace the current one with but none of the IC's look damaged or burnt out to my knowledge.

 

Here is a short video with the audible ticking/ beeping sound.

 

http://youtu.be/-CpCYsmN7nU

 

I know this is an annoying subject but if anyone has any other thoughts / Ideas it would be much appreciated!

 

Cheers   

[DarrenP]

Long story short my sisters 2.5" 500GB drive out of her laptop failed and of course no matter how many times I said to back up her data...she did'nt. So the data recovery fun begins (as it has/had University assignments on it)

 

So far this is what has gone down:

 

- Plugged drive into my PC

- Makes "Ticking/Beeping" sound approx 4-5 times before giving up

- Drive shows up in Disk Management as "Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialized" 

- Fails to initialize if I try, comes up with I/O Error

- Tried multiple pieces of data recovery software but as the drive can't be detected in "my computer" I cant select it

 

Therefore I opened it up to check if the head assembly was stuck but unfortunately it was in the proper "park" position, and all heads were accounted for.

 

I then removed the PCB and found that the connections had oxidation on them so I cleaned them up with an eraser (Now silver and shiny). After doing all this I plugged it back in only to hear the same sound and same results in windows.

 

I have now resorted to the freezer trick(had it in a zip bag for 4 hours) with again no such luck. 

 

The last thing I can think of trying is to find a donor pcb to replace the current one with but none of the IC's look damaged or burnt out to my knowledge.

 

I know this is an annoying subject but if anyone has any other thoughts / Ideas it would be much appreciated!

 

Cheers   

As soon as you opened it. You ruined any chance of you being able to recover any data off it. You're going to have to call a company and get them to recover the data off of it. I even doubt that they would be able to do anything. 

[yorky321]

As soon as you opened it. You ruined any chance of you being able to recover any data off it. You're going to have to call a company and get them to recover the data off of it. I even doubt that they would be able to do anything. 

 

Umm are you sure about that? The thousands of Youtube HDD repair videos beg to differ 

[Tech_Dreamer]

Ouch! the moment you opened that baby up, it's literally gone, usually repair guys do that in a vaccum chamber with little or no dust,

you'r best chance is shipping it to a proffesional date recovery company. the 4-5 clicking noise means that the drive's dead already and riddled with bad sectors. opening it up was somewhat of a worst mistake you made here,

 

your best chance as i said is to look for proffesional help, usually the company scans the platters and makes a customised alogrithm

  and make a seperate software to extractthe data from the recoverable sectors (its gonna cost more than what you use to buy a newer hdd)

 

edit: i dont wanna make you loose all your hope, it depends on your luck,if you have an exact replica hdd same model , try flipping over the components (mostly wont work) but you'll need to try.

 

shocked ninja

[DarrenP]

Umm are you sure about that? The thousands of Youtube HDD repair videos beg to differ 

I'm dead certain. I can tell you right now that your HDD was vacuum sealed. When you open it. You've killed it. If any dust or anything gets on your platters or heads the HDD is done. Call any data recovery company.  

[DarrenP]

Ouch! the moment you opened that baby up, it's literally gone, usually repair guys do that in a vaccum chamber with little or no dust,

you'r best chance is shipping it to a proffesional date recovery company. the 4-5 clicking noise means that the drive's dead already and riddled with bad sectors. opening it up was somewhat of a worst mistake you made here,

 

your best chance as i said is to look for proffesional help, usually the company scans the platters and makes a customised alogrithm

  and make a seperate software to extractthe data from the recoverable sectors (its gonna cost more than what you use to buy a newer hdd)

 

 

 

shocked ninja

Get your wallet out though. It's gonna cost hundreds if not a couple of thousand. 

[yorky321]

What about videos like this... 

?

 

And yeah the assignments are due in a week though so she'll just have to re-do them so no big deal, definitely not worth $100's + for hard drive recovery . Just thought I'd see what I could do before she pulls a couple of all nighters lol.

[DarrenP]

What about videos like this... 

?

 

And yeah the assignments are due in a week though so she'll just have to re-do them so no big deal, definitely not worth $100's + for hard drive recovery . Just thought I'd see what I could do before she pulls a couple of all nighters lol.

... You've got to be kidding me... 

[alpenwasser]

Yeah, opening up a modern HDD is usually not that great of an idea.

With older models the trick can work pretty well, but the problem

with modern ones is that the heads are much closer to the platters

than they used to be, so it takes much finer particles of dust to

scratch the platters and/or the head. Older disks have their heads

further away from the disk, so it's not as much of an issue.

Having said that, I've never actually seen experimental data about

it, might need to try this out with an unused HDD at some point just

out of curiousity, see how long it takes until it breaks once I've

opened it.

 

I'm dead certain. I can tell you right now that your HDD was vacuum sealed. When you open it. You've killed it. If any dust or anything gets on your platters or heads the HDD is done. Call any data recovery company.

Not vacuum, but clean-room sealed. The disk heads hover on a cushion

of gas between the platters and the heads. If there's a vacuum inside

the disk, that won't work and the heads will crash into the platters

(usually it's just air, but recently Hitachi brought to market drives

filled with Helium). It's the same principle as in a fluid dynamic

bearing. That's also why you often have an opening to the outside

on HDDs for pressure equalization (with a filter, of course, or a

membrane which can move). At least that was the case in those disks

of mine which I've opened.

[yorky321]

Yeah, opening up a modern HDD is usually not that great of an idea.

With older models the trick can work pretty well, but the problem

with modern ones is that the heads are much closer to the platters

than they used to be, so it takes much finer particles of dust to

scratch the platters and/or the head. Older disks have their heads

further away from the disk, so it's not as much of an issue.

Having said that, I've never actually seen experimental data about

it, might need to try this out with an unused HDD at some point just

out of curiousity, see how long it takes until it breaks once I've

opened it.

 

Not vacuum, but clean-room sealed. The disk heads hover on a cushion

of gas between the platters and the heads. If there's a vacuum inside

the disk, that won't work and the heads will crash into the platters

(usually it's just air, but recently Hitachi brought to market drives

filled with Helium). It's the same principle as in a fluid dynamic

bearing. That's also why you often have an opening to the outside

on HDDs for pressure equalization (with a filter, of course, or a

membrane which can move). At least that was the case in those disks

of mine which I've opened.

 

Thank you very much for explaining it in depth. Quite confusing when there are literally thousands of videos on Youtube of people repairing drives themselves and getting positive results without having to pay someone thousands of dollars. I obviously knew about dust etc but it was a risk I was willing to take since it was basically a last resort anyway and I like pulling things apart haha. Oh well it looks as if I'll just be replacing her drive with an SSD and she can re-do the assignments.

 

Thanks again, its good to have someone in the LTT Forum that gives good responses, with actual facts rather than somewhat mocking the OP for not understanding.