While a “dead” hard drive may seem like the end of the road, it’s usually less permanent than you think. Sometimes the problem isn’t with the drive itself; it could be with the cable, or the issue lies in your computer. On occasion the circuit board on your drive fails, but the data is perfectly intact. And occasionally the physical parts of your drive have failed. The first step is to figure out which one you’re dealing with before you end up damaging anything further. Here’s how to find out which type of “dead” your drive is, what’s safe to try and how labs recover data from drives that won’t power on.
Mounting failure, failure to spin, clicking, or no detection of the device would normally be considered “dead” to almost everyone, however each of those issues represents a completely separate problem and solution. A few safe tests will help you understand which of them you’re working against, and often the data is still available.
Before assuming the worst, find out which type of “dead” you have, since they’re not the same. A drive that powers up but won’t mount (you can hear it spinning, but your files don’t show up) often has a logical fault, such as a corrupt file system or a lost partition, and is mechanically fine. A drive that won’t spin at all usually has a board or motor problem. A drive that clicks or beeps has a mechanical fault with the heads. And a drive that is completely undetected and silent could be any of the above. The symptom points to the fault, and the fault decides what is safe to do next.
If the drive is not making any unusual noise, a few safe checks are worth trying. Test a different cable and a different port, and on an external drive, a different power adapter: dead-looking drives are often dead cables. Also plug the drive into a completely separate computer to rule out the machine. With an external drive, the drive inside may be fine while the circuit board in the enclosure has died, although if you are unsure, leave that to a lab. And check Disk Management or Disk Utility: if the drive shows up there at all, even as RAW or unallocated, it is a positive sign and usually a recoverable situation. What you should not do is any of this repeatedly on a drive that clicks or is silent.
Three things turn a recoverable dead drive into a lost one. First, opening it up to inspect the inner workings: the “pop the lid and have a look” instinct is fatal, because platters are sensitive to dust at a microscopic level and home or office air ruins them. Second, running recovery software on a physically failing drive: software cannot repair damaged hardware, and hours of scanning wear a sick drive down further. Third, folk remedy fixes such as putting the drive in the freezer or banging it, both of which do more harm than good. If the drive is genuinely dead in a hardware sense, the only thing that helps is to stop trying: each time you continue, you spend recoverability you’ll never get back.
Professional recovery reverses the home approach: instead of running a dying drive, we repair it just enough to get one good, clean read from it. What this involves depends on the fault: if the board has failed, we repair or rebuild it and transfer the original ROM across; if the heads have failed or the motor has seized, we fix them with matched donor parts; and if there is a firmware fault, we correct it through the drive’s service area. Once the drive is readable, we image it read-only, sector by sector, to a healthy drive with the weakest areas last, then rebuild your files from that image, never the failing original. It is the same process behind our data recovery in general, and a single dead drive is from £300 +VAT after a free diagnostic.
In most cases, yes. Most dead drives aren’t as dead as they seem; the data often remains intact, and the issue is typically something else entirely such as the board, heads, motor or firmware. Sometimes it’s simply the cable, and other times it’s the computer. Recovery involves fixing the drive enough to access the drive, then creating a read-only image of it. It is the continued attempts at recovery, not the failure itself, that harm the data.
The first step is to determine what has happened based on the symptoms. For example, if the drive spins but will not mount it is likely a logical fault with otherwise healthy mechanical components. If the drive does not spin at all there is a good chance it is either a board or motor problem. If the drive “clicks” or “beeps,” it is safe to assume that the heads have failed. And finally, if it is completely silent and cannot be located by the system, it could be any of these things. Testing with a different cable, port and computer will easily eliminate many of the easy-to-eliminate problems.
No. The disks inside of a hard drive are extremely sensitive to dust at an almost microscopic level. When you open a hard drive in normal room air you introduce contaminants onto the disk surfaces which can permanently damage them. This is precisely why hard drives are only allowed to be opened under strictly controlled conditions. Once you have opened up a drive, you are usually converting a recoverable drive into an irrecoverable drive.
No. The “freezer method” for recovering a dead drive is nothing short of an urban legend that will do more harm than good; the condensation and thermal shock associated with attempting this can cause even more damage to the drive, and does absolutely nothing to correct the actual problem with the drive. Additionally, there is no benefit to banging/hitting/shaking a dead drive; if a drive is physically dead, the only solution is to stop and get it properly recovered.
The cost for one failed hard drive is from £300 plus VAT to allow reading and an image of that disk read-only. We cannot give an accurate quotation until we have diagnosed the fault (board, heads, motor or firmware) and as such, we provide a free diagnosis and a fixed written quote prior to charging for any repairs. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Do not attempt to use your disk or open it up, if it does not make a noise, clicks, or is not recognised by your computer. Send it to us and we can recover the contents of your drive on the bench. We will inform you of the contents of your drive along with a free diagnosis and a fixed price quotation before attempting recovery.