Hard Disk Drive Failure

There can be many causes of hard drive failure. To successfully recover the data from a faulty hard disk drive it is first necessary to correctly diagnose the problem(s) it is suffering from and repair the hard drive.

1. MECHANICAL
Failure Symptoms:
– The hard drive may make a regular clicking noise when it is first powered on. This will last for approximately 20 seconds before the disk powers down.
– The hard drive may beep when first powered on.
– The drive will not be recognised by the computer
– Listen to an audio file of a hard disk drive with a mechanical fault
– Watch some YouTube footage of several types of hard drive failure

Causes:
– The hard drive has received a knock: for example, it may have been dropped, or if it is in a laptop, the laptop may have received a bang.
– Mechanical failure is not exclusive to hard drives receiving knocks, hard drives can fail at any time – especially the older they get.

2. LOGICAL
Failure Symptoms:
– Files and Folders will not open or have become inaccessible
– Files and Folders will not copy correctly – often CRC (Cylical Redundancy Check) errors will be reported
– Files and Folders may have been deleted or overwritten

Causes:
– Areas of the hard drive may not be readable due to the development of bad sectors.
– Data structures on the hard drive may have been corrupted due to (eg) the disk not being ejected from the system correctly.

3. ELECTRONIC
Failure Symptoms:
– The drive will not spin when it is powered on
– Sometimes the hard drive will get very hot
– It will not be recognised by the computer

Causes:
– A power surge has caused damage to the drive
– The wrong power cable has been plugged in.

4. FIRMWARE
Failure Symptoms:
– The drive will be recognised incorrectly by the computer
– Often the capacity of the drive is also reported incorrectly

Causes:
– The firmware (or ‘microcode’) that runs the drive has become corrupted. Often this is a result of software bugs that exist in the firmware.

Data Clinic’s Hard Drive Repair and Recovery Service

“Thankyou! … We made the mistake of sending our broken hard disk to [another company] and after 4 weeks theyd got nowhere. We decided to try Data Clinic because you’d been recommend. Our data was recovered in a week … we should have come to you first.” TA Print

We are able to recover data from almost ANY data loss situation.

Our data recovery service is unique: we GUARANTEE we are able to repair MORE hard disk drives and recover MORE data from MORE failures that any other UK data recovery company. We make this guarantee because we are the only UK data recovery company that has a recovery agreement with Seagate – the world’s largest manufacture of hard disks. So while other recovery companies struggle to find parts and recovery processes that work, we don’t because we have access to these parts and recovery processes already. More on why we are the best…

Regional Recovery Centres

We have offices in London (2), Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Northampton, Sheffield and Sunderland. Additionally, we have a free UK collection service. Call us now on 0871 977 2525.