How to Recover Data from a Broken Hard Drive

How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

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How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive18. May 2007, 3:09 Uhr Pablo Garcia If you are reading this article you are probably desperate, but before you panic let me tell you that there is hope, and there is probably more hope than you think…. Even if your hard drive has an internal mechanical malfunction, data can be recovered without having to send the hard Data backup and recovery drive to a data recovery service. Yes! you heard right, I’m Data Center Aligns IT Resources To About Business Needs & Gives Good Benefit sure you have come across articles that will tell you how What is GEEKYPROJECTS all about? Cisco.com/in/DataCenter to recover data from a damaged partition, you will find a Geeky Projects is a site conceived in hopes of ton of those on the web, but when your hard drive starts gathering and documenting interesting projects. malfunctioning none of those articles are going to help We focus on creating quality articles that help you solve your problem, This article will. you become more efficient. more about »

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Corrupted file system RSS Posts

If the hard drive gets detected by Windows and can be accessed but you do not see any data inside, or you get a RSS Comments message saying that the drive needs to be formatted. You probably have a corrupted file system in you hands. The solution for this is a good file recovery software. I’ve tried many, and my choice is “Recover My Files” from GetData. Many of the recovery suites out there claim that they can recover data and they probably can, but can Meta they find everything that you want to recover? Most likely not! This software can. But don’t take my word for it, download the free version from their website and give it a try, you will see what I’m talking about. The free version is a demo so it will not allow full functionality but, it will let you see what it can recover and will even Monthly Archives let you recover some small files. This software is included in my article: Best Data Recovery Software. September 2011

The software does have its drawbacks. If your file type is not on their list it basically can’t be recovered. If you August 2011 want to recover a file with an uncommon extension that is not on their list you are out of luck. Their list is June 2011 extensive though. Make sure you run the “complete File Search” and not the Fast, as the later is basically worthless. The complete will give you more than you need, even stuff that you erased from your hard drive years May 2011 ago. It will take a long time depending on the size of the hard drive. The program will not allow you to install it April 2011 on the same hard drive where the data needs to be recovered from for obvious reasons. So be prepared to install March 2011 the software on a secondary drive like a USB Flash Drive or External Hard Drive. There are also a free alternatives which work as well or even better than “Recover My Files”. If your disk read my article: How To Repair A February 2011

Damaged Partition or MBR. If you are unable to recover the damaged partition but still want to recover your files, January 2011 read my article: How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software. December 2010

Clicking noise of death October 2010

If your hard drive is making the common “clung… clung… clung…” sound your head are having trouble reading September 2010 the contents of the drive. This is one of the worst problems you can have since the arm of the drive is not December 2009 functioning properly and therefore cannot read the disks inside. As some of you might know this is not repairable, November 2009 at least not at home, Hard drives need to be opened in dust free environments, and by specialized personnel, so do not even attempt to open it if you want your data back!!!. Many people will just give up at this point and send May 2009 hard drive to a data recovery service. However, before you do that and spend an arm and a leg, there is March 2008 something you can do. I have written an article just for this: How To Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is May 2007 Damaged April 2007

Hard drive does not get detected Recent Comments 24.09.11, 18:03: Best Data Recovery Software - Top 10 List If the computer does not detect the hard drive, or the computer just does not want to turn on when the hard (from Kelsey) drive is connected to it, you might have a bad hard drive board. This is the big circuit board located at the 22.09.11, 11:17: Setup a Clonezilla Server on Ubuntu (from bottom of your drive. These easily replaceable boards tend to get damaged over time due to the heat generated Cory)

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by the hard drive itself. I will tell you how to replace this board with the following solution: 13.09.11, 22:35: Windows Won't Connect to the Internet - Corrupt Winsock Fix (from Chris) There are a number of places on the web that will sell you these boards. If you can’t find it or you are a cheap 13.09.11, 07:31: How to Install VMware 7 on Ubuntu 11.04 bastard you can always resort to eBay and buy a used hard drive with the same model number as yours, remove (from Cyrano) the board from the used drive, and use it on broken one. This will probably cost you less than purchasing the 10.09.11, 04:35: How to Recover Data Even When Hard board alone. If your hard drive is old it makes more sense to buy another hard drive, on the other hand if the Drive is Damaged (from Prashant) hard drive is new you are better off buying the board. These boards run around $50 each. If you decide to 09.09.11, 18:26: How to Install VMware 7 on Ubuntu 11.04 purchase another hard drive or the board alone, make sure you are getting the exact same board! I cannot (from Pablo Garcia) stress this enough. You can have drives with the same brands and specifications with slight variations on their 09.09.11, 07:31: Setup a Clonezilla Server on Ubuntu (from board and consequently on their firmware, if this is the case the board will not work, so make sure you are magnezyle) getting exactly what you need before pressing that “buy now” button! 09.09.11, 04:46: Setup a Clonezilla Server on Ubuntu (from mansoor)

07.09.11, 09:22: How to Format a USB External Hard Drive for Linux (from wpteddy) Hard drive gets detected but still does not work 06.09.11, 21:30: How to Install VMware 7 on Ubuntu 11.04 If Windows detects the hard drive but it can’t be accessed, won’t give you the option to format it, or its (from Cyrano) properties. You probably have dirty contacts on your board. Usually when this happens you do not hear the famous “clicking noise of death” noise, but rather a repetitive “rrrrrr rrrrrr” sound, as if the hard drive is reading the same data over and over, or you do not hear any sound at all. It is important to mention that this behavior does involve the computer detecting the drive but DOES NOT involve the “clicking noise of death”. To solve this problem try the following: Remove the main board from the bottom of the hard drive and clean the bottom contacts. That board that you see underneath the drive is actually sitting on top of un-soldered contacts. Many Hard Drives operate at high temperatures, and this tends to melt the circuit board’s coating. When this happens this coating will spill over these contacts, and since they are not soldered their dirty metal surfaces will no longer touch. To solve this, remove the screws from the board and flip it. You will see a row of contacts usually in more than one location. Rub the surface of the contacts with a pencil eraser, just as if you were erasing something you wrote. This will actually clean those contacts better than any other method. Screw the board back in place and try it. (If your hard drive happens to have pin connectors rather than flat ones, disregard this tip and buy a new board.)

Clicking noise of death (Last Resort Solution)

This trick will actually work 60% of the cases, so you do have a good probability of getting your data back. I have to warn you that after freezing your hard drive there is also a good chance that the hard drive won’t work ever again, therefore this procedure should only be attempted as a very last resort.

1 – Place the Hard Drive inside a Zip Lock bag and put it in the freezer for about 2 hours.

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2 – After that take it out and connect it to the computer as fast as you can so that it does not have time to warm up. Make sure that you do not remove the hard drive out of the bag and that you open it as little as possible when connecting it to the power and data cables, so that outside air doesn’t come in and create condensation on the drive.

3 - Turn your computer on, look for your data and take it out as fast as you possibly can. Time is key here because you do not know if that drive is going to ever work again. Make sure you do this on a fast computer that does not take to long to boot up, if possible connect the hard drive to an external USB enclosure so that you do not waste time with the computer booting up. Also make sure you know the exact location of your data; is better if you go to straight to the folder rather than using Windows search utility, as searching the drive will heat it up faster due to the amount of work the arm will have to make. Drives usually work for a few minutes and stop working once they heat up. So hurry!!!

4 – If after freezing the hard drive and connecting it to the computer you are still not able to access it and you still hear the noise, hold the drive in your hand and, without taking it out of the bag, tap it with your knuckles on one side to see if this releases the heads, you obviously have to do this while the hard drive is powered on and connected to the computer.

Final Thoughts

If none of these tips work for you and you still want your data back is time to send your drive to a data recovery service, there are number of those on the web, I have never actually tried one, but some of them will charge you a flat fee regardless of the problem. However, these services will not guarantee your back all of the time, in fact most of them regardless of what they claim, will just have a 75% to 80% success rate. There are some things you just can’t recover from, like an arm scratching the whole surface of a plate. Best thing is to back up your data regularly. I suggest you read my article on building your own NAS server

*** Here at GeekyProjects we have been receiving hard drives for a while from all over the world and recovering their data in exchange for donations to the site. (We even received one from a soldier stationed in Afghanistan once!). However, lately our focus has shifted towards the website itself and we no longer have the time to continue with the service. Nevertheless, we have decided to share our knowledge with the public in a series of articles, The following are the links to some of them: ***

How to Recover Data Even When the Hard Drive is Damaged

How to Repair a Damaged Partition Table or MBR

Best Data Recovery Software – Top 10 List

How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software

How to Retrieve Files From a Dead Computer

How to Recover Your Files When Windows Won’t Boot

Hard Disk Data Recovery Lost your data, Stellar would help Free Consultation (080) 2559 3883 www.stellarinfo.co.in/DataRecovery

90% Off-Seagate Hard Disk Register Free & Save on Hard Disk Offer Valid till Stock Ends.Hurry! DealsandYou.com

Data Recovery Indore data recovery ,deleted file recover hdd repair,data recovery softwares www.datarecoveryindore.com

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

How to Recover Your Best Data Recovery How to Repair a How to Recover Data Files When Windows Software - Top 10 List Damaged Partition Even When Hard Drive Won't ... Table or MB... is D...

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473 comments:

Pablo Garcia, 3. September 2011, 17:40

Hi Judah: It might be a necessity. That is the problem with buying the PCB board that it has to be exactly like yours including firmware, etc.

Judah, 3. September 2011, 13:32

I want to verify that I’m at the end of my rope. I got the blue screen of death one day and could not boot the laptop up again. It said did not have a bootable device. I did drive diagnostics using bios utilities (HP laptop) and it got to 40% and told me to replace the drive. The drive is a Western Digital. I bought a new drive and an external enclosure. When the drive spins up in the external enclosure it starts to read and then stops and tells me to reformat. It will even try twice sometimes, but if I go into disk utilities it does not recognize any drive except my replacement. I downloaded Recover My Disk and it does not see the drive. I tried putting the drive in the second slot. The bios looks like it recognizes there is a drive but when I attempt to do diagnostics it just sits at zero. Because of the position of the drive (board down) it makes clicking noises while in the laptop. When I use it externally I put the board up and don’t get any noise except when it terminates attempt to read. The drive does continue to spin. I have not tried replacing board or freezing the drive. Should I bother? I have congregational financial data, so I have to recover (I was using my backup drive for another purpose, won’t do that again :( ). If I freeze can it still be recovered if it does not work?

Dimitra, 27. August 2011, 16:38

Thanks very much for the answer. I hope that Racuva or Photorec will work! Thanks again!

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 16:18

Hi Wahida: Again… Provided you hard drive is healthy you can use Recuva or Photorec to recover your files, Both programs are free and reliable.

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 16:05

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Hi Malama: In order for you to be able to access your files you need to log into Windows 7 with Administrator rights and “take ownership” of the folder you are trying to access.

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 16:04

Hi Dimitra Sounds like you have a corrupt filesystem. Use Racuva or Photorec to recover your files.

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 15:55

HI Akashlina: If you see the drive as a drive letter in windows try using Recuva or Photorec to recover your files.

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 15:52

Hi Martin, never heard of that before. But a quick search in Google returned this: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive- have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11

Malama, 27. August 2011, 8:46

Hi My computer had a problem of “NTLDR IS MISSING” However i tried to correct the problem but wasnt successful. i then decided to recover by connecting the HDD to the other computer but also was able to succed. It tells me that “Access is denied” Is there any other solution that you can help me to recover the data?

Dimitra, 26. August 2011, 12:04

Hello! I’ m desperate! I have an ADATA 500GB external hard drive, which I used with my desktop pc (windows xp), I bought a new laptop now with windows 7, at first the HD worked fine, sometimes when I was connecting it with the laptop, a message will pop that was suggesting a format, but as everything was working fine, I ignored it. Yesterday all of the sudden (or maybe not), my hard drive gets detected by Windows and can be accessed but I don’ t see any of my data inside and I get a message saying that the drive needs to be formatted. If I do format, I’ ll lose all my data, right? Is there anything that can be done at all? I read about software ”recover my files”, does it works? Please, if there is any idea or suggestion will be more than welcome and much appreciated.

Akashlina, 26. August 2011, 5:26

Thanks for writing such informative post. My Transcend 320GB external hard drive just stopped working. The device is being recognized by windows but I am getting error messages like – cannot open drive, format drive to use it, drive is corrupted etc. It had almost 150-200 gb of digital pictures and movie files. Could you please suggest which of the data recovery s/w should be useful to recover the digital pictures (that’s all I care about)?

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martin fabram, 25. August 2011, 15:57

hi…all of a sudden all my data in my hard disk turned into shortcuts…need help on how i can get my data back..thanks

Pablo Garcia, 24. August 2011, 21:33

Hi Peter, its possible although I have never heard that before. I would suggest you connect the drive directly to a desktop computer’s SATA / IDE interface, then transfer you data using Windows.

wahida, 24. August 2011, 4:03

Dear sir, I’m using my external hard drive Buffalo 500GB anti-shock to store all my movie and photo. Recently my HDD unable to save some photos and when i tried to connect to my netbook,it no longer recognise my HDD.

I did tried on a different PC which sees the drive displays it in the directory but doesn’t recognise it a having any capacity or files it is simply a shell. Device manager still reads the drive properties however no data.

I have spent ages collecting the data, vidoes, music, photos etc. on my external hardrive and i was wondering what i should do to recover that data ..

Please..please..please.. help me :(

Peter Neski, 22. August 2011, 18:10

My problem is that My WD My book usb port is loose in the case,I took the drive out ,But trying one type of case for the drive didn’t work because the WD Software on the drive caused problem for the case not showing up on my Computer,The tech guy said it wouldn’t work with that case

Pablo Garcia, 21. August 2011, 22:04

Hi Remy: Try another cable they are extremely cheap. You can get one in deal extreme for $1 with free shipping.

Remy, 21. August 2011, 11:47

Pablo,

I still haven’t had a chance to take the external apart and attach it as a slave but I noticed something in my inspection. It looks as if my cats have been chewing on the usb cable. The external still makes the “window’s recognizing something is plugged in” noise which makes me believe the cable is still working…. but yet the drive still does not show up and the drive still whirls and clicks. Is it possible because of the very badly damaged cord that perhaps its not getting enough power? Should I bother trying to buy a cord and replace it, or should I just assume that it makes the “Windows plugged in noise” and therefore is fine?

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Thanks for all your help!

shane, 21. August 2011, 6:56

Hi pablo,

Thanks for your reply, i’m going to try and source a new board this week, I shall keep the thread alive.

cheers

Paulie, 20. August 2011, 15:04

this might be a dumb question, but what should i use to clean the contacts?

Pablo Garcia, 20. August 2011, 12:07

Hi Paulie “Don’t appear” but they might be. These boards have a clear coating that can spill over contacts when the board gets to hot. I would try cleaning them anyways, it won’t hurt, (provided that you are properly grounded of course)

Paulie, 20. August 2011, 11:54

thanks for the reply. the contacts dont appear to be dirty or have any dust at all.

Pablo Garcia, 20. August 2011, 11:49

HI Paulie It might be a bad board or dirty contacts in the board, have you tried removing the board and cleaning the contacts? the ones underneath the board and the ones that connect to the sata and power cables.

Pablo Garcia, 20. August 2011, 11:47

Hi Shane If the computer’s BIOS can’t detect the hard rive, no program will. Is the hard drive making any noises? Is it completely dead? If it is you might have a bad board.

Paulie, 19. August 2011, 17:13

thanks for this post. if i understand you correctly, it sounds like i may need a new hard drive board, please tell me what you think… -i have a wd external hard drive; it is a few years old. -for the past few months i have had to constantly plug in and unplug the power and/or usb cord for my cpu and ps3 to recognize it. -recently, it stopped being recognized at all. the power comes on, but it does not connect to the

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cpu or ps3. -i purchased a docking station, and my cpu acknowledged the station, but when i insert the hard drive, it does nothing. it doesnt run.

any thoughts on what you think i need to do? i really need the data on my hard drive. thanks in advance.

Shane, 18. August 2011, 2:48

Hi, I have a 500GB seagate internal HDD that has windows vista on it and loads of data i’m trying to get back. It cant load windows vista anymore. after calling Hp support they told be i have a dead HDD. so i went and purchased a new 500GB HDD and installed XP on it (working fine), i also got some extra sata cables so i could recover some data off the so called dead HDD, to no avail! The setup won’t detect the seagate drive, and the get-data-back program also cant find it. however i can hear it making some noise so somthing is going on in there!! any ideas on how i can get my data back?????? Cheers,Shane

Robert, 15. August 2011, 7:00

hey ive got a seagate 2tb external expansion hard drive and i have dropped it, my computer now does not recognise it and the hard drive itself just beeps, im not real good with the technical side of things. any help is greatly appreciated

Pablo Garcia, 14. August 2011, 15:51

Dimetri: A partition is a section of a hard drive. Most hard drives have a single partition while others can have many. If a hard drive has two partitions for example you will see two drives instead of one. But that is besides the point here. The partition contains your file structure, if that structure is corrupted then the files you recover are probably not going to have their original names or be in their original folders, as this information got corrupted. An external hard drive is just an regular drive inside an external enclosure. (this is explained in the article)

Pablo Garcia, 14. August 2011, 15:42

HI Remy: I suggest taking the hard drive out or its enclosure and connect it directly to a desktop computer SATA or IDE cable. Then read the part of my article titled “Hard Drive Developed Noise on its Own”.

Remy, 14. August 2011, 15:20

I have a maxtor external hard drive I’ve had for a long time. I just recently bought a new goflex to replace the old maxtor. I haven’t had a chance to move the data over and this morning I noticed my maxtor wasn’t showing in the drive list and its making the clicking noise. Awfull timing. Its never been dropped or had any problems. The power light goes on and it spins and clicks and windows makes the noise as if something has been connected but the drive never appears in my computer? What do you suggest? I was thinking of trying to stick it in another enclosure or to my computer as a slave just to get the data off of it. Is it possible to connect one backup to the new one and just move the data? Any help would be appreciated!

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Pablo Garcia, 12. August 2011, 8:59

Hi Rajkumar Reading your comment I can see that the reason the BIOS is not detecting the hard drive due to internal damage, so you probably won’t be able to recover anything on your own. The BIOS needs to detect the hard drive in order for any program use it.

Rajkumar Shrestha, 11. August 2011, 1:04

I have seagate 320 gb hard drive. firstly its has a problem of i/o when i checked, after a few days when i try to join it fall in floor and now cannot see my hard drive in bios and any partation of that hard drive. when i connet to the computer its vibrate and after long time it seems like to be silence. Do u have any Idea, how can i recover me document from that hard drive

Dimetri, 10. August 2011, 0:22

I see how in the pictures its a regular hard drive, I’m talking about an external harddrive if there is a differnce, and thanks for responding so quickly, I am very bad when it comes to this stuff also what is a partition?

-Dimetri

Pablo Garcia, 9. August 2011, 23:11

Dimetri: If you your partition is in good condition you should be able to boot and do the same things you were able to do before. When you make a raw copy of a hard drive you are coying A.B.S.O.L.U.T.E.L.Y everything even the blank space, this is why you need a hard drive of the same size or bigger to recover the data.

Dimetri, 8. August 2011, 18:05

Thanks for the reply, will I be able to run linux and windows on the same computer? -Dimetri

Pablo Garcia, 8. August 2011, 8:26

Hi Dimetri Read the section titled “Hard Drive Developed Noise After it Was Dropped”. With that method you can make a “raw” copy of absolutely all the contents in your drive.

Dimetri, 7. August 2011, 23:03

Hi Pablo, a while back my seagate external hard drive fell and now it makes a beep noise and its light flashes, I tryed freezing and my computer made a tone like something connected but it showed up as a usb controller, do I have to take it to a data recovery service? -Dimetri

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David, 7. August 2011, 16:59

Hi Pablo thanks for the update and telling us about it. I wish I knew which part you added. For my case, in the meantime I bought a 320GB internal drive to get my laptop usable again (priority #1 for me), and in the meantime while I googled my problem I found a site called datacent and they told me that the heads of the drive needed to be replaced (under clean atmosphere etc) so I either replace it, or their fee to retrieve the data was around 1000 CAD. That’s quite steep. The thing is, from reading your guide it could very well be the contacts/overheating (I sure know how many times my laptop was so hot I could not hold it on my lap, or suffer actual burns), however the problem occurred when the laptop took a minor bump (it took harder ones in the past without problems). I will buy a screwdriver to remove the board and follow your advice, but wanted to have your opinion about this datacent. :) Thanks again for the help to the community!

Pablo Garcia, 6. August 2011, 19:53

Hi Joe: Glad to hear you were successful. If you keep the hard drive cool it should not happen again.

Joe, 6. August 2011, 19:49

Thank you a lot for this helpful. I tried one of repair methods and problem was solved, My Seagate external hdd 1TB,it’s still under warranty but i can not find where’s i keep the document, maybe on the bin? Mainly, i use for storage documents,software,movies, music and moves it, room to room for watch movie in there.Last couple days, it started reading bad from time to time and last night stopped respond completely (undetectable). I removed it from the case and took the hdd out and put it on Desktop,it’s sometimes deteched, sometimes none, but it is not Accessible.Then I search on Web and found this side, and did “CLEANING THE BOARD’S CONTACT’S”,after put its back “WOW”,yes, it working as normal now. Don’t know how’s long, it happens again? But at least,i can copy and transfer all my important documents to other HDD. Once again, thanks a lot.

Pablo Garcia, 6. August 2011, 17:31

Ok everyone! I updated the article. It should now answer many of the questions that keep coming up.

Pablo Garcia, 5. August 2011, 15:55

Hi David: I am reorganizing the article so that people can understand it better, I will post the new version tonight.

David, 5. August 2011, 14:27

Love the site, but I don’t know if one of two options will work for me. I’m not sure which I should try: My laptop took s light bump and froze, then I saw the dark blue screen saying an error was

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

detected, and shut off. When I turned it on I got the black screen with white text letting me reboot, run diagnostics etc. Apparently the hard drive can’t be found, it advises me to reassess it (or some other word that sounds like it:). So I remembered I had cables (from an ext hard drive crash incident) bought to attach “naked” hard drives (out of their shells) and I removed my hard drive (WD 5000 BEVT – 75ZATO) and hooked it up with the cables to one of my pcs. As soon as I plug it in, the hard drive starts to show signs of life, it vibrates, I hear one click or two when I attach it. No weird sounds other than the vibrations. The PC takes a while to recognize something was attached, one of my two pcs even recognizes the model, but none will show it in My Computer or even let me “safely remove hardware”. What should I do to access this and copy out my very important files? Thank you in advance! :)

Jessica, 4. August 2011, 23:39

My hard drive died. I took it to the local computer shop and they worked on trying to recover my data. They could not. They said the problem is that the disc is not spinning. Would this mean none of these steps would work to help me get my info off the hard drive? Am I out of luck?

Bashir, 4. August 2011, 19:39

I love this post!! Thanks in advance :)

Nathaniel, 3. August 2011, 17:36

I dropped my 1TB external drive; it make the clicking sound of death. Windows wouldn’t recognize it. Someone suggested running it in Linux, and it worked! Not without a bit of hassle, but I ran off of a knoppix Live CD and copied from the external to my internal and saved 50 gigs of files so far. Apparently, Linux will accept “sloppier” file systems than windows, and instead of failing it will go to a backup and still work. Worth a shot to those of you with this problem.

ME, 3. August 2011, 3:13

thank u pablo

Pablo Garcia, 2. August 2011, 21:23

Hi Alex: It is very hard to tell from here what is going on with your drive from here. You can try cleaning the contact with an eraser, it won’t hurt just make sure you are properly grounded so that the board does not get damaged if you static electricity. However first I would check the hard drive to make sure it is in good condition (it does not have any bad sectors, etc. ) there are free utilities on the web for this purpose; check your hard drive manufacturer’s website for this. If the hard drive has mechanical failure or bad sectors, try that ddrescue (the Linux method) because you do not know how much time your hard drive has left; it might be about to die. Sometimes hard drives are affected by the heat they produce, so it help if you try to keep the hard drive as cool as possible during the operation. You can do this by flipping the hard drive upside down, so that gravity helps if the arm is close to the plates and putting a 125mm case fan on top to keep it cool. Sometimes just doing this helps you recover all the data without the need of imaging. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.

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Pablo Garcia, 2. August 2011, 19:58

Hi Me: You are in the best situation possible, you are getting a message from Windows that means that your hard drive is still accessible, it might not even be fine. All you need to do is take copy the data to an external hard drive. Read this article: http://geekyprojects.com/data-recovery-2/how-to-recover-your-files-when-windows-wont-boot/

Alex, 2. August 2011, 15:04

Hey Pablo,

Amazing site. Before I found it I was about to freak out (I had lost the same info two years ago on an external drive, went through a costly recovery process, and now lost it all again on the new one).

So here’s my situation. I know you’re more familiar with PCs than with Macs, but maybe you can still help. I have a CMS 500 gb external hard drive, formatted for mac. It doesn’t make any weird noises (unlike my old broken drive), doesn’t have the click of death — it just won’t mount…on either of my macs (it used to). I ran disk utility (a mac feature), and clicked repair drive. It said it was unable to repair the drive. So here’s my question. Should I open the casing and try cleaning the contacts/replacing the board? If so, how do I power/connect my hard drive afterwards?

Or should I forego opening the casing and use that linux method on http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/ ?

Thanks! If I somehow manage to get my files back, I will absolutely give a donation to this site!

ME, 2. August 2011, 0:09

windows canont find ”…….” Make sure you typed name correctly, and then try again. to search for a file, click the start button, and then click search

Pablo Garcia, 1. August 2011, 19:04

Sounds like a corrupt partition. Use Recuva to get your files out. If Recuva does not get everything, use Photorec. It will be wise to make a raw image of the hard drive using DDrescue before attempting anything, just in case the hard drive is suffering from some kind of mechanical failure or is developing bad sectors, since you never know when it might die.

Pablo Garcia, 1. August 2011, 18:26

Hi Me:

Well… what does the error say?

Pablo Garcia, 1. August 2011, 18:23

Hi Manuel: You need to go into the BIOS of the laptop and see if the laptop recognizes the drive and displays its correct size. IF it does then use DDrescue to get the data out.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Manuel, 1. August 2011, 10:25

Thank you a lot for this helpful, I hope, notice. I’ll try one of repair methods. My problem is quite different. My hard disk is undetectable. I remove it from the laptop and the laptop recognises the absence of hard disk. When I insert again into the laptop, no message appears. I think the Hard disk is dead.

ME, 1. August 2011, 7:44

i plug in my external mass storage device my folders are shown and files are still in it but when i try to access them an error message shows and i wont be able to access the folders what can i do ?!

Pablo Garcia, 31. July 2011, 23:25

Hi ulujm: If you connect the hard drive directly to a computer’s sata or ide cable (I am talking about a PC here not a MAC) and the compute BIOS detect the hard drive and reports the correct size. Then use this method: http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/

ulujm, 31. July 2011, 13:54

hi ok here my problem. my external HA make a spinning roaming sound. It’s not detected by my computer (PC) noanymore. I try to use a universal sata/usb adapter. no success. I try also to plug it on a mac no success. I put in a freezer, no change. still the spining sound. what can I do. Best buy charge you $100/ 10GB. I have around 300GB so I can’t afford.

How can I have my HD recognized?

Pablo Garcia, 31. July 2011, 11:55

Hi Leana: I am not familiar with MACs, sorry.

Pablo Garcia, 31. July 2011, 11:51

Hi Magnus: Install a data recovery software on your main drive, not on the affected drive. Try Recuva first which will give you your files back with their original names. If you still feel that you did not get all your files back, then try photorec.

Leana Rosetti, 31. July 2011, 11:00

Hello Pablo, I have a Mac and was in the process of uploading data from Seagate time machine when I disconnected it without stopping the upload and ejecting it. I know, totally stupid. Now when I connect the time machine, it is not detected, or it comes up asking me if I’d like to upload

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

everything on the computer to what it seems to think is a “blank” time machine. Is there anything I can do? Thank you so much.

Magnus, 31. July 2011, 5:45

Hi,

I have a TOSHIBA laptop (Vista) that is now 3 years old. Two days ago I returned home from vacation and turned on my computer. It froze, and eventually the System Restore tool scanned the hard drive. The error was that the “System Volume is corrupted”. I spoke to their (TOSHIBA) telephone support and they recommended installing a new hard drive and then using the old drive as a secondary drive, plugged in using USB.

Here’s the problem: When I plug in the malfunctioning hard drive using USB, it does show up in Device Manager. But not in My Computer. (Disk Manager was not interested in starting up at all) Also, Windows Explorer freezes when I connect the hard drive. I attempted to use GetDataBack, but although it found the malfunctioning drive, it froze too. I am hearing slight clicking noises from the drive (so click of death I fear).

Is there anything I can do by myself, or is my only option now to use a data recovery company? How big are my chances of successful recovery?

Thanks in advance

Al, 31. July 2011, 5:18

Hello Pablo, My 2 TB Western Digital Elements External HD (WD seems to be the culprit in many cases here.) is only about 4 months old, and shortly after I loaded it almost half full with photos, music and videos, my pc will now only recognize it in My Computer, but will not let me access the data on it. If I click on OPEN, nothing will happen and not a sound will come out. Then, after about a minute, a “This drive needs to be formatted, Would you like to format it now?” message will pop up. I have tried to access it on 4 different pc’s (Vista or XP, but not Win 7, and with different cables) and get the same message every time. What’s unusual about this, is when I plug the hard drive into the USB port of my Samsung hi-def tv, it will recognize it and allow me to see the photos, listen to the music and watch most, (but not all), of the videos I have on it. That tells me that at least the hard drive does work, but of course my tv will not let me add or remove any of the data, or email or print any pictures, or burn any music or videos from it, or change anything on it at all. A Western Digital recommended recovery affiliate, will recover the data on it, but for a considerable fee. There is no critical, must-have, data on the drive that I don’t already have burned to cd’s or dvd’s, but it’s a lot easier to access it all on a single drive. I would like to try and backup the data to a new hard drive and just leave the old drive connected to the tv. Is there any software you think might allow me to do this, or allow my pc to access the data? And is there any other reliable external hd’s you would recommend that I can back it up to? Any help would be appreciated!

Pablo Garcia, 30. July 2011, 13:20

Hi Som The only thing that comes to mind is create another account on the computer with administrator privileges, log in using that new account and go to c:\users and settings\yourprevioususername\desktop (in windows XP) or c:\users\yourprevioususername\desktop (in vista or 7) and organize/delete the files.

som.sopheak rith, 30. July 2011, 5:20

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Dear sirs,

I had extracted the zip files from one folder and I extracted to my desk top then there are so many files spread over my desk top and then I try to deleted them off from my desk top and then I had restarted my computer but after my computer restarting those files still appears again even though I try to delete them many times . so could you please tell me how to delete those files permanently , so that it can not appear again ?

Pablo Garcia, 29. July 2011, 23:48

Hi Anton: Try flipping the hard drive upside down, and put a big computer fan over it, (if you have one) to keep it cool. Then Use DDrescue to extract the data. Read the following article: http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/

Anton, 28. July 2011, 17:00

Hi all,

I have a problem with my 2 TB WDC HDD. Its only 6 month old but its obviously broken. Win 7 does not recognize it anymore (nowhere – not even GetDataBack or stuff). However it shows up in BIOS and Linux (rescue CD).

TestDisk fails even in the quick test (it would stop at 90%). I started copying the files 1:1 with Parition saving – and it works. But it detects bad sectors all the time – and slows down – its at 400 Errors at sector 500k out of 2 Billion sectors!

I would like to recover some data – but its not like I need every single byte. Is there a faster way of skipping the bad sectors or avoiding them? At this speed it will take 200 days!!! to finish.

Thanks for any help

Anton

Pablo Garcia, 26. July 2011, 10:01

Hi Merian It is difficult to get the data out of a hard drive that developed a clicking sound as a result of being dropped. That being said… try the article I suggested in the previous comment (to Tara). it is best if you take the hard drive out of the enclosure and connect it directly to a computer.

Pablo Garcia, 26. July 2011, 9:52

Hi Tara. If your hard drive has a “clicking” sound you need to get your data our ASAP because you do not know how much time is has left (if it has any at all). #1 you need to see if your hard drive is detected by the BIOS and that it displays more or less its correct size. #2 If it is you need to image it using Ubuntu Rescue Remix and ddrescue. Read this article:

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/

That is as clear an answer as I can give you, I hope it helps.

Pablo Garcia, 26. July 2011, 9:27

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi Ting: I suggest you make an image of the broken hard drive before you loose everything. http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-even-when-hard-drive-is-damaged/

Ting, 25. July 2011, 1:21

Okay, when I turn on my laptop,it shows the acer logo and then restart. It won’t even boot from cd. So I tried another hard drive, it just said boot manager don’t find. I plug into an enclosure. Waited and waited, then it show up but take ages to open. Before I could get into them, it disappear. It make the cling sound a few times. Now when I plug in, it would be just a disk with no data. But in the disk control thing from the control panel, it didn’t show up. Arrr what’s wrong with it…. :(

Merian, 22. July 2011, 4:37

I don’t know what happened exactly to my external mobile harddrive (WD Scoprio Blue). Left it connected to my laptop as i was copying some files. When I got back, the computer cannot detect the mobile harddrive. Noticed that the position where I left my mobile harddrive was not the same. So I asked my flatmate if it was moved or what. He said he didn’t do anything. But I assume that it fell as it is now making some noises.

Anyway, would really appreciate some tips/advise/help on how to be able to recover my data.

Have already done the following: 1. tried to connect to different computers — all failed. 2. swap the harddrive to another similar enclosure — the new disk in my old enclosure was detected/read — however the old disk in the new enclosure still cannot be detected/read — so meaning harddrive is the problem.

Haven’t tried to make the harddrive a slave disk yet.

tara, 21. July 2011, 22:00

Hi all So I have seen the same problem as mine put on here a couple of times but the answer is never very clear I have a western digital 1 tb it was working fine until it clicked a few times and then stopped, I have put new cables on it change the Sata cable part on it neither worked so im up to thinking I can take the internal part of my laptop out and attach the external via a cable though I’m not too sure if this is right and can some one help please or send me in the right direction for a you tube vid

Pablo Garcia, 15. July 2011, 13:54

Carlo: Before you try changing the “MB of disk” like you said, have you tried connecting the hard drive to another computer? have you tries a different hard drive on your computer to rule out a motherboard controller issue?

carlo, 15. July 2011, 13:20

hi pablo , we have a seagate 500 gb 7200.12 sata2 works fine for 6 month ….

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

today blu screen and no hdd was detected by bios now i unmount the drive and i hear that is stopped i try to change mb of disk with another of same type and drive seem started but i can’t see it on the bios and i can’t see it via usb cable connected … any suggestion?

Pablo Garcia, 15. July 2011, 8:53

Hi Dev: Other data recovery companies can probably recover your data, as long as the drive is not too scratched. But there is nothing you can do on your own.

Pablo Garcia, 15. July 2011, 8:51

Anand I would if you give me more details. Is this an internal or external drive. If it it an external drive you need to take it out of its enclosure and test it directly with the SATA or IDE cables of the motherboard.

Pablo Garcia, 15. July 2011, 8:48

Hi Luke If it is making a clicking sound and it is not being detected by the BIOS, I do not think its a PCB problem. If you cant get the BIOS to recognize the hard drive, send it to a data recovery company.

Pablo Garcia, 15. July 2011, 8:10

Hi Dan Yes a data recovery company can get your data out but it is probably going to be quite expensive.

Dan, 14. July 2011, 23:45

Thanks Pablo. It is not being detected at all. When you say there is nothing I can do on my own – do you mean that it would be possible for an expert in this field to recover the data? I am happy to pay someone if it is possible, Io idea what I am doing so I had never intended to attmept it myself!

Thanks again.

Pablo Garcia, 14. July 2011, 23:39

Hi Dan If the computer detect the drive and it is not showing up as a drive under “My computer” you can probably try photorec to recover your files. If the computer is not detecting the drive at all, then I doubt there is anything you can do on your own.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo Garcia, 14. July 2011, 23:18

Hi Harrish Is this an external or internal drive? If this is an internal drive, you hear clicking noises and it is not detected by the BIOS, you probably do not have any options left. If the drive is external you might have some options. Yo have to give me more details.

Pablo Garcia, 14. July 2011, 21:58

Den: Whenever you format a drive the data is still there, but if you write something to the hard drive it overwrites whatever you had in there. The hard drive writes data randomly so if you re- installed windows you do not know what parts of the hard drive got overwritten. You might be able to get some of it back, but whatever was overwritten by Windows is gone.

Den, 14. July 2011, 19:14

Hi, i had important data on a laptop running on windows XP which got formatted. After formation, windows XP was installed on it again. How do i get the data i had on it before it was formatted

Dan, 13. July 2011, 21:25

I have a USB memory stick that is not working. It is not making any noise, I just cant locate it on the system after I plug it in. I have tried it on many computers without luck. Is there any hope for me to retrieve the data or is it lost forever?

Thanks for your help!

Luke, 12. July 2011, 6:10

I forgot to mention that my HDD has worked once since this problem occurred, which was at the very start – but I have had no such luck since.

Luke, 12. July 2011, 5:59

Hello

I have read so many contrasting comments re: my problem so any help would be appreciated with this.

I have a Toshiba HDD that is making 2 types of clicking sounds, they eventually stop and it appears to spin as normal, but whatever the case I cannot get it detected in the BIOS ( I have tried external methods and they do not work either).

I understand from what I’ve read that this could be either a head crash or a PCB problem. I have tried the freezer method and have had no luck with that.

I was about to buy a replacement PCB just to give it a try but am now reading that Toshiba PCB’s have individual firmware on them and that I would need to replace certain chips as well to have any chance on it working.

If anybody is able to clarify my situation that would be greatly appreciated.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Anand, 11. July 2011, 23:44

I bought a 320 GB WD 2 years back and it was working fine till last month. But now when I connect the WD to my laptop and navigate to My Computer the laptop is getting hanged. I had tried various solutions provided in internet but nothing is working out.

Can you please help me on this?

Dev, 11. July 2011, 11:35

Hi Guys,

I really need your help here.

I have a Western Digital 500 GB Hard disk that i have made external. It stopped spinning for some reason and i had taken it to one of Thailand’s Data Recovery center. They had told me that the Hard Disk cant be recovered because there is a scratch on the disc plate and it wouldnt spin. They changed the spinning head, and the drive began spinning for 2 seconds and stopped again. Is there any chance you guys can help me out ?? The data is really important to me. Thank you.

Pablo Garcia, 10. July 2011, 23:51

Hi Jared. Looks like you lost the partition. You can use TestDisk to try to fix the partition. However before doing that I would try to recover the files using Photorec, just in case you do more damage than good using TestDisk improperly. Read the following two articles:

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-repair-a-damaged-partition-table-or-mbr/

http://geekyprojects.com/data-recovery-2/how-to-recover-erased-data-using-free-software/

It would be good if you can recover the files ASAP, your drive might be going bad and can die unexpectedly.

JaredAvery, 10. July 2011, 11:21

Hi I have a Free Agent go Seagate 500gb and I’m using it for almost 2 years now. When I connect it to my desktop computer it reads the hard disk but I can’t open it and keep telling me that it is not formatted. is there any possible solution for me to recover the files inside it? thanks..

Pablo Garcia, 9. July 2011, 12:58

Sylvainbruley Nothing further from the truth. YES, you can recover data out of a hard drive with a clicking noise, I have done it myself plenty of times with DDrescue. Like everything else, it does not work 100% of the time but it does work in a big percentage of them.

Pablo Garcia, 9. July 2011, 12:41

Hi Wangchuk The drive is most likely dying. If the transfer time is not unbearable, try to get as much as you can out of the drive in one shot and don’t interrupt the copy process. Don’t do it in parts, you do not know if your drive will start again next time.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

sylvainbruley, 7. July 2011, 14:26

One more thing….for a clicking noise there is no need to try any software base solution. It will simply not work. The SA area can’t be read this is it….You need to fix the drive first then use a soft if required….

Getting the drive cold is a great thing. If this is clicking there is no point to it. But if your drive is recognized with a “weak” ROM or PCB performance , then yes keep it as cool as possible and you can get back things….I would recommend fan more than ice….

wangchuk, 7. July 2011, 4:45

hello.. recently my transcend hard drive of 320 GB showed format it when i connected to in my PC. then i did format it but after this when ever i transfer any files in my hard drive, it is taking too long to copy…..what is the problem with it….can any one suggest me to make my drive effective.

Pablo Garcia, 2. July 2011, 17:35

Hi Ferdinand If you do not care about the stuff on it, have you tried a low level format?

Ferdinand, 2. July 2011, 11:52

Hey! I got an iomega portable hard drive USB 2.0 500GB. it is about 4 months since i just got my hard drive, but today it stopped working. The hard drive was running, and my computer (Vista) was reacting to it, but it could not recognize it. when i click on my computer it does not show up next to all the hard drives that the computer use as it used to. But i still can click on the safe remove option. i don’t really care too much about what is stored on it, but is there a way to make it work again?

Some information: Stopped working after 4 months Lights are working and it is making a normal sound i have tried it on 3 different computers A friend of mine that works with computers said the cause was that it was unplugged while still running computer does detect it but cant communicate with it

Maybe i’ll try the “Hard drive gets detected but still does not work” thing if not you have anything else to suggest.

Mohan, 29. June 2011, 9:11

I am having a TOSHIBA external hard disk with 512GB Memory. Unknowingly,My friend sat on top of the hard disk when the data was getting transferred. Since then it was not detected by computer. I checked in data recovery centre.They told it could be a media problem and gave me 50% chance that data can be recovered.at the same time they cautioned me that if they open the hard disk it would become useless then.Please let me know if there is any chance to recover data from my hard disk.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo Garcia, 25. June 2011, 12:07

You must take the hard drive out of the plastic enclosure and use a new one, connect it as a slave on a desktop computer or use an IDE/SATA to USB cable, that is the first step. Then you can rule out an enclosure problem. If none of that works, and it turns out that the drive is the culprit. Then use DDrescue to recover your files. Read this article:

How to recover data even when your hard drive is damaged

zah, 25. June 2011, 2:32

hey i have a problem with my external hard disk. Mine can be found on the device manager but not in my computer. tried many software out there to extract important data from it but i found no luck. they just don’t find it or i’m not doing it right. the instruction usually towards like the hdd is there but i can’t find it. Sometime i gave up and i just want to re-format it but again, I can’t even find the external hard disk (im using WD) the time just wasn’t right. i just re-formatted my computer and my backup files are in the broken external hard disk.

please help me =(

mario, 24. June 2011, 23:38

Pablo Garcia is correct…..

I took out the crashed hard drive out of my computer and bought a new hard drive for the computer for 50 bucks. I needed to get old pictures and videos from the crashed drive so I bought an 350 IDE enclosure case for another 30 bucks and placed the crashed drive in the enclosure which now became an external drive. I connected the external drive to the USB port of the computer, hit local E drive and hit “search” to locate my old files. Voila! I found the old files in again.

Pablo Garcia, 18. June 2011, 20:46

Hi Moiz… Its hard to say, but in order to recover your data your hard drive needs to be detected by the BIOS period. If the hard drive it is not detected be the BIOS, no software will see it.

Moiz, 18. June 2011, 20:32

Recently i had a virus and every time i tried to format my Main partition it would show me the blue screen so i took my friends hard drive made his primary and mine secondary. Right click on my computer and format, and boom it worked. Restarted it and now its not being detected. Not on my computer or the bios. Connected it with 3 different computers but nothing. What do people think is wrong and how can i get my stuff back. I had 3 partitions C:/ D:/ and E:/.. I formatted C and E and forgot to transfer my stuff from D.. :( And now i lost my stuff and would love to have it back. Its about 12gb of stuff.. Any one with help can email me at [email protected]

Pablo Garcia, 10. June 2011, 8:13

Don’t listen to your friend, Use Photorec.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Nelle, 8. June 2011, 8:10

Hi can i still recover files and pictures from a corrupted hard drive? when i turn on the laptop is says ERROR NTLDR is missing..a friend of mine says the best solution is to reformat it, but they checked it and they said that the hard drive is not functioning, they said that the “circle” that runs inside it is not running anymore..is there still hope?

TaLibanUFB, 6. June 2011, 11:50

thx guys, you are the best. You saved me!

Pablo Garcia, 5. June 2011, 20:39

Hi Sally You need to give more details about what the drive is doing. Is it making any sounds? What is the error you see on the screen when you start your computer? Does it get detected by the BIOS? Give as many details as you can. Do not tell us how it happened or when it happened, that is not important, just what it is doing now.

Sally Widener, 3. June 2011, 20:51

Hard Drive went out on Old Computer. I am a Genealogist and Would love to Find a Way to get my Huge amount of pictures. Put into another hard Drive or Find some way to Recover them. on Disk, This is a Very big Loss for me. Does Anyone have a Suggestion of Where i should take it. Have had 3 people look at it so far. Say I cant do anything. I am Hopeing for a Miracle that will not cost me alot of Money please I Hope someone can help me. It would mean so much

yazz, 2. June 2011, 7:30

hi again , can i send a picture of the hard disk to u so u can see what i mean ?

Pablo Garcia, 1. June 2011, 23:06

Hi Rick: I politely disagree with your opinion. 1) If you read the article, the article describes freezing the drive in a ziplock bag, to prevent condensation from getting to the drive when you take it out. 2) When you have tried all other alternatives, photorec, ddrescue, etc, etc. and nothing has worked and you do not have $1000 or more to spend in data recovery this is a good alternative that works; not all the time but it does work. And, if it does not, you can still use a data recovery company, in case you come up with the money later.

Pablo Garcia, 1. June 2011, 22:55

Hi yazz:

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

You need to take the hard drive out of its eclosure and connect it directly to a computer, and see if the BIOS detects it and if it shows its correct capacity. If it does, you have a prety good chance of getting your data back. Anything is possible, but I have never seem a hard drive with the USB connection built in, all hard drives are the same. Have you ever tried opening the enclosure?

Rick, 1. June 2011, 9:50

Just thought I’d throw my two pence in. I wouldn’t recommend putting your hdd (hard disk drive) in the freezer… ever. They are not air tight and thus when you cool them down in your freezer frost/moister can “get in”. Then you warm them back up when you turn them on and you get condensation.

Also some of the motors use fluid bearings… so when you freeze them they can crack..(liquid expanding when you freeze it.) And again when they thaw they drip lubrication fluid all over your the insides of your drive.

I can recommend though perhaps putting a heat sink on the drive to help keep it cooler as it works. Oh and PCB swaps don’t really work any more on modern drives, the boards have unique data on them individual to each drive, you have to reprogram your “donor” board with this info.

Good luck with any data recovery work you come across folks.

yazz, 31. May 2011, 21:14

hi i have a a portable WD BAAA5000ABK-00 500 gb hard drive, i dropped it a while ago , and when i connect it to my laptop it spins for like 10 seconds and i hear a ticking sound,then it stops spinnig, i tried to find another enclosure for it but i cant find one , the micro usb seems to be biult in the hard disk itself ,it doesnt look like SATA o IDE, i dont know what to do , plz help me i have very important data on it

Pablo Garcia, 31. May 2011, 20:32

Hi Joshua

You can buy a used had drive on Ebay, it has to be of the same model number, firmware and even serial number have to be as close as possible sometimes. Then you swap the boards.

Joshua Forbes, 29. May 2011, 20:40

Hi i have a 1tb seagate drive and the usb connection has broken of board/ is there a way to fix this with out sending in to seagate. Thanks in advance

Jenny, 29. May 2011, 11:28

Help!!! I accidentally dropped my Seagate external hard drive and now it cannot be detected by my laptop!! I need to recover those data inside my external hard drive but i don’t know how.. help me please…

jp, 25. May 2011, 17:10

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

what can i do if my friend acidentally removed my externals’ power supply while i was transferring data to it, and now my external doesnt even power on when i connect it to my pc?(its the hdd with USB AND external power supply). there’s work on their that i cant afford to lose. please help!!!

Pablo Garcia, 25. May 2011, 9:10

Hi Tom: CGSecurity is the page of the makers of PhotoRec and TestDisk. I have several tutorials on how to use them on this site. These are some of them:

How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software How to Repair a Damaged Partition Table or MBR Best Data Recovery Software – Top 10 List

Tom, 25. May 2011, 8:17

hi guys, haven’t read the article in full detail (sorry) but i recently lost all my files on my hard drive (the computer wouldn’t read it) and i spent days looking for a program that would help restore all the files, in the end, which worked for me, i found this website called CG Security, its nothing huge, just a homemade looking webpage, but the program it offers works. the programs nothing special looking, but its free, and it worked for me. thought id post this if anyone else is in a similar situation like me, here’s the link to the programs.

Pablo Garcia, 24. May 2011, 19:29

Arnav: Hard Drives do not have USB slots so I am assuming you are talking about an external USB hard drive. Your problem is very simple to fix. You need to take the actual hard drive out of its current enclosure, purchase a new one and install it. Enclosures are cheap, but you have to make sure you purchase the correct one. (SATA or IDE). Take the hard drive to a computer store like, Tiger Direct, CompUSA, or Fry’s and they can tell you what you need.

milanoi mell, 17. May 2011, 5:26

hi, my 1TB WD dropped in water accidentally i havent used it in 6 hours although i shook it all up it wasnt much but am afraid to use it coz i dont know if i will find anything or if something needs to be done…

arnav, 12. May 2011, 23:32

The USB slot inside of my had disk has broken. I want to know if it can be repaired. Thank you

Pablo Garcia, 11. May 2011, 21:37

Hi Kiara: Read this article: How to Retrieve Files From a Dead Computer

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Kiara, 11. May 2011, 15:51

My laptop ran out of battery. When I tried to turn it on the screen is completely black and there is a blinking horizontal line in the corner of the screen. Also, whenever I press a button the computer beeps. WHAT DO I DO?! T_T

Pablo Garcia, 9. May 2011, 23:23

Daster:

See if this works for you:

How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged

Pablo Garcia, 9. May 2011, 23:19

Hi Josh, if your hard drive is in good mechanical condition, Photorec or Recover My files should have been able to recover at least some of the data. Have you tried DDrescue? Read this article….

How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged

Josh, 9. May 2011, 7:31

Hi Guy’s, Dropped my 1TB WD Passport HDD the other day while transferring files. Continued to work for a while but all user rights changed and wouldn’t unlock. un plugged and tried the next day on a different PC which sees the drive displays it in the directory but doesn’t recognise it a having any capacity or files it is simply a shell. Device manager still reads the drive properties however no data.

Drive still spins freely. no ‘noise of death’, cleaned contacts but made no difference. Don’t mind as much if the data is not able to be recovered but would be good if the drive could be brought back to life. Tried Recover My Files and photrec, also tried to run the reformatting tool and disk defrag but none work. Any other suggestions? A office IT guy thinks the segment or partitioning may be completely corrupted or no longer recognised. I have no idea what this means

Daster, 8. May 2011, 6:49

Hey i have an Iomega external 2.0 Usb external hard rive, im not too computer savy but i get around. Here’s my problem. A few days ago i noticed my external as having trouble booting up but it started up when the cord was pushed to a specific side or angle so i tried a different cable but nope same problem so i thought it was a faulty jack on the external, so i sticky taped the cable in a way so it was working. A few days later however the hardrive stopped working at all, when plugged in it says “This hardrive has malfunctioned and windows cannot recognise this drive etc…” when i listen to it the hardrive when plugged in it starts booting up then abruptly there is a single click, like a switch being thrown”

i have spent ages collecting the data, vidoes, music, photos etc. on the hardrive and i was wondering what i should to to recover that data if possible.

Kikoba, 6. May 2011, 13:34

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

HI every one, I also have my Toshiba external hard drive. I dropped it down accidentally when it was running i.e it was connected to my laptop, on moving my laptop it dropped down from a table, from that time it started running very slowly while requiring me to format one partition after another, finally the whole disk cant work any more i.e the PC cant show it though the sound of detection is heard. What can i do guys?

Pablo Garcia, 5. May 2011, 19:14

Tim:

Time for Photorec, read this article:

How to Recover Data Using Free Software

Pablo Garcia, 5. May 2011, 19:03

Adam

Time for Photorec, read this article:

How to Recover Data Using Free Software

Adam c., 4. May 2011, 14:31

Hi, I have had a WD 1tb external hard drive for some time now, and my laptop recently was reformatted. Now. When I put the HD on my computer, it recognizes the name of it, as well as the amount of data used on it, which is correct, but no files are displayed inside the folder at all. The icon on the my computer screen does not display for the hard drive either. I’m deploying soon to afghanistan and could really used the data on there. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Tim Rudziensky, 4. May 2011, 14:11

My hard drive appears to be blank – asks if I want to REFORMAT NOW? Have been using a WD7500P032 drive for a few years. Turned it on and got a big surprise, the drive seems to be empty. This certainly is not the case (hopefully). One person I spoke to said the drive likely has all the information still on it just the directory is missing. What is the best procedure for recovering the data? I have reviewed a lot of information but cannot find my specific situation. The program RECOVER MY FILES seems appropriate using the Recover Drive function, any advise you can pass along would be greatly appreciated!

Pablo Garcia, 28. April 2011, 14:38

Thomas:

I do not know what your specific case is. But, you need something to extract the data to. You can use photorec for example and a USB flash drive.

Thomas Baklund, 28. April 2011, 4:46

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

How about if the drive is the only drive in the computer, the computer will not boot, and that is the only computer in the house. How should you retrive data from it before replacing the disk?

And it is also just one harddrive slot and it’s a laptop

Pablo Garcia, 26. April 2011, 17:51

It spinned and now it does not spin anymore? If the drive does not spin you are going to have to send it to a data recovery specialist. IF if DOES spin when you unplug it and plug it back in, you might have a chance, read mi article:

How to Recover Data Even When a Hard Drive is Damaged

Shan, 26. April 2011, 14:10

Hi, I have dropped my Seagate free agent 1.5 external hard drive. It has rrrr sound, and flashing light. I sent it to data recovery specialist, and he said it is not spining. After he changed the head, it spinned for 3-4 minutes, and stop. What can I do with this situation?

Marian, 18. April 2011, 6:03

I recovered the data, however, when I attached the recovered drive to a Windows 7 computer (USB) the only options available to me in disk management is new simple volume. Mark partition as active is not an option. Thank you

Pablo Garcia, 15. April 2011, 23:35

HI Isabel

I do not know if you will be able to get your drive to be bootable again, but you can certainly extract the data. I would try extracting the data first with Photorec, and then use TestDisk to fix the drive. TestDisk can probably get it to be bootable again (so you do not have to reinstall Windows). The reason why I am telling you to use photorec first is so you can have your data before running testdisk, just in case you make a mistake with testdisk and make matters worse.

newbie, 14. April 2011, 3:48

Hi,

So I made the critical error of initializing my C drive when I was downloading some software (big mistake, dont ask…). Not a few seconds after hitting the initialize button, my pc went black and said ‘No Operating System Found’. The computer store said the driver was gone, at best they could do a super scan and this may help them retreive the lost data. Is it retreivable or should I accept that it is gone?

Thanks

Pablo Garcia, 12. April 2011, 20:23

HI, BLP… I tell you what I tell everybody. the best test you can do is to connect the hard drives

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

directly to the SATA or IDE cables as a slave drive. And see if they get detected by the computer’s BIOS, if they do then you have a good chance of getting your data back. If the drives are identical you can probably swap boards and the one that does not make a sound might have a bad board. You should be able to recover the other one, you just have to do some reading :)

BLP, 12. April 2011, 16:33

Pablo,

This is a very informative website. I read all instructions and comments but before doing anything else, I wanted to get your input on my situation.

A couple of months ago, I plugged one of my WD external hard drives (passport or something like that) into the USB port (computer runs Vista). Never had any issues with any of my external hard drives before. Although the little white light turned on as soon I plugged it, the drive did not get detected. Shortly after that, I plugged another WD external drive (passport essential, I think) and exactly the same thing happened. The white light was on but the drive was not detected. I then plugged a third external hard drive (Toshiba) and it worked without any issues. I tried a fourth hard drive (WD but with a fire-wire connection) and that worked just fine as well. My initial reaction was that this was due to the known issue with WD drives and the USB cables. Tried different USB cables, no luck. Called WD technical support, they sent me double USB cables – that did not help either. Of course, they suggested that I send the drives to a data recovery service and they would then send me new drives as part of the warranty. No thanks – no more WDs.

I bought a docking station, removed the hard drives from the enclosure kits and connected the drives. Same thing – the drives were not detected. Then I thought that the drives were affected by some electric circuit issue, even though my computer is connected through a UPS station. I had noticed some issue with the power at home the day before.

In any case, the issues with the two drives seem to be identical, except for the following minor differences: - one of the drives is detected as a “WD” with a red “X” under disk management, indicating that the device is working properly. Yet, none of its properties can be seen. This same drive makes a quiet “rrrrrr” noise for about 3-4 seconds, but this does not sound like the “clicking noise of death” described above. - the other drive does not make any noise, does not get detected at all by the computer. Note that I have tried connecting the drives to different computers (desktops with Vista and laptops with Windows 7). Any help would be appreciated. I am willing to make a donation to your website if I can avoid sending the drives to data recovery services.

Thank you very much in advance! BLP

Pablo Garcia, 8. April 2011, 10:42

You can find them on Ebay, just be sure of what you are buying, ask questions if the information is not clear.

Eugene, 8. April 2011, 7:20

Where can I buy circuit board for my WD external drive as there is a short on the powering of the 3volt line of the board…?

Paul langan, 2. April 2011, 16:04

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

I have a WD My Book external drive WD500032-00, I backed up everything there, all family photos, videos, data files. Because that is what it is supposed to be a backup drive. I am freaking out as it as stopped working. It fails the Western Digital diagnostic test ( – too many damaged sectors!!!). When You click on drive to open it says it needs formatting. Help, Help. Should I buy Recover My Files software? PLEASE HELP!

Diablo, 21. March 2011, 4:03

Hi Dennis. Try to ask tech people to load your drive as a slave one on other computer. Then use Acronis or Partition Magic to watch your HDD

Ahmed, 19. March 2011, 13:41

Hi Pablo…. A very nice article. I have a seagate Momentus 5400.5 160GB HD, it was in a plastic external case. It dropped from my laptop bag. And now its not working. When i connect it the light with the casing turns on and there is beeping sound from the HD, but it is not detectable on my laptop. Please suggest what is wrong or what item may be broken and replaceable. Much of my office work and some private data is stored in the HD which I really need.

cole, 14. March 2011, 23:35

hi can u please email me, my hard drive makes noises wen i plug it in and makes that noise wen something get connected but i cant find it in documents only in the control panel, it says there its working properley, but its not lol. it has all my photos of my 2 lil baby girls i put them all on there 2days before it stopped working :(

Dennis, 8. March 2011, 12:52

Hello Pablo, Very informative site, well anyways since I found this website and im also having this problem with my WD 1 terabyt inernal hd. It was running well the past few days nothing out of the ordinary until when I turned on the computer and took really long just to boot up the windows. Then I found out that the drive is not on the “my computer” Ive partition the drive in 2 so that I would be more organize. The bios can detect the drive but the windows can’t. The tech people in place tried to do it on another computer with a result of long booting time. You might not happened to have a solution on this? Need to save all that date. ^_^

Pablo Garcia, 2. March 2011, 8:59

Hi Kari: Its really hard to diagnose your problem if I do not have the drive with me. There is a lot of good information on this and other sites, I suggest you start reading. One thing I suggest is that you take the hard drive out of its current enclosure and connect it directly to a computer’s IDE or SATA cable and see if the BIOS detects it, if it does not then you are going to have to send it to a data recovery service. If does then purchase a new enclosure, or a USB to SATA adapter, they are very inexpensive, that way you can rule out a problem with the enclosure. Now if this does not work I suggest you use photorec to recover your files. Finally if that does not work, use DDrescue. I suggest you get one of your friends that are experienced with computers to do all of this for you.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Kari, 2. March 2011, 4:01

help! i have a seagate freeagent desk 1tb usb drive. last saturday i turned off my system, ignoring the voice in the back of my head that was telling me something really bad would happen if i did it. i awoke sunday morning and turned it back on and my freeagent’s lights wouldn’t come on, computer management couldn’t detect it either in the device screen or in the disks screen, and in terms of vehicle engines, it sounds like it is trying to start up but it just woke fully kick over. there’s no beep, no squeal, and not really a click to speak of. yes, i am in a panic, i just had to tear down my case to replace a bad pci adapter and in doing so, replaced the local drive for a larger one & added a secondary internal drive. ALL of my data had been moved to the seagate during this process and i had just barely began to restore and rebuild pathways. there was data that had not been baked up online or elsewhere yet and i also had backups of my friends’s pc’s on it, and bakups of all 3 of my household’s pc’s. for various reasons, starting with i live in a solely tourist industry based area and winter is layoff season and i am literally FLAT broke, i cannot afford a service. however, i do have 2 friends locally and one available thru the internet and his wife that i can turn to for the extremely advanced stuff and the stuff that i am confident or experienced in. one of them is even threatening to put a server in my house. please help! at this point, i’d even accept someone lying to me to give me hope. yes, after 2 days of crying, i am desperate and nearly dry eyed

andrew, 25. February 2011, 12:02

my hard drive, a nexstar3 1TB, fell about a foot and a half from an end table to the floor last night. Now when I start it (which I have only done twice because I am nervous) it just makes an intermittent buzzing sound (buuuuzz . . . buuuuzz . . . buuuzz . . . ). It is not detected by the computer. I am a photographer, had recently moved all my five years of files over to that drive and not yet backed it up. It was a very short fall, when I think back on it I have to imagine that the actual disc must be fine. It was running at the time it fell. I’m worried. Any thoughts?

dave, 23. February 2011, 16:53

hello all, i just bought a 2 terabyte WD Elements external HD 2 days ago, i filled it up 3/5 full with movies. it was working fine but today when i tried to hook it up it would not show up as a drive in my computer. i have another external that shows up fine. when going into disc managment i can see it in there as 2028 gb of unallocated space, i tried to create a new volume but it said that the disc was not initialized. i then tried to initialize the disc but it said that the media was write protected. i dont need to recover the data on it i just want to get it working again. any suggestions?

josfin, 21. February 2011, 21:17

hi please help my WD my passport essential fell down since then it is making the clung noise, can any one please help me sort the problem and to recover the data or make it work.

Theresa, 15. February 2011, 21:37

Had a wd my book external hard drive – the computer no longer detects the hard drive – as i have all my pictures and videos on this i really need to get my data off – i removed from case and plugged directly into computer sata slot – now my computer does not boot up – get the screen to boot into diagnostics etc and freezes on that screen – any suggestions

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo Garcia, 6. February 2011, 19:01

There is not reason to panic. you are probably in one of the best situations for data recovery. What broke is not part of the hard drive is part of the external case, just open the case, take actual hard drive out, insert it into a new case and thats it, you are done. Those cases are really cheap by the way, but you have to make sure you purchase the right one. Take the hard drive to the computer store and they should be able to tell you what case to buy.

robert, 5. February 2011, 20:58

the usb port has broken off inside my hard drive??? WTF DO I DO?????? i haven’t used it in a new days and i wanted to play some wow and i discovered that is has broken off…. it is now rattling around the HDD. i am on the edge of breaking point everything on there was put on there from my brother that came over to NZ from ausy just to do so pritty much H.E.L.P

Xero, 30. January 2011, 16:50

hey , i tried everything to get my external to work , but nothing worked! I have very important files in there … please let me know if you have other solutions please let me know. regards

Rose Parisi, 18. January 2011, 16:17

I turned on my Dell lnspiron 1525 laptop and it is asking me for a password for OWNER. There was never a password set. It would have been under the name Mike. I tried the password for Mike but it will not take it. I am locked out of the laptop. I tried several suggestions, even re-installing the software and it keeps bringing me back to that screen. HELP!

sydnei, 15. January 2011, 9:47

Hi .. i need some help. I refuse to pay a small country for the recovery.

I have an 80Gig Hitachi drive from a Mac (internal drive from about 2007). 5400rpm. The drive “died” and gave me the white screen of death. When the IT geeks plugged it into another macbook …the disk spun and the lights went on but the laptop couldnt see the drive.

Other geeks that saw it told me to send it to data recovery.

Help. – please email me.

Ta.

Pablo Garcia, 14. January 2011, 14:11

Hi EdhelDil:

I followed your advise and updated the article and included a link to another of my articles which talks about how to use Ddrescue: How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged

EdhelDil, 13. January 2011, 5:48

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hello,

Thanks for those informations, which are helpful and nicely written down.

However, I’d highly recommend that you change the ORDER they are written in on this page: I think you should START with all the things to try to do if the drive is in any way accessible BEFORE you put the section on how to try to freeze it if it’s not at all accessible… Otherwise, I guess many people will just follow the webpage order and therefore will completely damage their drive by the freeze method before they tried the other methods, even though their disk was maybe accessible (and therefore could be saved with ddrescue or the like).

Hope this helps ^^

EdhelDil.

Chuck, 11. January 2011, 14:06

I just bought a 320 GB Western Digital ATA to replace my 120 drive in my older powerbook G4 Hi- Res A1139. It was making kind of a grinding noise for a couple day and I got lax backing up. Anyway it stopped, I did get an apple icon once trying to restart but then i shut it down and I can not get it to restart, so I guess it is dead. I have now taken the drive out of the computer. But before put in the new WD 320 ATA I would like to try to find a way to recoup my data. All my iTunes are there as well as many other things. I spent quite a git on iTunes would like to recover, I have read some articles on trying to get the data off that drive, can you help, thanks.

Pablo Garcia, 29. December 2010, 8:22

Hi Lisa, if you look at the bottom of the article there are links to more data recovery articles. Click on the one named “How to recover data even when hard drive is damaged”

Lisa, 28. December 2010, 20:45

I tried doing as this tutorial suggests, I put my seagate freeagent storage device in the freezer for 2 hours and made sure it was sealed in a bag i took it out and made sure to carefully connect it to my computer once again and this did not work. I also tried tapping the device which did not help anymore. It sounds like it is not the “click of death” but rather an rrrrrrrrrrrrrr – rrrrrrrrrrrrrr sound….and it just keeps going over and over again. Is there anything else I can do that may help to get my data off of the device. My device is under warranty but I would like to get some of the data off of the device before sending it in because I realize that they will not recover my data for free.

Ruslan, 27. December 2010, 15:29

Help please… I have Western Digital External hard Drive 500 GB.It was nearly full, such there was only 50 gb free space. Day by day it worked slow and one day It stopped working, not only I am unable to access it but even I couldn’t see it in My Computer window. . I can feel the disk rotating and the light is on on the HDD. It used to flicker when it was accessible now the light is just on.. plus there got some sound inside.. after 10 seconds this sound stops… Pls help me in getting disk accessible to me.. I am using Toshiba Laptop

Pls help me Thanks in anticipation

Regards Ruslan

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

anirudh kuksal, 24. December 2010, 11:20

sir.. i have 2 hardisk one of 320 gb [segate ] and anotherof 500gb [segate 620 as] .In 320 gb i have installed window xp only. and in another 500 gb hardisk i have stored my valuable data upto 450 gb..which is very precious.now the problem starts in 500 gb hardisk from somedays as …when i start my pc it checks for error in 500gb like stage 1 of 2 ..2 of 2 .. and finally 3 of 3 ….. and process ends with replacing files.it repeates for 2 -3 days when i start my pc. now my pc is not detecting the 500gb hardisk …. it says on statup …secondary slave hardisk error … or primarmary slave hardisk error… and the system ask for resume or f1 .when i disconnect the 500 gb hardisk my pc starts normally.if by hit & trail i start my pc with both 320 & 500 gb hardisk…. in device manager it shows both the hardisk but in disk managment it shows only 320 gb hardisk.. also when i connect my 500 gb hardisk it also gives crr crr sounds . plz help …. i dont’ want my data lost …if it can be recoverable.

Mun, 16. December 2010, 6:45

I have a Western Digital External HDD. It’s a few years old and I’ve never had any problems with it….. until when my sister by mistake inserted its cable into a DVD Port. After that it just stopped showing up all together on my laptop, and desktop. When I plug it in to a computer, it makes little sound as the header spins and then goes up again making click at the end and then starts spinning again but will not appear under “my computer”. My laptop is running vista, and my desktop is running W7. I have already read probably 50 forums on this yet nothing has seemed to help. I have unplugged and replugged, changed cables, changed computers, disabled and re- enabled under “disk manager”, unistalled drivers and let windows refind/install them, searched for new drivers, etc. I have even attempted to go into disk manager and try to rename it, yet it doesn’t give me the option to do so. It shows up as “Disk 1″ and the details under that show “unknown” and “not initialized”… When I attempt to initialize it, the “virtual disk manager” just displays an error message that says “incorrect function”. When I right click on the device under disk management it only gives me the options of “initialize disk” (error message: Invalid Function or Cyclic Redudancy Check), “offline” (same error message), other than that I can just access “properties”, and “help”. I have literally tried everything I can.

I don’t want to lose my data. Can you tell me how I can recover my data in this particular case. The serial number of my ext. HDD is : WD800U017-001

Ashish, 15. December 2010, 1:42

Hi Pablo,

I have 500 gb Seagate external Hard Disk. I have purchased it 8 months back. It has very cruicial data on it. When i connect to my laptop, it does not detect and the light continuing blinking on the hard disk. when I connected to the PC windows XP it detects and ask for the drivers. I have given the path of the drivers but it does not work. any of the systems are not able to detect the Hard disk.

Please help me in finding out if the hard disk has been destroyed or how can i be able to recover my data from hard disk.

Hard disk is under warranty, but sending to service centre ….will they recover my data or replace my hard disk. please help

Regards, Ashish

sola, 13. December 2010, 8:24

please my HDD just crashed and i lost some of my documents on the drive (80GB) seagate. what

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

can i do.

SeanPaul, 13. December 2010, 7:26

HI Pablo , help needed. i have a 500gb iomega external harddrive. i’ve had it only about a year/ year and a half. about 2 days ago, it dropped about a metre onto the floor. when i plug it in, the blue light still comes on and stays on, however the external hardrive is not recoqnised on my computer and i tried on data management etc and it also doesn’t show up. i believe the usb itself that plugs into the side of my laptop is slightly broken as it does not feel secure in the port. Any idea if its broken, or any ways i can still recover the files in the external drive ;) thank you!

sahil, 23. November 2010, 6:40

hii i have a seagate 500gb still in warrenty till 1h back working fine but now i plug it in the laptop makes a sound that isomethingis plugged in but nothing in my computer and the light blinks continously it has data which is priceless no unusual sound proper vibration can my data be recovered or should give to the company will getting it repaired erase my data please answer

L Lim, 18. November 2010, 23:21

Hi Pablo,

Thanks very much for taking the time to compose the above article and doling out advice.

I wondered if you could point me in the right direction, as my problem is just slightly different from the scenarios that you have painted.

I dropped my 500GB Seagate portable external hard drive, while moving my laptop but luckily, it was still attached to my laptop via its USB cable. However, the jolt from its fall may be the reason for why my external HD is no longer working properly.

The symptoms are as follows:

1) After the jolt, there may have been a whirring noise – I can’t remember. However, I do remember the external HD beeping every second, for a minute or so. 2) The green light on my external HD started flashing about once every 3 seconds (when it is operating normally, the green light fades in and out instead of flashing abruptly). This carried on until I switched off my laptop, below. 3) A file that I had opened, from my external HD, froze. 4) After I had closed the file, it would not open again. 5) I attempted to safely disconnect my HD but my laptop informed me that my HD was still in use. 6) My HD was not reacting, so I tried to shut down my laptop. 7) My laptop was taking unusually long to shut down, so I switched it off without waiting for it to power down. 8) I disconnected the laptop from its power source and disconnected my HD from my laptop. 9) After a suitable wait, I reconnected the laptop and connected my HD after my computer booted up. 10) My HD started beeping in the same way described above, followed by the flashing light. 11) An icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen informed me that my HD was being installed. 12) After a spell, my external hard drive’s light started fading in and out, normally. 13) My external HD did not show up in My Computer but did appear in Device Manager, where it was stated as working normally, in General Properties. 14) In Disk Management, my exetrnal HD did not appear in the upper window panel. It appeared in the lower window panel as “Disk 1″, with a red arrow pointing downwards and a black bar above its description of “unallocated” (if I recall correctly).

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

15) Under its properties, in the stated x amount of storage within my external HD, the same amount was stated as available, although I have substantial amounts of data stored within the HD.

I should be grateful if you could kindly advise me as to: a) what the problem appears to be, here and 2) whether I should send my HD to Seagate’s recovery specialists (i365). Additionally, would you happen to know of other reliable recovery specialists in the U.K.?

Many thanks for your time.

Jack, 18. November 2010, 15:31

I have a 1TB SATA drive on my 6 month old gateway desktop which has apparently failed recently. The first symptom was the system freezing at the gateway logo screen on startup. Nothing worked (no safe mode, setup screen, etc.) I had the HDD tested and the tech couldn’t get to any of the data. the drive would start to spin up and then abruptly wind down and stop. No sounds, grinding or otherwise. My guess is that the drive has finally failed. The problem is that I really need to access data on that drive (mostly family photos, videos, etc.). Is it worth trying to freeze technique on this one??

Ren, 12. November 2010, 1:03

Hey there!

i have a Toshiba external hard disk(320 gb), when i plug it in through USB my laptop can detect that there is a generic external hard disk but it wont show up in My Computer and there is a noise whenever i plug it in then suddenly the noise stops and when i check if the disk is spinning i found out its not spinning . I need to access it, because of very important file that is in there. Can you tell me what to do?

Here’s my email [email protected]. Kindly help me please!

Benjamin, 9. November 2010, 23:26

hello there, I desperately need help here, as I need my files to back in order for me to work on my tasks tat is due 2 days time.

I have this D: Drive in my com, which no idea how the manufacturer combines all 3 HDD and show it as 1 to me.

I now can see the D: drive on My Computer. but when I clicked on it. It says “Drive not conencted”

Any solutions ?

Looking fwd for ur answer. Thanks!

francine, 30. October 2010, 16:55

thank you very much for the link to ‘recover my files- getdata’. i had dropped my hard drive, and after bringing it out into the frosty weather, it stopped running smoothly (and couldn’t be recognized by my computer). after running the getdata program, not only did it find all my files, but has guided my harddrive to run smoothly again! : ) it has been a HUGE relief to have my files back+ copied to a safe place

thanks!

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Sam, 28. October 2010, 21:56

Hi,

i have a 3.5″ IDE Seagate Quantum Fireball where the Pin is broken.. So its not been detected. I have plenty of priceless files. Would be great if you recommend me any solutions without going to the Data recovery service.

LisaB, 27. October 2010, 17:21

Please help…. I am a consultant, and have been using a “NEW” WD passport external hard drive to back up my data…and my 2 co-workers. The data on here can’t be replaced, and my old laptop has been returned to the vendor. I haven’t had a chance to copy the data off the backup drive. Today I plugged it in, and it made a quiet wincing sound 3-4 times then it’s just quiet…the light it on, but I can’t hear it spinning and it’s not being reccognized on My Computer. My lapptop makes the sound to tell he it knows something is attached, but nothing shows up. I tried using it on my husbands PC and it does the same thing. Does anyone know where to go to have the data recovered in the Toronto area…

Thanks, LisaB

Sam, 18. October 2010, 6:15

Hi, my 500 gb external HD (Transcend) gets detected by windows but its not showing up in windows explorer. I tried for changing letter path but the option doesn’t appear.

In the disk management when i go to that drive and do right click i get option of initializing and when I click it .. It says incorrect function.

Please help me.. Thank you!!

Daniel, 16. October 2010, 8:29

I just conected my External Seagate Barracuda 1.5 Tb in the plug and usb: and i heard a strange sound… A metallic and long cliiiiiinc cllliiiiinc cliiiiiinc… Then, i realized that the disks were not spinning at all (dead!). I tried to connect the drive at the sata port of the computer, but nothing changed, only that metallic sound and disks not spinning at all… I suppose this is a mechanichal failure. Can you please confirm me this? Is there a way to access to the data? Thanks.

SRK, 11. October 2010, 10:19

Hi, I accidentally dropped my Seagate go flex1TB Portable HDD, and now it is not detecting by my laptop (Vista OS) , the light still turns on and the HD sound seems normal. its a brand new and 2months old , though i have 500GB data , i have back up for that ..i wanted to knowwhether it can still work as usual after any repair ?

Thanks! SRK

xenia, 9. October 2010, 11:51

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

hello, how are you? I have this external hard drive, a Freeagent Seagate, it was working fine for ~4 years, I had lots of things stored in it. However, the little “teeth” inside the USB port have bent for some reason, although I have been handling it with lots of care, and now the drive won’t work. How can I get it working or get the data off it? is it possible to put a new USB port in? Many many thanks

Kali Placencia, 7. October 2010, 13:17

Okay so I am not sure if you can help me but I have a 1.5TB that was pretty much full. I saved photos, school papers, and thousands of dollars of digital scrap kits. Pretty much years of collecting stuff. One day the USB port broke off in it. So my buddy who runs his own computer repair company ordered me a new external case and got it working. Well the problem is, when he plugged it in, everything was gone. He ran a 24 hour data recovery program but nothing came back. NOTHING! I lost everything. I am ready to have a break down- literally. Is there anything else I can do or is it all gone? Please help!!!

Thanks!!

[email protected]

Craig, 3. October 2010, 1:10

I have a 40gig external hard drive that I dropped on the hard tiled floor, ever since my hard drive is not detected by windows at all, the lights usually flashed green now it’s flashing green then red constantly when plugged in via USB, I can hear the drive making the noise it normally makes yet windows does not detect it. Is there any hope of me recovering the data. Please help???

Anish Shenoy, 30. September 2010, 6:34

Help.. my 1.5 year old Iomega 500 GB external HD seized for no reason.. One day I used it for just 30 mins then put it off and an hour later when I put it on Windows didn’t detect it.. The blue indicator lights up constantly, its casing gets warm normally, disks spin normally without any clicking sound.. The vibrations are normal, only thing is that the indicator LED glows constantly..otherwise it would blink whenever data is being accessed.. So it appears that the PC doesn’t recognize it.. I changed USB cable, switched ports but no luck.. I tried everything I could do.. it is not shown in My Computer or Device manager.. I tried the HDD on a different computer and also on Ubuntu.. Condition is the same.. The problem appears to be case 3…right..? Could changing it from SATA to internal IDE using an adapter solve the problem.?? Does changing its existing SATA to USB adapter solve the problem..? Does Iomega provide spare adapters..?

Susan, 27. September 2010, 18:17

I have an eGo portable drive which I use to back up my photos and files. I have only used it twice since purchasing the device earlier this year. Last week, I tried to back up my files but my computer couldn’t establish connection with the portable device. I had to wiggle the cable to a certain position to get the device working. I contacted Iomega about the problem and was told to try a similar cable and see what happens. I tried and it not only didn’t work, but now the port on the device is broken. I don’t want to spend a lot of money in the recovery if possible. If there’s an alternative, I would like to try that first. Hope you can help.

Jane, 27. September 2010, 16:24

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi Pablo

I lent my 500Gb external Meccer Bravo to a friend (who has a degree in computer science!) and he plugged it in using a cord with the wrong power supply. That drive has all the project data on for one of my majors and was the only back up because my computer’s internal had to be reformatted at the same time after it stopped working. :( really really really need to get that hard drive working again soon. Any advice? please please please help. :( thanks so much

natalie, 21. September 2010, 22:22

hi there, i have a maxtor external hardrive that has stopped working….the comp doesnt pick it up and i occasionally get a pop up error msg telling me the drive had malfunctioned. i have all of my son’s baby photos on there :( and stupid naive me thought they would be save on the external as it was always treated well ( i thought) i have had the drive sitting here for about 12 months now im scared if i try to fix it i’ll lose everything forever :( but im now at my wits end and need to try to get my baby photos back! any advice? please email me back [email protected]

Dario, 20. September 2010, 16:43

Hi Pablo, I have a WD3200BEV (surprise!) that underwent a very short fall while I was watching a video off of it. The video got choppy, so I stupidly ejected the drive. If I plug in the device, the I can hear/feel the disk spinning, the led goes on but then starts blinking. No noise whatsoever, but I get the message: the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer When I try to verify the disk using disk utility I get: invalid record count catalog file entry not found for extent the volume needs to be repaired error: the underlying task reported failure on exit. Any suggestions? Thanks, Dario

Noorul, 19. September 2010, 0:58

i have an external hard drive, and it has 4 partition one the partitions is not opening, it has lot of file so i want open it pls help me

Ste Morris, 7. September 2010, 6:56

My pc will get to my desktop, hang for about a min, then bsod appears, and restarts. This also does this on safe mode. When i put my restore disc in, it will not detect the hard drive. Any answers will be supurb

Vipul Sanghani, 4. September 2010, 5:37

Hi Pablo I’ve got a Seagate External Hard Drive (1TB)

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

and it’s stopped working When it is plugged to the computer (but not clicking sounds) for a few seconds, the computer detects Lights on Hard Drive but the drive is not showing in My computer. I have My wedding clipping and so many Photographs on my Hard Drive Please help me to recover my files from hard drive

please thanks Vipul Sanghani [email protected]

John Andrews, 25. August 2010, 4:57

Please help me. My 1TB hard drive fell off of my table when i was watching a movie with my little sister. It seems that the problem is the “Clunk cluck” noise of death. I am well in high school so i doubt that i have enough money for a specilist to help me if their is anything i can try or anything i can do to fix it myself please tell me. Also how much would it cost to get 700GB worth of files recovered. Yep 700GB they are all my files. I put files on their to free up space and don’t lecture me about backing up becasue that was my only backups. So please if anyone could help me i would highly appreciate it. Oh and do the recovery specialest check the files i have some files that are not 100% legal on it.

Thanxs in advance

Sakthi Ananth, 22. August 2010, 23:25

I accidentally put my hard disk on my room surface , since that my HD didn’t work . i want my HD data . please help me.

lazai, 18. August 2010, 2:27

I accidentally plugged my pc cable on my hard drive.. since then my pc does not recognise it… is this something easily remedied??? tha..

Vandidaz, 10. August 2010, 1:28

My hardly used 250GB Seagate external HDD started to make whining noises. I had it opened and it appears the disc is not turning. I only got 60GB data on it (including my wedding clips). I would really love to get my data back. Does any of the above trick work? Is there a way to recover my data? Needless to say I will never buy any crap made in China again!! Many thanks.

gurpreet, 9. August 2010, 3:34

hi … my WD hdd 500gb detected by the pc and light also glow but the hd is not workin when it meant to run i ve use recover my files software for recovering my but all went in vain

plz suggs me sm tips asap so i m able to my run hd again

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

thanks in adv waitin for ur reply

Abbey Joe, 3. August 2010, 7:05

please help me to recover my external 500 GB harddisk and repair it now

Aaron Walker, 30. July 2010, 5:26

I really ned help to recover a hard drive that wasw an external hard drive. my usb port broke off completely and now i cannot get access to the information i need for court and if i lose my kids i will have nothing left to live for. so please help me fix my problem cause i know it can be done but i just don know how to do it \\ Thanks Aaron Walker

michael, 23. July 2010, 10:54

Thanks!!! i just swapped hard drive casings and voila, it works!

Kyle Turner, 20. July 2010, 19:43

Hi Pablo, I have a WD Passport portable hard drive and I’ve had it for about three years. It was a 320 GB model, and it had been working fine until the last month. The computer refuses to read it. I took it to a Geek Squad member today and they said that the disk does not spin. Is there anyway I can retrieve the data from this hard drive. I have all my music on it, and it would be about $500 or so down the drain. Please help! Thanks! :D

- Kyle Turner

Shaitian, 11. July 2010, 2:57

I had an interesting problem with my hard drive recently, and i was seeking answers but couldn’t find them until i got here and saw your number 4 option and tried it but it didn’t work; but after doing that i decided to remove the foam that was put between the hard drive and the hard drive chip and clean the chip off and that fixed the problem instantly. The foam itself had melted onto half the board was was really bad on some of the chips. Someone more tech savvy can probably explain why the foam was hindering the hard drive but i cannot. Hopes this helps someone else.

Kelly Dz, 9. July 2010, 15:56

This tutorial is wonderful but I am hoping someone can help me with a problem with my external hard drive. When I hook it up to the USB, the computer detects that it is there (it shows up on the task bar with the icon to Safely Remove Hardware) but when I go to My Computer it doesn’t show up. I tried to follow another site directions to fix the problem and went to Manage under My Computer and then Disk Management to change the drive it goes to. It says Disk 1 — Unknown — Not Initialized and there is a little red arrow pointing down on the icon of the drive. But when I click on Disk 1 Properties it says Western Digital and says it is working properly. When I try to initialize the disk it lets me choose partition style (MBR or GPT). When I click MBR and initialize it

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

says Incorrect Function. So I am at a complete loss. I was going to try cleaning the connectors as suggested but I have no idea how to get it out of the external hard drive casing. ANY help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Andy, 5. July 2010, 17:28

hiya hope i can be helped my sata hard drive started making a clicking noise and when it went to boot up i got a black screen saying operating system not found can any 1 help me plz as i have precious data i need to get off it

edu, 5. July 2010, 3:21

My hard drive is making the click of death. How long can i keep it before sending it to the specialist because i do not have the kind of money they are demanding. I hope it can stay for as long as possible. Their charge is more than what i earn in a month, but i have hope of being rich one day.lol. really i do.

Suril, 2. July 2010, 14:40

I have a Western Digital My pasport Hard drive and it makes the sound of death,, i tried the refrigerator plan and it didnt work..do i have to send it to recovery center or is there another way around?Thanks

kennedy, 1. July 2010, 11:52

I am lucky i come a cross your home page interesting

Yura, 30. June 2010, 10:48

Hi, I dropped my WD passport external hard drive by accident. The blue light of the hard drive is on, it produces interruputed buzzing voiced sounds when it is plugged to the computer (but not clicking sounds) for a few seconds, the computer detects it but the drive is not showing in My computer. It says: the usb mass storage device has malfunctioned. Can I recover my photos in any way? Many thanks

James, 15. June 2010, 7:14

Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955

Windows error recovery

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be there cause If windows files have been damaged or configured incorrectly, startup repair can help diagnose and fix the problem. if power was interrupted during startup, choose windows start normally.

Launch Startup repair(recommended) Start windows normally

Then when I press enter on ”start windows normally”, it shows as loading… but never loads completely to take me to the SIGN IN screen to put my password.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Now, when I press enter on ”Launch Startup repair” it then takes me to this…

Window has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer.

Then it says,

This error can be cause by unplugging a removeable storage device such as an external usb drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Make sure any removeable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer.

If you continue to receive this error message, contact the hardware manufacturer.

Status: 0xc00000e9 Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred.

***NOTE***: I have located and removed the hard-drive to test it under the same exact laptop and the results are the same.

Is is possible for me to recover valuable data?(All saved on a Notepad) Is there a solution? I really can’t afford to lose it.

Please help.

Thank You

Pablo Garcia, 10. June 2010, 8:35

Michael

Follow these steps:

1) Take the hard drive out of the USB enclosure and insert it on a new enclosure, see if it gets detected by Windows

2) If it does not get detected by Windows, plug it in directly to a computer and see if it gets detected by the BIOS of the computer.

3) If it gets detected use a data recovery program. If it does not, your only option is a data recovery service.

Michael Nieckoski, 9. June 2010, 13:56

OK got one for you… I haven’t been able to do much with this. Hitachi Deskstar 500GB T7K500. I was using it in an external USB enclosure and it fell off the CPU and banged on the floor (less than 3 feet). It now makes musical tones when powered up, a repeating set of humming-like tones, very musical for about 30 seconds then goes quiet. Sometimes, the CPU will give the sound that it knows a device has been plugged in. The drive does NOT spin up. Any ideas?

Thanks! –mike

Pablo Garcia, 7. June 2010, 6:46

Hi Devkrishna

Sounds like a corrupt partition table, I would use a data recovery program. I recommend “Recover my Files”

devkrishna, 6. June 2010, 10:37

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi dear

i have WD external portable 120 gb hard drive MDL NO WD1200XMSB-00 S/N WXEY07Q89223 R/N A4B, This hardrive i using from 1.5 years back. but now it will dedect by computer i mean drive will apper on computer and also opne but their will not any may document and file.i try to recovery but i unable. it has approx 29 gb document very importent so can you please please advise to me how to get this file and documents.

Lucy-Fay, 1. June 2010, 16:25

Hi. Is there any chance of accessing an external hard drive after it says it has malfunctioned.. its saying it is now an unknown device.. as it manage to install but nothing is popping up for the device? I can’t access anything.. And Its about 6 months of photography work

Please help

Lucy

Usman, 1. June 2010, 3:45

I have a problem with my hard disk. My hard disk is WD300. It is affected with bad sector and i have very important data in it. I try to attach with another hard drive. But its speed is very very slow. And when i open my computer it take nearly 15 mints. The hard is detected and i can see it clearly. But not of his partition is opening while i have tried many time and wait nearly 1 hour of it. Plz tell me how i can get data from it the data is very important for me. Thanks. For give me guidance My email address is [email protected], [email protected]

katherine medlin, 30. May 2010, 11:19

Dude you saved years of games pics music and tons of movies for me thanks a lot i really mean it.I put it in freezer like u said had to a few times but oh my gosh way worth it.It really does work thanks kat

Tyna, 24. May 2010, 20:07

Hi Pablo, I have a 320gb WD external drive that I’ve been using for a little over a year now and one day it does not get detect by Windows XP. I had try to use Linux to boot it, but still unable to get detection. So i need your advise how to solve my problem because right now I’m only care to save all my data on the hdd.

Jeff, 24. May 2010, 18:34

Hi Pablo, I have a problem with my external hard drive, basically is making that clicking noise. I already tried to put it on the freezer, but it won’t work. My external hard drive is 500GB and I have around 250 GB of files on my drive. I was wondering if you would be able to help me fix my drive if i mail it to you, and if you could tell me your charge as well. Thank You

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Nick, 21. May 2010, 11:18

Hi there, I got a problem with my seagate 500GB seaagent Desk. I dropped my external hard disk on the carpet from the computer tower and also when the computer connects with the harddisk, and then the computer automatically restarts too. After that, my hd does not work anymore. The computer does not detect the hardisk, and also the harddisk does not turn on the light when I connect with the power. When I put the hd close to my ear, I can hear the hd runs, but it sticks. I have some important data in the hard disk!!!So please give me a solution for me to find out how to retrieve the data or make the harddisk work again. THANKS

Kristen, 16. May 2010, 8:18

Hi, Are you still running your data recovery service? This is my situation… I have treated my WD external drive like gold, then one day I was transporting it to a different room and it fell out of my hands and hit the wood floor. I didn’t think much of it, until I went to use it a couple days later and the drive clicked ~4 times and went undetected.

Would you be able to help?! Thank you, ~Kristen

Steven Bayne, 15. May 2010, 5:03

Hi!

Incident: A couple of days ago, I ejected my WD 1 TB external from my laptop. First, I unplugged it from the back of the laptop. I then waited till the light turned off on the external. From there, I unplugged the power from the external, followed by the USB cable. Here is where things went awry. After unplugging the cables from the back of the external, I started to stand up(I was kneeling because my laptop was on a flat wooden chair) and my hand hit the bottom of the chair. I was not expecting to hit the chair so in surprise I dropped the external.

Aftermath: I moved everything to a table and tried plugging up my external again to my laptop. It detected a new device, said it was installed and should work properly. That, of course, was strange to me. I look under My Computer to see the drive and nothing. I eject the device, try again. Nothing. I can hear it make the same spinning sounds like it used to when you first plug it in, but nothing.

Attempt to fix: My problem sounds like number 4 exactly, so I tried the eraser. It did clean off the contacts quite well like you said in this article, but it still didn’t help. What to do now?

Salvador, 14. May 2010, 12:09

Hi Pablo I’ve got a Western Digital Passport and it’s stopped working like it should I own a mac

I plug it in and it appears in the finder menu (list) but when I click on it – it does not open – it just disappears (Finder closes down)

So I can’t access the info on the hard drive

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Any ideas on how I could get the info off the hard drive?

please thanks Salvador

Dan, 11. May 2010, 20:19

Thanks for this Pablo. Was slighly suspicious at first this article was a promotional write-up Recover My File, but just using the program now to drag all my photos off an external drive that would just prompt me to format it whenever it was connected. Looks like I might of lost a few of the long filenames, but apart from that, a very happy camper here :)

Mitchplaza888, 9. May 2010, 12:14

In my case i have a 350Gb WD drive and when i start it i hear it spin for a total of 20 seconds while making clunking noises then i just stops. It even had enough time to install the drivers on my computer but has an error in my disk management.My question is, if I should freeze the drive and is there any way that i would be able to fall back on the option of sending it out to be recovered after freezing.

Warren C, 6. May 2010, 22:07

Pablo Please Help!

I used the wrong plug, my laptop plug, to power my external 500gb hard drive. The hard drive did not turn on and I realized i was using a higher voltage plug. I found another external enclosure and the hard drive would not turn on either, nor would the enclosure. I went to best buy and their computer wouldnt turn in with the hard drive installed. From what system recovery companies have said, it might just be an electrical error on the main board.

I really need to know: should I simply replace the board with a new one? and will that likely solve an issue of this nature? I know computer companies jack up prices to do things I do for my friends for free – but I have never delt with this yet I’ve built my own computer. Please let me know how I might fix this on my own.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! Warren

abbas esmail, 6. May 2010, 14:52

Dear pablo, icame across your site and desperatly in need of yor help i have 1tb Wd extr harddrive 800gb data in it .it stopped working suddenly. the drive is not detectable even in BIOS.i have my documents and photos movies music ect .i sent the drive in two diffrent datarecovery centre here in dubai but both returned back saying that the drive is dead and head is gone .i dont know what they mean. now i want to send it to u ,if possible can u give me ur email id and contacts my email is [email protected] thanks abbas esmail

Armando, 6. May 2010, 14:06

I have a 500gb wd passport (scorpio blue). It’s about a year old. I connected the SATA interface

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

directly into a desktop with same results as when connected through the USB bridge. It spins on and communicates its model to the computer (reading WD500GB) (the light blinks and seems to attempt to mount in USB connection) but will not mount. It had a slight bump that morning but not sure if that was the reason why it died. It seems like it is not hardware, but not sure. Any recommendations?

thank you in advance…

Stefanakos, 2. May 2010, 16:04

Pablo S.O.S !!! My hard drive fell on the floor from one meter height and now it does that “cling” noise,but also the light indicator of power doesnt get red,it looks dead,although i can hear the fan cooling the HD.From the solutions u kindly suggest here in this article,what would u suggest me to do? If i get the HD in the fridge, is it for sure that the HD is going to “die” after a sort period of time,after i get it out of the fridge? Or if i try that, i will be able to get it to a technician to see what he can do?

Jan, 30. April 2010, 19:55

1TB WD Caviar Green. ESATA. 1 partition.Hi Pablo

I’m experienced. have used the freezer trick myself for 12 years to recover from that condition.

Today My condition with 1TB WD Caviar Green. ESATA. 1 partition. Drive letter I: Externally docked

This drive is externally docked. Was using as a shared drive on a simple 2 person WinXP network. Rebooting the PC could scramble some files occasionnally. File handles not released when software shut down on the Network PC before reboot. Not serious and always fixed with ChkDsk f/r

Yesterday, same thing and running ChkDsk f/r took longer and when finished, there is the Drive letter I: but without the label “1TB-2″ windows sees the I; drive with difficulty. Takes 3 to 4 minutes. But, File Explorer cannot open the drive.

Disks Utilities Disk Director – can find the disk after minutes. Starts to run ChkDsk under windows, but fails

Disk Symptoms running normally. Temparture OK. “After” the drive settles down after WinXP fights to access the disk, there is a Single click every 20 seconds and the access light at same time. Normal in my experience

This appears to be an external circuit board issue. I will try the pencil eraser. If that does’t work I will buy a identical replacement drive today, xchange the boards and try that

If not work, then I want to know if you think I can send you the drive and $99 to recover the files? Where do I send the drive to?

Best Regards, Jan

PS your contact form is not working. Got 404 or no capcha image. 5 retries unsuccessfully

Diane, 29. April 2010, 14:57

I work for a school system and should be working off the H drive which should be backed up each day. To make a long story short on Tuesday my computer started making a running sound and then started clicking as if it was not connected and within 3 minutes my computer screen went black and came up with a message. I sent it to a local store called Save Your Data and they have just called me to say they could not see anything on my hard drive. They are contacting a Data Recovering service which I know will cost a fortune but my boss said she will pay it. They are

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

contacting a company called CBL Data Recovery right now and should call me back today. I have not tried the freezer method or other methods you described in your article but I don’t know what I will do without my information. What can be done in the future so this doesn’t happen again?

abi, 26. April 2010, 7:52

Hello

My Freecome 160gb extrernal hard drive has stopped working. I normally have it on permanantly and it has a power supply. I have tried it in another socket but still no joy. It has been making a few whirring noises when I access it lately but I didn’t give it much thought. Could it have overheated? What can I do with it? It has 36gb of photos on! Can someone recover the data and how much might they charge roughly?

Thanks Abi

Mahesh, 17. April 2010, 19:47

My Laptop with SATA Hard driver does not boot. I took out the SATA Harddisk and connected to another laptop Via SATA to USB connector, another laptop can detect extenal Harddisk driver and however I cant access the same. It give me error saying “C:\>CD F:\ The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.”

Is there any hope to recover data , if so how ..

Wayne Kelly, 15. April 2010, 14:02

Hello Pablo.

I am hoping you can help me. I have a SimpleTech 320 MD External HD (Model U35/320) that is not being detected by my computer. This HD has over eight years of the only source of family photos and I am hoping there is a way to access/save these photos. It was working one night and simply not working the next morning. I purchased three (3) SimpleTech 320 HD’s in December 2007 and two were gifts.

The SimpleTech 320 MD External HD has been used very little and has not been dropped. The red AC power light shows and initially the HD blue light comes on but that is all and the HD is not detected by the computer & I have tried several computers. There is no clicking noise and the SimpleTech external HD has not been opened.

Pablo does this sound like the circuit board? Can you please advise what options I have to recover the photos on my own and if necessary what companies you can recommend for data recovery. Thank you.

Wayne Kelly

Dinora Galvan, 14. April 2010, 13:35

I own a Western Digital WDBABM0010BBK My Passport Essentia. and I believe my problem is your first senerio, 1) Corrupted file system. The only think is that I can see all my folders but when I try to open them to copy them somewhere else my files are not accesible to be copy. and the ones that are accesible take from 30 min to an hour each, “could be one picture taking that long”. Would this program work for me too.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

B, 11. April 2010, 23:17

I had my hard drive in an enclosure and someone tripped over the wire causing the hard drive to fall to the ground. I had a friend take a look for me and assured me that he knew what he was doing, but after reading online I discovered you shouldnt open it unless its a dust free environment and handled carefully. He opened it without gloves and i think he tried moving the arm of the hard drive and it broke. Is there any way to fix this and if so how much? Can my data be recovered given the circumstances? The issue I have is number two listed above. Please email me back. Thanks!

Popular, 11. April 2010, 13:34

hi i needsome help pls… my tb wd fell from my bed and it does not show up any more…… the blue light still comes on as normal just not coming up help pls………problem is i have some stuff on it i cant carry for a tech. to fix stuff that will crash my career (im very very popular and well known in my country) help pls and every thing legal and illegal is on this drive) thanks for understanding…………………….

charles cudjoe, 9. April 2010, 11:03

my western digital hard drive fell off the ground and has stop working my data on the, am really dying to have them on other drive but i cant recover them

PC Engineer 2311, 5. April 2010, 16:02

The best thing you could actually do providing the files were copied from your computer to your hard drive is instead of messing with the hard drive use a programme called recover my files. When you copy files to your hard drive it leaves the origional on your computer and even if you have deleted them, re-formatted your hard drive it will still recover them. Its a lot cheaper than paying for data recovery, i run a computer shop and the amount of people that ask for this service is unbelievable, tbh its keeping me in business considering the cheapest price for recovery is $275.

cara, 4. April 2010, 2:17

Thanks for this article!

I tried to send an email through the ‘contact’ page, but I keep getting an error message, so I will post here.

Basically the situation is this–I inherited my friend’s external hard drive (Samsung, 500GB, HD501LJ) and tried to plug it into my computer. It clicks and the light is red. After a few minutes, it stops clicking and the light turns blue, but my computer doesn’t read it. Should I use your freezer method? Or is that only if the computer can read the drive to begin with? I have a spare desktop and I thought I could maybe insert this one as a slave drive, but I am not sure if that is a good solution.

Any advice would be appreciated. The computer place near here quoted me $1000, which I don’t have. Thanks again!

Denvick, 3. April 2010, 21:40

hello,

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

I have a 500GB Adata external 2.5″ hdd , a thin one.. I used it one day but while I selected some files to copy to my main hard drive, I got a “windows is not responding” pop up and then everything hang. When I turned on my laptop and plugged in back my external hdd, I got only the drive name (eg. Local Disk G:) but no information about its size and no option for reformatting. I don’t hear any clicking nor beeps only the “rrrrrrr”…..”rrrrrrrrrr”…. rrrrrrrr” sound. Whenever I try to access it, my system does not respond. please help me, I don’t want to loose those treasured memories and important files in there. I don’t have any experience fixing PCB’s.. And I don’t have that much for a data recovery service.. Thank you,

Megs, 31. March 2010, 12:44

Hi,

I dropped my WD 250 GB MY Passport External Drive while I was moving, and the shell was slightly open so I clicked it back together. Initially I used to get “Drive is not recognized” but, now it just spins with a whirring noise and clicks. I think it’s the heads but, I am not sure if I should go get it fixed with someone or if there is something I can do at home (besides the freezer trick). Can you help me?

Megs

Donja, 29. March 2010, 17:27

Ok–you seem to be the person in the know–so here goes. I have a SimpleTech 320Gb pininfarina–that is–without warning–without dropping–without clicking or beeping or flashing–not recognized. I disconnected all cords to move it–and when I plugged it back in –to the USB–it was no longer recognized. I tried other USB ports and tried it on my laptop–still nothing. It does power up–but that’s it. I have MANY irreplaceable files—HELP ME PLEASE.

MDiz, 29. March 2010, 16:15

Hey, I dropped an Aluratek 500GB external (WD HDD) from about a 2-foot distance on carpet; it no longer works.

My computer is detecting the USB connection, but no drive shows up in My Computer. My HDD sounds like it’s trying to run/boot up (I’m not getting any clicking noises), but it makes the “whurrr”ing noise for about 10 seconds before falling silent.

When I locate this drive as Drive 1 in Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management and try to initialize the disk it’s telling me “Incorrect Function.”

The HDD still gives me all of the same complications whether it’s hooked up from it’s external casing or if I run it directly into my computer.

Is it possible to recover any data from this external without sending it in for repair, or should I just chuck it in the garbage?

Please help ><

Yoshi, 28. March 2010, 8:23

Hello Pablo,

I know there are many people with similar problems as me and I would like to thank you for going out of your way to help people in trouble like me. You have no idea how lucky I feel to be to find

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

your site, after having the feeling of losing all hope.

I was recently transferring data to my Seagate FreeAgent Desk external hard drive, when my computer froze and I was forced to restart it. I rebooted the computer, and noticed that the hard drive took forever to read and when I tried copying one video file (about 300megs) it would have an estimated 2 hours or so. When I tried to cancel the operation, it froze, and (I probably shouldn’t have done this) I pulled out the USB cable. The next day I tried to plug in my external, and it would take approximately 5-10 min. before the drive was recognized, but when I tried to open the drive, I would get an “I/O device error” and cannot open the drive. I have about 400 gigs used in the external out of the 1TB. It also does not make any sounds. Properties and such also could not be viewed.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Durga, 26. March 2010, 9:25

Hi, I am unable to contact you via the “Contact US” link at the top of this page as I get a “Page Not Found” when I click submit. Here’s what my problem is -

I have a Toshiba 160GB portable hard drive that I dropped accidentally. I am hearing a clicking noise and the hard drive is NOT getting detected. I tried connecting it to a couple of PC’s/Laptops – one running XP and another Vista (if that makes any difference), but the Hard drive still wouldnt get detect. Is there a way that the files could be recovered or get the hard drive to work ? Let me know if I need to ship it to you and the terms.

Thanks, Durga

Doozy8, 20. March 2010, 16:40

I have a Maxtor 500GB SATA drive in a USB enclosure that I was using as additional storage. I moved it to a new laptop in the house and it started up fine. Next time I connected it I heard clicking. I am not able to get a PC to see this drive. Is there something you think can be done to recover this data?

Thank you

ashish, 19. March 2010, 23:30

after using demo version of data recovery on my 320gb portable hd, i am able to takeout data from it, but this thing is working very very slowly and not all the files i am able to recover.please help.

Chris, 19. March 2010, 1:36

I dropped my external hard drive and when I connect the power it spins for 3 seconds and stops. I tried the freezing but it did not help. Do you think I can still recover some files? Can you do that?

Thanks

Susan Ragsdale, 17. March 2010, 15:43

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

I have a seagate free agent 500 gb new external hard drive. Problem is I can’t plug in usb connection. When inserted into the hard drive, it comes right out and I can here rattling which tells me that part of the connection is probably broken off inside. Now what do I do?

Yanni, 16. March 2010, 10:26

Hello, I’ve been trying to contact Pablo Garcia by email but I get an error that the link http://geekyprojects.com/thanks.html appears to be broken. Any other ways to contact him?

Scott Reece, 12. March 2010, 11:13

does your offer still hold for recovering data for a donation? If so, do you accept PayPal? If so, please reply to [email protected] and I will forward a more detailed description of how I cannot get data from wd5000c37 that fell to the floor but is still recognized as a usb mass storage device by my pc.

soL, 10. March 2010, 6:02

what would you say my chances are at getting desktop files off my aunts laptop? it got smacked with a spindle of dvds right above where the internal drive is, and instantly locked up. tried rebooting and it would get to the xp progress bar, advancing about 1% every 10 minuites before locking up at about 1/4 the way. live cds lock up when trying to detect drive, and when i connected it as slave in my machine, you cannot access it in my computer without it causing an error. the drive makes normal read sounds about every 5 seconds, no strange noises i can hear =(

Billy, 9. March 2010, 17:53

Greetings Pablo, My hard drive took a spill from the top of my computer tower. The screen flashed and said all data has been deleted. The hard drive still shows the light like its on but I cant get a usb read on my computer. I took it to a friends computer and the usb device was detected but It would not locate the external drive. The hard drive light flashes on and I would like to try and salvage whats been deleted. How do I get the computer to read the hard drive? Is it to late? The brand is a calvary external hard drive I can’t tell if the disc inside are spinning because its a pretty silent unit. I would appreciate any advice on this matter.

Ralph, 5. March 2010, 9:04

I have a sony viao laptop which is about 4 years old, the hard drive recently stopped working, PC world removed it and tried to connect it to 2 other computers, but they did not recognise the hard drive hence I cannot retrieve any of my data. The only option they gave me was a lab test which costs £700, but can I do something myself?

giulia, 4. March 2010, 13:04

ciao è stato dato un pugno al pc portatile e da quel momento schermata blu,nel bios non rileva hdd, beh ci sono le foto dei bimbi, del resto non m’importa, come posso recuperarle? grazie

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Mary, 26. February 2010, 23:26

I have an external drive I use to back up files. Occasionally, the PC would not recognize it. Then, later, it would work. Since I used the PC system to auto back up, the ext. drive would fill up and I would then delete files. Now, the red light and yellow light are on constantly, but there is no whirring sound and none of my computers will recognize it. My feeling is that it jammed with too many files. Is this possible and how difficult would it be to recover the files?

Maung AUng, 26. February 2010, 10:27

Dear Pablo I accidentally dropped my WD external Hard Drive (Laptop drive). My pc does not recognize it when connected. I took it up to my IT department and they told me (they open HD) that the “head” that read and write data is broken. Thus data cannot be recovered. Is there anyway you can help? Any hope?I am so depressed. Thanks

Richard, 25. February 2010, 21:28

This is very informative. thanks.

Every time a turn on my computer. it says that their was a error reading drive and to press ctrl alt delete to restart. and when i do this, it simple says the same thing once again.

Carlos, 25. February 2010, 14:28

Very useful info! Having a problem with WD 320GIG HDD not being recognized now?

Just happened last week, the platter is spinning & no clicking noise. I’ve connected the drive externally but still nothing? Might getting a new board work? Because before finding this article I was trying to find the exact same drive to replace the guts to see if that might work?

Any advice? Thanks in advanced!

Mahmud, 22. February 2010, 7:12

hello, could somebody suggest me what should i do to recover my data, since, my Western Digital 80GB (1st ) was not being detected then i opened it and took the disk out, i put it in Western Digital 320gb (2nd) drive (replacement with one of 3 disks). it didn’t work. i took the 80gb disk back and expecting 320gb to work as usual with it’s own disk. but no! i m in doubt it might cause problem to the needle of the second one. Also i had a 2to3 milimiter scratch on the 1st disk.

1. is it possible to recover data from 1st one? 2. is it possible for the 320gb drive to work again? Thanks for your help.. Mahmud

Mike, 17. February 2010, 22:28

I dropped my hammer ext. drive about a foot onto my hardwood floor. i plugged it in and it beeps and clicks. the power light does come on. nothing appears on my computer. I have all my sons

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

baby pictures on this and some music. is there anything you can help me do here? thanks Mike

JRS, 15. February 2010, 0:17

Hi,

I recently knocked over my WD external Hard drive. It powered up after, but wanted me to reformat it. I took it out of the case, and installed it as my 2nd SATA Drive. Had to go into BIOS and turn on Auto so my computer would recognize it.Am using XP, Followed the directions: If you are using XP do the following Click on Start Settings Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Disk Management

Under disk management it states the following: Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System is blank, Status=Healthy, When I click on properties, it says Right now I’m doing a scan with the free trial version of recover my files software. Is there any other way for me to recover the data without purchasing the recovery software from GetData. Thanks.

JRS

Nightly, 14. February 2010, 19:45

Hi Pablo. Recently I found this page while searching for the problem with my portable external HD – Maxtor OneTouch III Mini. The problem is when the drive is inserted Explorer hangs on. Especially when you try to reach My Computer it hangs. After I plug out for a second drive appears on My Computer and then gives the message “You need format the disk in drive before you can use it”. Device Manager shows the Drive, and Properties available for drive except ‘Policy” section – its hanging there. and the computer nor Shutdown nor Startt if the drive isn’t plugged out. I tried Command prompting (both in Windows mode and with Bootable Windows Installation disk where provided Command prompting) – it also can’t access the drive. How to be? What is the solution for that?

I also tried disabling the device in Device Manager. well, PC doesn’t hang on in this situation. But anyway – it’s useless.

Im using Vista Ultimate on my laptop so I checked all these mostly on Vista. I also tried Windows XP. The drive is recognized and drivers are loaded but in My Computer doesn’t show and taskbar hangs. so almost the same result in Windows XP. Tried WIndows 7. It shows up drive (without it’s name) on My computer (but after 1 minute) but I double click on it green bar on the upper side (in the address bar) shows the progress but sure the device is not getting open.

I opened the case, and could get out this 2,5 Seagate Momentus 5400.3 . As it is OEM product it’s not provided 5 year warranty. What is the solution for this?

gospelmidi, 14. February 2010, 4:00

I have read the article and all the comments. I had already frozen my HDD before reading this. The CMOS no longer recognizes the drive (Maxtor STM3200820A 200GB). I’m shopping for another old drive to replace the circuit board, but that probably won’t help now. I can afford to lose anything else for which I have no backup, except I do need one 20KB .doc file. But I have to do a search for it, which will probably use up any remaining lifetime I can get out of this drive, even if

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

a new (used) circuit board helps the CMOS to recognize it.

Anyway, is there any specific HDD I should buy for continuous 24/7 service? I can buy a new 1 year 300 GB 10K U320 SCSI for $260 shipped. I would prefer to buy an ATA or SATA drive because it is cheaper . . . but I get what I pay for, I know. Thank you for any suggestions.

Stephanie, 14. February 2010, 3:48

oh goodness could you help me too please!!!

1 week ago my laptop didn’t want to start up. a blank black screen showed when trying to boot up & said some system not found. yesterday i brought it into a repair shop & the guy tested the hard drive & told me its dead since the hard drive ‘motor’ spoils, no cure for this or may be other specialist could help. I’m quite worry about that because I have around 30GB ‘personal private files’ inside..(^_^”) *shy* well like what you said, it makes the ‘click click noise’ after i on my laptop..

Nichole, 14. February 2010, 0:02

Hi Pablo, I just came across this article and all of your great advice. I don’t know too much about computers but I am a do-it-yourself type person with just about everything. Right now I am just trying to figure out if it is the “click of death” that you refer to. I was not about to pay an outrageous amount for data recovery and I was wondering how likely it was that I would be able to recover any data. So I have a Western Digital My Book 320GB external hard drive. It was on and I accidentally knocked it over and it fell about 2 feet onto my carpet. This happened over a year ago but I gave up after I found out how expensive it is for data recovery. When I turn it on it doesn’t make a clicking sound but it makes a sort of buzz sound followed by a beep 5 times in a row. The light is on and Windows recognizes it but it does not show up under “My Computer”. Does this sound like I have a chance of recovering the data or am I look at a data recovery service? Thanks so much!

Alex, 9. February 2010, 16:16

Hi Pablo Garcia, This is the great page i found ever online to recover my frozen hd, I thrilled when I managed to pull of my data using “recover my files” from my almost dead hdd, but unfortunately none of my videos, pictures files are workable they just seems to be icons. could yo help with that? to pull of my data from almost dead

Rena, 5. February 2010, 12:34

Hey Pablo, I have had a 320 GB WD HDD for over a year now that stopped working. It accidently fell down on the floor, and now when i plug it in my PC it lights, get recognized as a hardware, then makes the death soud :( and nothing happens. I’ve googling for a solution and tried to check DisK Management. It’s not listed, actually there is something called DISK 1 that needs Initialization but even if I try to initialize it it doesn’ work. All my data is on it and I really need it :( Shall I try the freezer solution as the HDD symptoms match with it?? If it doesn’t work will I still be able to send it to an IT professional to recover my data? I just am trying to recover my data without paying too much money i can not afford..

Please advise

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Jairo Mesa, 5. February 2010, 12:25

I have a Hitachi 1tb 7200rpm hard drive… hardly with it almost 7 months, and from a while ago, it was like hanging and the OS froze for a while, and then resumed, but several times a day. I sent it to a technician but he said it was alright. However, i hooked it up to my pc yesterday and i was planning to do a low level format to it just in case. but then, it stopped functioning… Power is flowing to it, but i cant seem to hear or feel the “reading” process… I dont have any important information in it, but i need it. I was reading some forums and i wanted to try the freezing trick, but idk… i just want it to function… BIOS detects it as Hard Drive, but with no info.. please some advice

DEEPAK, 5. February 2010, 1:22

THANKS BOSS WONDERFULL HELP, ALL IS WELL

Drew, 3. February 2010, 23:13

I closed my laptop too hard and the computer froze. When I restarted it goes to a black screen for a while, then eventually to the system recovery manager. I took the hard drive out and connected it to another computer and could not access anything. I did diagnostics and it said I needed to replace the hard drive, so I did. I took the old drive to a friend who works at a computer tech store and he tried to hook it up to a linux system and could not access anything. Is there anything I can do to get the data from the old drive?

Nicole, 2. February 2010, 15:23

Hi there,

I need HELP! I have an external HD Western Digital 120GB that was working fine one day and the next morning was not being recognized by my laptop. I plugged it into my HP and it recognizes the X drive but doesn’t pull the data up. When the external HD is plugged in the green light is on and you can hear a rrrrr click, rrrrr click, rrrrr click sound and then it goes quiet (like its no longer running) but the green light is still on. I need to extract the data off this ex drive what route would you take to do this?

Please help asap! Thanks Nicole

alba, 30. January 2010, 22:47

Hello Pablo, I have an external harddrive (simpletech 500GB). I tripped on the powercord and it fell 3 feet from the ground, while it was running (listening to some music from the harddrive). Winamp started to skip so I powered off the harddrive and powered it back on. I was left with a minute of beeping and then silence. The drive never spins and my computer doesn’t see anything occupying that specific USB port. I’ve tried connecting the harddrive directly to a motherboard to no avail.

thank you in advance!!

Johnny, 28. January 2010, 8:17

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Dear Pablo,

I am using a IBM R61e laptop. I normally turned it off this morning, and in the afternoon, when i tried to turn it on again, there’s this ‘zi zi zi….zi zi zi…zi zi zi…’ noise coming out from the hard drive, and it failed to turn on, with system warning: initializatoin error.

then i took the harddrive out and use it as an external one connecting to another running laptop, again, this ‘ zi zi zi….zi zi zi…zi zi zi….’ noise coming again, and this one can not be recognized by the windows system. From my observatoin, the external harddrive was not working while connecting after the noise.

Do you have any suggestion on what i can do to get my data back? Thank you in advance.

How to detect Hard disk drive - General Hardware (Pingback), 27. January 2010, 9:56

[...] Re: How to detect Hard disk drive Can you still access data from your hard drive ? If yes,

just copy all your data to another drive. If not read through the following articles who give step by step instructions on how to recover data from a broken hdd. Recover a Dead Hard Disk – wikiHow How to recover data from a broken hard drive… [...]

Roberto, 27. January 2010, 9:33

Hello, my HDD fell from table, now the computer doesnt detect it and it makes a soft noise Beep beep…. should i try to recover? they asked me 800 euros…

Raiden, 24. January 2010, 1:11

Hi! I have WD external HDD 500gb and there is a lot of data inside i still can see the data from inside, but the problem is I can’t open any files and i cant copy most of the data, i heard there is a sound (tik tik tik tik). I tried to make backup using recovery program but still doesn’t work, when I restarted my laptop it says the harddrive need to check when starting to read the harddrive it says the harddrive is totally unreadable. Please help me to recover all my data back thanks!!!

AUGI, 23. January 2010, 19:58

Hi, I accidentally dropped my External WD HD, and now it is giving me a “USB Device not Recognized” message, the light still turns on and the HD sound seems normal, any suggestions Please???

Yunus Lau, 21. January 2010, 22:13

Hi, Pablo Garcia ! thx for your information. it’s realy helpfull for me. i’ve a question, what about if my laptop harddrive cannot detected on bios, could it recover the data using recovery softwares ? thank’s alot !

Alex, 19. January 2010, 6:44

Hi,

Thanks for the info, the problem im having is when i turn my computer on it gets to the welcome screen then freezes. Ive tried startin in safe mode bu it still freezes, i have been told by experts

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

it could be a hard drive fault and i shud buy a hard drive docking station to try and retrieve my data. i havnt noticed any noises coming from the hard drive.

any ideas?

Thanks!

RaShell, 13. January 2010, 12:51

My computer will turn on, but will not get past the beginning blue hp page where you can press the “f” keys to boot etc. It freezes on that screen. I have hooked the hard drive up to another computer and it locks it up too. My computer runs fine with a new hard drive in it. My concern is retrieving the data from the old hard drive. Do I have any options? I am electronically, technically, and mechanically impaired. I have many pictures and videos of my daughter on the drive and am desperate to get them back. Please help!!!

Ramzi, 13. January 2010, 11:14

hi… i have a problem wih the desktop, well i turned the pc on and it launched properly, then a few minutes the screensaver as usual started but suddenly after like 5 minutes the screen went black as if the power saver started so few minutes later i movedthe mouse so the pc wakes up but it didnt so i pressed the esc with no results , so i restarted the pc but same thing the screen is black but the fan of the motherboard is runing, bt i was impressed when i saw the on/off button and the reset button both are on, so i disconnected the pc from the power and reconected it with same results. so i bought a USB cable and took out the HD and conected directly to the power source and hooked it to my laptop via the USB cable, but the hard disk didnt work, i spoke to some tech ppl but seems they didnt want to get involved as the advised me to buy another HD but the issue is that i have looots of pix for my kids for over 7 years since they were day one, guys im desperate and really need help as these priceless pix are so important. advise me what to do.

Indra, 13. January 2010, 6:27

Thanks Pablo for the reply.

The computer won’t turn on. I already connect the hdd to my younger brother’s computer but same things happened. The computer won’t turn on. I’m not sure what the problem. Both computer using Windows XP.

As your suggestion to use Linux, I’m not try it yet because I’m not familiar with linux system. You have any suggestion?

Lil Sis, 12. January 2010, 19:40

Thanks Pablo. I will definitely try replacing the circuit board. I’ve got a little hope now. I think after this experience I will make sure my data is backed up somewhere else as well.

Pablo Garcia, 12. January 2010, 14:10

Indra, The computer won’t turn on? or won’t get to Windows? Have you tried connecting it to another computer? If you connect it to another computer and the problem is still happening. then use a computer with linux or a linux live CD to boot your computer and then get your data out using another external Hard Drive. Sometimes when Windows detects corruption on a Hard Drive it shuts itself down.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Anonymous, 12. January 2010, 11:49

Pablo Garcia said:

Please people….. don’t focus on the freezer trick! while this trick works very well, you are risking loosing your data. Try every single alternative first before trying the freezer trick.

I’ve been doing IT work for quite a long time. Pablo is right. I’ve used it as a last resort, and only in the right circumstances. In countless thousands of computers I’ve worked on, I’ve only used that trick three times. One time, I used a variation of the trick which was rather dangerous. This was for a friend of mine. I wouldn’t ever do this for a customer, as it was risky and time consuming. The bearings inside the drive were overheating and seizing. I tried the illustrated method first, but it only allowed for less than 5 minutes of successful access in this particular case.

I froze the drive inside a ziplock bag. After about an hour, I submerged it almost all the way in a tupperware full of ice water. The bag’s opening was just above the water, and the connectors were up. I attached it to my recovery machine, and turned it on. Over the next 8 hours, I managed to recover just over 50% of his data. During those 8 hours, I babysat it. I spent my time siphoning out excess water, and carefully adding ice cubes by hand. Since the drive was running very hot (because of the bearing failure), the ice melted pretty quickly. Over the 8 hours, I used all the ice from the ice maker, which is roughly 1 cubic foot. (loose cubed ice, not one solid block), plus whatever the ice maker made during the period. Needless to say, it would not have been good if water got on the drive, so it was tedious work. The result was an improvement over the 0% it looked like we could recover otherwise. With all that, I don’t recommend it to anyone, unless you like the idea of submerging electronics in water, and frying them (or yourself).

Indra, 10. January 2010, 6:53

My computer have 2 hdd, WD 160GB as system files WD 320GB as movie and data files. Last night, my PC suddenly shutdown without any warning. Then from that moment, my PC cannot switch ON. After do some troubleshooting, my hdd WD 320GB problem. When I remove this hdd, my PC can running normally. When i’m trying to connect this hdd to my system, my PC won’t start (turn on).

So i need your advise how to solve my problem because right now I’m only care to save all my data on the hdd.

Pablo Garcia, 9. January 2010, 14:18

James: Try to take it out of its current enclosure and use a different one. If that does not work and the hard drive still does not make a sound, then the plates are most likely not spinning and you are going to have to sent it to a data recovery company.

James Rizzo, 9. January 2010, 12:12

Hello, I dropped my WD HD from the table by accident. Once i plug it into my mac it turns on for 1 sec then it turns off. The HD doesnt make a sound..the light just turns on for a sec and then turns off as i put the firewire into the slot. 2 months ago i tried to plug it in again and it worked for a day but then i unplugged it and then plugged it back in, it won’t turn on again. Please help Me!

Pablo Garcia, 7. January 2010, 22:09

LIL SIS: Sound like the board may be fried. If you can find the same exact hard drive with the

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

same firmware loaded on the board you might be able to do it, look on ebay for a hard drive exactly like yours and ask the seller about the serial numbers on the board.

Pablo Garcia, 7. January 2010, 22:05

Lahavana: I would try something like a software recovery option in your case. However if the plates are not reaching full speed the arm will never be able to read the data and you will have to send it to a data recovery company.

Pablo Garcia, 7. January 2010, 21:55

Mary Donoho: You do not have to waste your money, thats what trial versions are for, so you can try before you buy ;)

RHODAboii, 7. January 2010, 10:24

I also have the same problem ’cause my aunt knocked over my HD and then when I plug it, it creates this rrrrrr click click, rrrrrr click click, sound and then nothing. What can I possibly do? Is it jst because not TOO much power is entering I used to have that problem before wherein my HD works with only one cable and now that cable is nowhere to be found please help.

Lil Sis, 5. January 2010, 19:18

Hi,

This it the first page that I’ve come across where people have had the same problem as me. I have a 500gb WD external drive that I’ve been using for a little over a year now and one day it stopped working and it smelled like something was burning in it. Since the warranty expired already, I opened it up to put it in a HD enclosure. I plugged in the power cable and SATA cable like it says and when I turned it on, the drive started smoking where the power cable was plugged in. I turned it off immediately. Do you know if there is any way for me to recover the data on my own without having to use the power source? Or would I have to send it to a recovery service? Or is the data just gone for good? Any suggestions you could give would be greatly appreciated….

Lahavana, 5. January 2010, 17:10

Arnold – if I may suggest – try taking the hard disk out of the external casing, just be careful not to damage the hard disk inside when scooping around with the screw-driver. The same thing happenned to me this summer (I own a WD as well – 500 Gb – which is currently dying on me from a different reason…) – a power shortage ocurred after a thunder-storm and when the power came back on, it fried the part that powered the hard disk. If you remove or replace that one, your hard disk should be just fine. And don’t worry about the data: it is completely safe. Here’s a video I’ve found on Youtube that shows a similar process with a WD My Book. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FlySnyJ0CQ&feature=related

Lahavana, 5. January 2010, 16:17

Hello there and thank you for taking the time to write this article – it brings a small ray of sunshine for those of us who have hard disk troubles. I’m writing to you more out of desperation,

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

seeking “another opinion” – I have a somewhat simmilar problem as everyone else, with my hard disk – it’s a 500 Gb Western Digital, an “ex”- external (I say ex because it’s original USB and power board got fried during a power shortage, so I simply extracted the drive out of its enclosure and I’ve been using it, for the past 6 months, as a regular SATA drive, using one of those SATA to USB connectors). The problem is that, unprotected as it is, it’s been knocked down by a careless friend and hit the floor (marble…) with its short side – now it won’t start anymore – it starts spinning, the SATA2USB recognizes it, but it keeps spinning, with a dreadful buzzing sound (something like a cross between a damaged CPU fan and a kite in the wind…) with some small clicks from time to time and it stops after a while, without showing up on the computer where it’s hooked up. In Device Manager, it simply shows up as USB device, under the Disk Drives category and in Details, it says “Device type: Disk drive” and that’s about it. I’ve tried the freezer trick, seeing as nothing else worked (hooking it up on various computer, gently knocking on its side, changing SATA cable) and it still didn’t work – I only got it to spin for a bit longer before stopping… the SATA to USB dongle is recognised by the computer, but not the hard disk… Is there anything else that can be done with it (except the professional data-recovery method – I am but a poor student in her final years), or should I simply kiss it good bye and start rebuilding my data?… Thank you in advance for your answer (and IF you have time to answer).

Mary Donoho, 5. January 2010, 15:04

I have the “blue screen of death” and took my Dell Inspiron 6000. It is about 4 years old, and I took it to Best Buy Geek Squad. They said they couldn’t recover anything from the hard drive (said it was bad – Dell did too and sent me a new one). Anyway, Best Buy wanted $300.00 to send it off to “try” and recover data. My question for you is: Is there anything I can do personally? If I download the File recovery software and put it in my CD drive will my system be able to read it? I don’t want to waste my money buying the software if it can’t read it. Also, I am shoppoing for an external hard drive for my laptop (so this doesn’t happen to me again) – do you have suggestions on the “best ones to buy”. Please let me know. I have 4 years of photos I need to try and recover as well as music, and other files.

Thanks so much!

Pablo Garcia, 4. January 2010, 21:13

If you burned the HD board then you need to replace that board, fo your hard drive is external, then insert the hard drive in a different enclosure.

Pablo Garcia, 4. January 2010, 21:11

Please people….. don’t focus on the freezer trick! while this trick works very well, you are risking loosing your data. Try every single alternative first before trying the freezer trick.

Pablo Garcia, 4. January 2010, 20:20

Hi Matt, yes I do have experience with this issue. have you tried to use MHDD? try it and see if it detects it.

Arnold, 4. January 2010, 0:55

I may have burnt out my 1 TB WD by plugging in a different power cord by accident. It wont even turn on at all when I plug it in. The light doesn’t come on and I don’t know what to do. I have over 500 G of files that i need recovered. How would I do that?

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Ray, 3. January 2010, 21:30

Pablo, I have an external Iomega 500 GB USB hard drive. Today, my wife accidentally knocked it over on the desk. Now all we get is a beep from the drive every 5 seconds. Will not spin up but powers on and then beeps. Took cover off of carrier and the drive turns out to be a Seagate 500 GB Barracuda SATA drive. Tried plugging drive into another PC via SATA cable and still got the beep every 5 seconds and would not boot up. I’m trying the freezer trick you mentioned as we speak but am not confident that will do the trick. Any guidance/suggestions???

Alex, 3. January 2010, 4:58

Hi, I am having the “click click click of death” on my laptop hdd, now it cannot be booted or recognized, it happened so randomly… Is it safe to place it in the freezer and give it a try? Thanks a lot for ur help.

Matt, 31. December 2009, 14:09

Pablo:

I have a WD Caviar (WD3200JB) that was in a machine that suffered a power failure. I have moved it to a new machine, and it is not detected by the BIOS on startup. I have tried several ribbon cables and power plugs. I was most interested in solution #3. Do you have experience with this sort of drive/problem?

Olivia Alston, 26. December 2009, 9:51

I haven’t the first clue about computers or hard drives, and I really need help!

I have a DELL inspiron 1501 laptop and it just didn’t have enough space for my mass amounts of music and downloads, so my Dad gave me a Maxtor One Touch 160GB. I’ve stored pretty much everything on there.

The other day when I went to plug it into my laptop the cable wouldn’t go into the hard drive. I think the hard drive has been dropped and the wire inside the hard drive has been pushed through.. I hope this is making sense, I’m useless with these sort of things! Anyway, I’m panicing now because I can’t access my music etc and my Dad would actually go mental with me if I told him.. Could you please tell me how to fix this or where to send my hard drive to get it repaired/recovered or whatever. And how much it may cost. I’d really appreciate some advice!

Thanks, Olivia

Joe, 24. December 2009, 16:29

Pablo: Yes, the harddrive does spin. It tuns on, begins to spin then after 10 seconds it begins to click. And no, it does not get recognized by windows which is the problem. I tried the freezer method and did not work either, so I’m not sure my options. Any help would be appreciated.

Pablo Garcia, 23. December 2009, 8:26

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Joe: Yes there are ways to get the data out. have you tried using any data extraction programs? Does the hard drive spin at all? Does it get recognized by windows?

Joe, 22. December 2009, 14:40

My girlfriend, soon to be ex, wasn’t paying attention and knocked over my external HDD. It was in a secure place and only fell 1 foot into thick carpet, but now it’s clicking and I hear the disc trying to start up but after clicking repeatedly it just stops and does nothing. My hdd also does not show up on my mac or my pc, it doesn’t come up at all. I have EVERYTHING on there, all my tv shows, movies, etc… but that is all replaceable if need be (although I would prefer not it’s close to 1 tb), the main thing I am worried about losing are the pictures and documents I stored on there. If there is a way to fix or recover these files, please let me know I’m desperate and reading a million google pages which aren’t helping.

Pablo Garcia, 22. December 2009, 0:00

Rosetta: You must take the hard drive out of its enclosure first and insert it into another enclosure. Either that or connect the hard drive directly to the computer as a slave or secondary master. If its SATA then connect it to one of the available SATA ports. Get somebody to lend you an empty external enclosure or buy one, they are very cheap if you live in the USA… Also make sure you purchase the right one. You need to be sure of the type of hard drive you have and the size… Size could be either 2.5″ or 3.5″ and type could be SATA or IDE.

Pablo Garcia, 21. December 2009, 23:53

Hi Ishwar… Don’t panic… try using a data recovery program, like recover my files and see if that works.

c Rosetta, 21. December 2009, 21:36

We have a WD 1T external hard drive. Recently when we tried to turn on the computer with the hard drive attached, the computer would not completly come on – but when we unhooked the hard drive the computer came on just fine. The hard drive would make a spin click sound and then stop. Is there any way for us to recover our data on the external hard drive?

Ishwar, 21. December 2009, 9:40

hello sir pablo, Iam Ishwar from India…i have a transcend 320 gb external gb harddisk which fell down recently… now its making the click sound…the files open in my laptop dell xps…not in my computer…but they cant be played…iam a college student and had the best of movies and song collection on it…not to mention the tv series that only i had!!!!…..iam very desperate…..plz god help!!!!!please….please

Anuja, 14. December 2009, 23:40

hi my tera byte suddenly fall of in this table and now its shows 0bytes its detects show found new

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

hardware but the file contain shows 0 bytes

Felix, 14. December 2009, 10:42

Thanks Pablo, you are my hero. I’m working on recovering 350 GB. Many files irreplaceable. Thanks for this post, you saved my files.

Pablo Garcia, 13. December 2009, 19:39

Hi Karen, I sent you an email with details.

James Foster, 13. December 2009, 7:14

Hi there,

I have a seagate 500gb ext. hardrive, it looks like where the usb cable plugs into the hardrive, it looks slightly damaged, i was wondering what type of external hardrive enclosure i would need, as my external hardrive is a little old and needs to be plugged into the mains aswell as my computer? Thanks James

Karen, 10. December 2009, 20:57

Please let me know how to donate, I want to send you my hard drive

Craig McDonald, 9. December 2009, 13:25

Thanks for the great info I havea WD sec 16 External Hard drive that was corrupted. Read this article got all my data back. You are a Hero.

Pablo Garcia, 6. December 2009, 12:23

Hi Eveyln, I sent you an email, check your junk mail if you did not get it.

Evelyn, 6. December 2009, 1:24

Please contact me about help with a dropped WD external hard drive. I see that someone just posted the same problem a few days ago. I would be happy to make a donation for help. My son just knocked it off of the table and now I get the clicking noise. Looks like it’s working but I get the red exclamation point when I plug it in that says something like “The disk inserted cannot be read”….I think that’s what it said. It pulls up the Disk Utility but wont let me Repair OR Verify it. I’m on Mac OSX 10.5, I think. Gosh, I hope some of the images on this drive can be found. I’m so upset right now!!!

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo Garcia, 5. December 2009, 14:22

Kes:

That is OK, go to the Contact US tab on top of the web-page and send me an email that way and I will answer you, I do not publish my email address on the website to prevent spam.

Pablo Garcia, 4. December 2009, 11:09

Hi Chris: There are programs out-there that will help you recover data from flash drives I personally do not have any preference on this. One thing I have to tell you is that these programs will only get you data out if the problem is partition related, if the problem is hardware related it will be virtually impossible to get them back.

kes, 4. December 2009, 3:04

hi, i have so many questions to ask, and i’d rather ask you via personal email if that is okay by you.

thankyou!!

Chris Carson, 3. December 2009, 10:55

Hello Pablo, I was wondering if you could shed light on this similar problem, but concerning USB pen drives? Mine is malfunctioning and has very important documents that need to be retrieved.

Any help similar to your above post relating to my problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Pablo Garcia, 3. December 2009, 10:24

James, I sent you an email regarding your case.

Pablo Garcia, 3. December 2009, 10:23

Lara, try another enclosure, they sell them cheap on the web. That’s the first thing you should try. You can also send it to me in exchange for a donation to the website.

Pablo Garcia, 3. December 2009, 10:19

Pieter I am very glad my article was able to help you. Take care.

James Strand, 3. December 2009, 0:23

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

I have a broken external hard drive. it fell about a foot and a half onto a hard floor. I am getting the click…click…. click…. response. “power button” still lights up. it is a Seagate. what is your advise for externals? I would be more than happy to donate to your site and send it in as the data onboard is irreplaceable. Thank you for your time

PS: your contact form submit button is broken.

Lara, 1. December 2009, 23:59

i have a I O magic data to go 40gb hard drive. while i was working my external hard drive must have stopped working for some reason because when i went to go save a document it could not find the hard drive. when i unplugged the external hard drive and plugged it back in an error message appeared saying it malfunctioned and windows could not recognize it. is there anything i can do to fix this? or anything to do get the documents off the external hard drive?

thank you

Pieter Joanes, 1. December 2009, 4:46

Greetings from Portugal.

Yesterday i was transfering some files from my 500GB HDD to my 1TB HDD when,out of no where my 500GB goes offline and silent.Must confess,i was starting to get desperate,everytime i tried to connect it back the freaking thing wasn’t being recognized by my computer,made an online search and found Pablo’s article.Read the entire thing and figure out that the best solution for my case was to freeze the bastard.While i’m typing this answer i’m transfering my files.

Pablo,you are a rock star.Much appreciated and much love and respect to you all the way from Portugal.

pam smith, 30. November 2009, 1:19

i have an external hard drive wd500 gb it fell then when i plugged it up it wouldnt come on now the light is flashing its not making any noise its not showing on comp i have 14000 karaoke songs on there please tell me i havent lost them can you help me

Robert, 28. November 2009, 13:51

I own 1TB external hard drive thats making the click click sound and it cant connect to my computers. Is there a way to fix it?

Pablo Garcia, 24. November 2009, 8:38

Hi Rajeev:

I tell you the same thing I tell everybody else. purchase an empty external enclosure and take the hard drive out of its current enclosure and install it on the new one. and see if the computer detects it then. The hard drive does not have to be necessarily damaged.

Rajeev, 24. November 2009, 5:59

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi Pablo,

I own a WD 500GB My passport Essential USB drive and a Dell laptop with Windows Vista (single drive C: – around 300GB). Recently i took all the backup of my system to WD and formatted the system to install Windows 7. After the successful installation, i did the partition of the C: drive to 4 drives of around 70GB. I plugged in my WD and i was able to view all the backup data. I did a fullscan of the WD using Avast Antivirus. It was taking a long time and my system went into sleep/standby mode while the scanning was happening.

When i unplugged my WD and connected again, it was not getting detected in My Computer as a drive though it shows in device manager that a drive is connected – named as WD. I don’t hear any spinning sound of the USB also.

I tried to use GetDataBack but it didn’t detect my WD. I enquired a DataRecovery center and they analysed my WD without opening it and told me that there is physical damage and quoted high price. I’m not sure how they found it to be a physical damage without opening the drive. I have also reformatted my laptop 1 or 2 times later on and did the partition again and added few data. Can you please let me know if there is a way to recover data from my WD or from my laptop without giving the data recovery centres.

Thanks

Daniel Penrice, 18. November 2009, 16:54

Dear Pablo,

I go to plug in my hard drive, and it makes the noise that it makes to signal its connected. However will than make this noise every half a second or so. Such as its connecting and disconnecting. But it makes this noise an infinite amount.

I go onto my computer, and it doesnt show that its there, however i go onto “safely remove hardware, and it shows its there, but i go to disconnect it, and i cant.

Whats the matter with the external hard drive. Ive changed the Usb lead, tries a different port, and computer, and nothing helps.

Thank you very much Pablo.

(if it makes a difference, its a “lacie” make.

Pablo Garcia, 17. November 2009, 12:17

Ormond:

If you are using XP (vista must be similar).. do the following

Click on Start Settings Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Disk Management

See if Disk Management sees the drive. However I highly doubt it, since you are not hearing any noise coming from the drive. Le me know if you see it, and I will tell you what to do next.

Ormond, 17. November 2009, 9:16

Hi Pablo,

My laptop hard drive recently crashed and I am trying to retrieve some files off of it. I purchased a USB SATA cable and tried connecting the laptop hard drive to another machine via the USB Cable. The machine does recognize the cable as the Safely remove Icon appears by the Windows

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

clock but when I go to the My Computer the drive does not appear as an additional drive. Note that I do not hear the drive spinning nor the clicking noise. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Jamey, 15. November 2009, 18:39

I had a Western 320GB external HD that could not be found – when plugged in, it just wouldn’t stay there. Windows Explorer showed a drive appear with a ? for a second then disappear. No weird sounds, certainly not a click, but repeated flashing, the “doink” USB sound if I plugged and unplugged it, but never any recognition by Windows that it was really there.

Freaked out a bit – then I changed the USB cable out. Came back like a dream.

One more thing to try.

janice price, 13. November 2009, 13:27

my dell laptop wont power up properly I just get a black and white screen that says ‘no bootable device found’ I have purchased and fitted a new hard drive but wabt to try and recover some dtat is this possible please?

Laszlo, 12. November 2009, 16:29

Hi Pablo, I have a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 sata drive Firmware: SD15 used in Coolermaster external enclosure until recently when my Windows XpSp2 stopped detecting it. After i removed from the enclosure I’ve plugged it into motherboard.Windows still not detecting it! However in bios shown the drive!

Could you hep me plz! The hard drive if nearly full with important document..:(

thanks in advanced!

Winter, 9. November 2009, 11:00

I have a problem can you please help, I purchased a WD Passport Essential 500gb a month ago and i have all my family pics on it, as well as some music files. I had orignally purchased the drive for my DVR but had never plugged it into the DVR till yesterday. When i plugged it in a dish network screen pulled up and said for my to contact tech support with an 800 number. Well upon calling tech support the man said it had to be set up for dish network and he proceeded to set it up. I seen a screen pull up and it said reformatting drive in process, well i freaked and pulled the usb cable out. I told the man i had pics on the harddrive and i dont want to lose them. i told him i was going to plug it back into my pc and remove the files from it and then i would call him back. Well when i plugged it back into my computer it doesnt show that there is a j/: drive like it used to. However when i check the device manager it shows the WD 500BEV Exrenal drive is working properly. So i looked in disk management and i see disk 1 basic 465.76 GB online 1.01 GB Healthy (unkown partition) 464.75 Healthy (unkown partition) and the only option i get is to delete the partition. Please i don’t want to lose my pictures and i don’t here any noise coming from the drive. Any help you can give me is really apprecaited!

PANKAJ NAYER, 9. November 2009, 5:06

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

i put all the data before formating my comp when i revers back to taking data backup at that moment my data backup haddrive is crased and making noise so pleas help me out iam a hard ware engineer and i was cheack it out in diffrent comp also . It is Hitachi harddrive Sata and its serial No is rs2paehm model hdp725025gla380 kindly help out into this matter thanks pankaj nayer

Pablo Garcia, 5. November 2009, 9:58

You can try opening the enclosure, take the hard drive out if the enclosure, install it on another enclosure and and see if the machine reads it. they sell empty enclosures on the web, really cheap too. I sent you an email.

Carla, 4. November 2009, 14:34

Hi there,

I’m on a MAC. My Lacie 500 gig external harddrive died and can’t be read by my computer. I got the error message but never the clicky noise of death sound. I plug it in and it flashes but it’s not read by my computer. I’ve tried switching computer (to my laptop), I’ve tried switching cords and I’ve tried switching ports. Nothing!! OMG, all of my work is on there. What can I do, I have limited funds and I’m not a mechanic and can’t do this myself. Any recommendations? Carla

Pablo Garcia, 2. November 2009, 19:01

Hi tiffany: Do not worry. I sent you an email regarding your case.

tiffany, 28. October 2009, 15:23

oh goodness could you help me please!!!

few weeks ago my Dell desktop computer didnt want to start up. a blue screen showed when trying to boot up & said hard drive error. yesterday i brought it into a repair shop & the guy tested the hard drive & told me its dead. well like what you said, it makes the clicking noise. he told me the ONLY way to get back all my data on the computer is to send it to a specialist…

John Kyakuwa, 24. October 2009, 3:01

Sir the Doctor of the IT generation troubles,

I am john from Uganda. My HDD drive fell down, it was running windows server2003. After a while it started making noise sound. I set it to slave to another machine and it is not being recognised by a pc. It keeps on making noise. It was our company server with 3 years old accounts, clients, and sharepoint database. Please, I am trying finding out how I can solve the problem or who can help fixing it or getting back my data. But if I can fix it so that I create an image out of it, will be wonderful.

Sir. Andy possible hope to fix it? Please, instruct me while nursing my wonds.

Thanks I am waiting with anticipation.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Battulga, 23. October 2009, 7:23

My hard drive is not functioning properly. It doesn’t open. It spins up and after few seconds it spins down. What cause this happen and how to recover my data on hard drive? Please anyone help

Pablo Garcia, 20. October 2009, 8:41

Everybody, I can’t post my email address on the website due to spam. However if you wite a comment with your email address I will respond as quickly as possible.

Fred, 19. October 2009, 8:51

Hi Pablo, thanks for your helpful service first. Same old story with me really: I just accidentally dropped my 750 Maxtor One Touch while unplugged from the computer and switched off. I tried plugging it back: the light comes on but it doesnt appear on the hard drive list of the computer, and keeps doing a “blip” sound every 5 seconds – it seams like is trying to start or something. Any chance to bringing it back? Any chance to recoup the data? HELP! Thanks, Fred

James Cagle, 15. October 2009, 17:31

I have a Seagate 500 gig that rattles. What would it cost to retrieve data

Matt S., 15. October 2009, 3:50

Help me please! I need your help. My Mybook 500gb HDD was knocked from the kitchen counter to the floor and now when i plug it in it starts to spin up and then just stops. No abnormal sounds come from it and i took it out of the casing and plugged it into my PC and both ways it will not recognize the drive at all. This has very important pics of my family on it. Long story short my laptop which was my home pc crashed and my mybook was my back up source, i bought a desktop pc and have not had a chance to put all my stuff on the new one before it started acting up. I am in desperate need of your help, please any info on sending it to you or anything else would be greatly appreciated.

OC Smith, 11. October 2009, 20:24

Hey. I just saw where you might be starting a recovery business for broken hard drives. I wanted to send you an email, but couldn’t find your email address. Please email me at the address I gave you so I can donate, getting shipping info. and see if you can get my info off this broken HDD. Thanx. OC Smith

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

yusuf, 11. October 2009, 6:02

Am a computer engineer by proffesion i have a cracked hardrive that is not detect and i need to retrieve the datas in it..i cant even use my data recovery sofeware for it

Helen, 10. October 2009, 0:31

Hello, my Mac hard drive has just died, and I’m looking to try to recover data from it. Can you help?? Email me and I can give you more details. Thanks so much – looking forward to receiving your message.

Pablo Garcia, 5. October 2009, 8:02

You definitely can. just take it out of the computer, buy an external enclosure (make sure you buy the correct one, size and type) hook it up to another computer and start copying your data.

Pablo Garcia, 5. October 2009, 7:58

You need to give me more details about your case, I will send you an email.

Pablo Garcia, 5. October 2009, 7:55

I seriously doubt that that it is the board. the needle probably crashed on the plates in a critical area, if the needle is not damaged and the hard drive is still detected by the BIOS there is a good chance to get your data back.

Dan, 4. October 2009, 4:35

I have a seagate barracuda 7200.10 750 Gbytes Hdd bought last year that i only used it for a few times. When I start up, BIOS recognizes it, it boots up ( it’s the HDD that contains the operating system), but it doesn’t finish loading windows and it crashes, sometimes doing a “clung”. it’s not the windows install with the problem as it doesn’t crash at the same file(when I try starting windows in safe mode), sometimes the HDD can go for like 20 seconds, sometimes like 30 before it crashes. Can I recover my data? well, at least without voiding the warranty

Kaled, 3. October 2009, 15:32

Hi Pablo! My computer’s hard disk got broken and i have very important things in it. Can you please help me to recover the data from it.. I actually took it to my pc company cause it gots still warranty, and they told me that they replace a new one to my pc but they can’t recover the hard disk. They also told me that i can take my hard disk to some place where they should be able to recover it((((but it’ll be very expencieve around 1000€ !!! ))) :/ so if you could help me i’ll be very happy. //AND SORRY FOR MY BAD ENGLISH

thnx

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

ac, 30. September 2009, 13:16

hmm.. ok.. well my hard drive, seagate external, 1 tb nearly full :(

it fell off my desk and when I connect it again it is no longer detected.

It makes a somewhat repetitive sound and then stops after a while.. doesnt sound like scratching… like zzzzhhh zzzzhhhh zzzhhhhh zhhhhh zhhhh and stops after a while. If i plug it back in, it starts doing that again and then stops.

How can I tell if its the board or possibly the needle?

Brad, 24. September 2009, 10:11

Hey Pablo…

Man….you’ve been asked the same thing over and over since 2007 ;)

I am in South Africa and here data recovery is rather expensive. My HDD spins, clicks, spins, clicks and then powers down.

Is there any software that can detect this HDD even though its not detected in the BIOS? The freezer thing is an option but a last resort cos I’m afraid I wont get anything off it again. Is there ANYTHING out there that can be used/done to help with recovery?

Thanks for help. appreciate it.

Pablo Garcia, 24. September 2009, 7:15

Yes, just open the enclosure, take the hard drive out if the enclosure, install it on another enclosure and that is it! they sell empty enclosures on the web, really cheap too.

Kevin, 23. September 2009, 19:37

I have a 2.5 Toshiba USB 180GB portable HD. I dropped it and ever since it shows up on my computer but then disappears. I have to hold the USB cable into it at a certain angle for it to work. Is this easily fixed?

Brian Batayola, 22. September 2009, 23:12

I have an old 40G hard drive which produces a clicking sound.

Could you email me your suggestions, Pablo?

Rene, 16. September 2009, 17:16

I have a 500GB WD Essential Edition. When I plug it in it makes 7 clicks, spins, 3 clicks, spins, a few more clicks then stops. Under Device Manager it says the unit is working properly but it doesn’t assign it a drive. I did open the case and check the board contacts as your suggestion above but the contacts are pins.

Androlewicz, 7. September 2009, 23:06

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

CK I sent you an email regarding your case….

david, 26. August 2009, 2:28

my old computer crashed, i got the error message “NTLDR is missing”.It would never boot up again and someone told me it was that my hard drive had blown, i have a different computer now but want to get the data off my old hard drive if i can, is there any way of doing it? if so how and what do i need?

musicdan, 25. August 2009, 11:57

hi iv a maxata 500 gig extural hard drive . yesterday it stopped the hard drive is not spinning but the light is comming on my computer dose not pick up anything when i usb it in iv backed up but iv just finished recording a song wiv a cliant whos gone back to the usa HELP!!!!

tomas, 21. August 2009, 10:24

Hi, I have 1TB internal Maxtor drive. about 2 weeks ago it started to work really slow. extracting 100mb rar file sometimes took 15 minutes. after couple days my computer started to freeze randomly for 5-10 seconds every half a minute or so. I run chkdsk and it didn’t find any errors or bad blocks. I started to burn data on DVDs (and it took forever because reading from the drive was very slow) but before I finished it got worse. one day my computer shot down itself. after that every time I tried to turn it on it would start up slowly and then completely freeze after couple minutes (usually while windows was still loading). yesterday i bought a new drive. i installed the drive and windows on it. everyting is working great. now i still need to retrieve some importand data from that broken drive. i connected that drive as a slave. my computer detects the drive but i can’t start windows when it’s connected. what happens is i start up the computer, both drives are visible, and then when windows starts loading it kind of hangs at that point. windows never starts. if i disconnect the broken drive everything is back to normal. i think the drive gets disconnected (goes dead ?) after it gets powered (around 1 minute after i start my computer). i’ll take a look at the board today. any other ideas ? what else should i try ? connecting it through usb ?

Tabi, 20. August 2009, 4:43

Hi…i came across this site while i was searching for a solution for my problem…i have purchased a maxtor one touch III external drive 7 months ago at first it worked fine and i have stored lots of data in it and didn’t use it much only used it when i had to transfer anything to it and then kept it off but it stayed plugged in with the computer…and now few days ago i used it and in for 3-4 times while i was using it when i turned my pc on and then turned the external hd on i did not see the hd icon in the system tray and the computer did not detect it but when i turned the switch off and on again few times the icon showed up and then after that this happened again and even turning the on and off switch didn’t show the drive icon and the computer didn’t detect it so i rebooted the pc and after the reboot the icon showed and the drive was detected but yesterday when i turned it on it didn’t detect again and now its not working at all i don’t hear any sound which i used to hear before when the drive used to start running and also the front light used to flash that is also still now the light does turn on but nothing else happens….please i need help very badly because i have so much precious data on it and i can’t afford to lose it it’s like losing a house full of valuable items and then sitting in an empty house if i lose that data….what can i do to recover the data from the drive?? and is it possible to recover it without taking the drive

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

out of the enclosure because doing so will void the warranty as it’s still in warranty….please help anyway you can….thank you so much.

miri cohn, 18. August 2009, 21:03

HI , browsed thru ur web page and was very impressed. I need ur help desperatly. I have a 250 gb external hd that got fried, there are irreplaceable pix in there and i’d love ur help with recovery. I already gave it to best buy and was told it wud cost me upwards of $2,000 which i definatly cannot afford. plz let me know if i can send it into u i wud pay up to $250 for recovery. thanx in advance. plz email me

Good nite,

Peter J. Lewis, 18. August 2009, 10:30

Hi Pablo I wrote a comment a couple of days ago but it seems to have vanished. I’m desperate, my external Seagate drive has short circuited, I plugged the wrong power cord into it. The drive doesn’t spin despite the circuit board being replaced. I have 170,000 words of my book and all the research on it together with all my photos and music. It was all backed up with CARBONITE, but I couldn’t afford the renewal and it lapsed. I’ve been told the situation is hopeless but you’ve given me a glimmer of hope with your recovery service, I can’t find an email address for you so I hope this works. Thanks in anticipation Pete Wales (UK)

Kelley, 18. August 2009, 9:06

I have a hard drive that had to be replaced. the only really critical files I have are my tax files and pictures that I so want to recover. The hard drive crashed and was very unexpected. No noise no slowness…no warning signs whatsoever. It is a western digital 320gb sata hdd. would you be able to recover any data off of it all? I really could use the help!!

Peter Lewis, 16. August 2009, 11:39

Desperate for help, I plugged my laptop power lead into my Seagate external drive and shorted it out. Several people have looked at it and the board has been replaced as you suggested but to no avail. I’m told that no data can be recovered as the internal motor has short circuited. Is there any way that I can recover my files, I have several thousand family photos, all my music and film collection and the manuscript of a booke I’ve been working on for 2 years. I KNOW everything should have been backed up and I was using web storage with CARBONITE, sadly I was broke when the renewal came due and never did continue with it – YES I’ve paid the price – but is there any hope. Thanks for the website, it’s great, when I win the Lottery I’mll make you a BIG donation.

Jason W, 14. August 2009, 13:42

I have a WD 80 gig drive that died on me yesterday. I am getting the clicking noise of death. I really need to recover the files that are on this drive. Pablo are you still doing the recovery service? If so please Email me when you can.

Dave Ramsey, 13. August 2009, 13:53

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

I have a seagate 500 gig external drive. It is usally on all the time. One day the drive stopped making the normal disk noise and stopped working. When I turn it on the blue light comes on but no noise and the computer will not reconize the drive….

Help

CER, 4. August 2009, 23:57

I have a Maxtor One Touch III. While traveling, somehow the area where the USB cable connects into the case became damaged, and I can no longer connect the drive to my computer. Is there anyway I can get my data out of this drive? I

michael pursel, 2. August 2009, 7:09

Pablo,

I am a Tech and I have seen and fixed many a “dead HD”, but I have one in my hands that is actually winning the war atm. It is a maxtor 80GB DiamondMax Plus 9. I have put it in a external enclosure and it is seen by my puter, however it will only tell me to format….that has since stopped and now it will only make a beeping sound constantly, it is still recognized by my puter though. I have not tried the freezer trick ad this is a customers HD. Any ideas and how much to send to you if the customer is interested?

Thanks you are doing a nice service here, keep up the good work.

MIke

Rodolfo Fernández, 26. July 2009, 8:09

Thank you very much for your explanations. In my case I was very unlucky because my back up external hard drive broke when I accidentally dropped it and within a few days my internal hard drive got damaged. My 125 GB WD My passport EHD sounds like the motor is attempting to run for a second, stops and repeat the sound intermittently. I checked with an external test connector and it does the same. Could I send it to you with a reasonable donation? If so, how should I do? I will appreciate your kind attention.

Stephanorf, 14. July 2009, 12:55

HI Pablo, There’s some good stuff here. I have a 500gb Seagate 7200.11 (ST3500320AS) that started to go south on me a few weeks ago. Whenever the PC is booted, the BIOS recognizes the HDD. Also, the Window’s device manager also sees it. Sometimes the FAT sector is read and I can see the file structure, and even copy some files. But sometimes the drive just shows up as a generic HDD and I cannot access it at all. I get an I/O error. I flashed the firmware witht he latest revision, but that didn’t change anything. For the past week or so the drive won’t do anything except spin up. There are no sounds from the drive, except a very faint Whir, click, click, click – Whir, click, click, click – Whir, click, click, click. I pretty much have to hold the HDD up to my ear to hear it. I’m going to try cleaning the contacts when i get home tonight. If that doesn’t work I was going to try an swap the PCB with another drive of the same model and part number to see if this helps. What do you think? Does the I/O error give an clues as to where the root of the problem might be?

Thanks, Stephen

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Eric Ewing, 10. July 2009, 10:59

Hey pablo, just has a question about your data recovery services. My powerbook g4 recently started to make a knocking sound and I get a smiley icon with a question mark coming up on the screen. So im guessing im dealing with the click of death which is a total bummer because i do have some files that i would like to grab for school. Can you do anything to help me out?

I couldn’t find your email to contact you directly so hopefully you check this site often.

ro, 7. July 2009, 20:29

hey pablo…my hard drive is 400 gb WD…and its not making its usually load up sounds…and the light is on but its not loading it sounds like the motor of fan or something in it went out…what should i do?

Hawk, 5. July 2009, 5:48

Hello! I have bought before like 7 months a 2.5″ WD Passport Esential 250GB external usb HDD, & recently it started to do clung… clung… clung… noise of death. I have some very important data for my work, some movies & music I would like to backup, however, when I plug the drive in, windows do the sound “device plugged” but hard drive is not shown anywhere. What would be your recommendations what to do to ge the data back?

Pablo Garcia, 24. June 2009, 16:41

Don’t use chkdsk it can actually make things worse. Plug it into an external eclosure and connect it to the computer. If you can’t see the files inside, the filesystem might be corrupted and you might have to send it to a data recovery company.

Don Johnson, 24. June 2009, 10:03

I have a 60GB Seagate that is no longer working properly. I attempted to use C:\CHKDSK r and it started to recover the data, but at 43% it stopped and revealed a unrepairable sector or volume. I would really appreciate any sugguestions. I thought about the “Geek Squad”, but I see a lot of negative reviews in the web.

Pablo Garcia, 23. June 2009, 15:33

Cody: Buy an enxternal USB enclosure, and hook it up to your Mac and see if Leopard sees it. If it does not then your hard drive might have mechanical failure. Is it making any noises?

Cody, 23. June 2009, 12:01

my question is regarding a Mac hardrive. The laptop will not boot. Rather when it tries it gets to a screen with a folder with a questionmark in teh middle. I took it to the mac store and they

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

replaced teh hardrive in teh comp and it works fine… I do however need teh info off the other hardrive and i cannot afford to pay 600$… Any ideas? .. please e mail me

Pablo Garcia, 12. June 2009, 22:28

CK I sent you an email regarding your case.

Pablo Garcia, 11. June 2009, 16:59

Tanai: This might sound weird but it is possible to recover data from a hard drive that does not get detected by the BIOS, this might very well be your case. Try connecting the hard drive as a slave or a secondary master and boot the computer with windows and see if it detects it.

Pablo Garcia, 11. June 2009, 16:38

Hi Karla: Unfortunately once you hear the clicking noise you have to use either the Freezer trick or send it to a data recovery company. I would only suggest to use the freezer trick if your data is not too important and there is not much data to extract. From experience the freezer trick works only about half of the time, it only lets you recover data for a small amount if time and usually damages the hard drive even further, so be careful!

Pablo Garcia, 11. June 2009, 16:28

Tina: The fact that the Hard Drive gets detected being inside the external box does not mean much. It could be detecting the USB interface on the box and not the hard drive itself. Once you hear the clicking noise of death you are pretty much done, the only method to try would be the freezer trick however, that may damage your hard drive even further and you have too much data to recover. Your only solution would be to send it to a data recovery service.

Tina, 11. June 2009, 13:14

Dear Pablo,

I have WD 500GB external HD for about two years and it stopped working just about a week ago. I left my external hd on for downloading when I later came back, the problem started. The light on the unit was still on. The computer was still able to detect a usb connection but cannot mount up the hard drive. Then i unplugged the power and USB back into the power outlet and computer respectively, then I heard the infamous (click… click… click… click… roommmmmmmm, click.. click) sound….

CK, 10. June 2009, 13:42

Pablo – Sigh…. I bought a new 640g MyBook to transfer my digital music and photo archive to (my MadDog external device was clearly dying). The transfer never successfully completed – repair shop tells me the mechanical arm isn’t moving. So…. I’d be interested in what services you are thinking of providing (customer 001?). The tech services arm of the Fortune 100 company I am consulting with referred me to this website.

What eMail address should I send the details you requested (above) to?

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Karla, 5. June 2009, 7:32

hi there, i have a 160gb seagate external hard drive, it was working fine until last night and now it won’t work at all, i have tried it on both my pc and laptop.

The external hard drive lights up as normal, then starts making a clicking noise for about one minute, then stops, the pc/laptop does not see the external hard drive at all, theres nothing for it in disk management or device manager. I have a lot of important files on this, is there anything you can advise me on to get this fixed?

Kind Regards

tanai, 30. May 2009, 18:45

helo i need help with my 200g maxtor hard drive. as i go into bios in the advance bios features, on the first option ‘Hard disk boot priority’ it shows my ‘SCSI-0 : Maxtor stm3200820a’. But when i enter the ‘Standard CMOS features’ on the main BIOS menu, it shows no hard drive being detected in any IDE channel. i played around with teh jumpers putting in all possbile slots, yet it shows no sign of detection. i also replaced the IDE cable and switching IDE slots on the motherboard, but still no sign. i dont think the hard drive is fried or broken as it still runs. ive run an active boot disk and it reads the hard drive fine, but my bios wont read it therefore i cant install windows on it.

Pablo Garcia, 30. May 2009, 12:51

Vey: Is the hard drive is not being detected by the BIOS at all? Did you change the jumper to all possible positions? did you connect it as a slave with the first hard drive being set as (master w/ slave)? (not a single) Did you connect it to the secondary IDE port in the computer as a single master? If you did all this and the hard drive is still not beng detected by the BIOS there is a pretty good chance that you have a bad HD Board on your hands. If so, then yes, try removing the board ans cleaning the contacts with a pencil eraser to see if that helps. If not, then you probably have to buy the same hard drive with the same board, with the same firmware in order to get it working again.

Pablo Garcia, 30. May 2009, 12:32

Jhonny: In the big majority of cases data can be recovered without having to open the hard drive, even when there is physical damage to the plates. We recover data logically, meaning we do not open hard drives or do anything physical to the hard drive that will make matters worse. The methods listed in this article can help you but you are taking a risk with some. (like putting the hard drive in the freezer etc.) We do not put your hard drive at risk. We recover data fixing corrupted mbr, filesystems, etc.

vey, 29. May 2009, 20:26

hi i have a internal maxtor diamondmax 16 80gb ata/133 hdd and iwhen i plug it into my computer it doesnt seem to run, spin or antyhing. no movement within the hdd. couple days ago i was trying to fix my computer due to window update problems and my situation seem to have escalated from there. due to some problem with window files, my bio then does not detect the hard drive. so i unplug and plug it back in, number of times, yet still no changes. i also tried o

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

spin the hdd and i hear the disk spining inside, but im not sure if that would damage it. do you think if i take out the board and do the pencil “cleaning” will it fix it? i dont thik it is my motherboard because i have a 200gig maxtor internal hdd connected and it is detected in the bios. any suggestions? i would like to try to avoid sending it to the specialist as its not that important of datas but still worth trying to save since its 4 years of memories.

on another topic: im also haveing problem with my 200 gig maxtor hdd. it is being detected on my bios, but it does not detect any hard drive when i tried to run the window xp boot cd (im trying to install windows). its a 200 gig hdd but i have it partition into 4 sections; thus, creating 4, 40 gig drive. any ideas?

johnny, 28. May 2009, 18:56

Pablo,

I like your style. Good for you that you can help so many persons with your advice.

for the $199 flat fee will you do anything more than what you have told us about here? Is the fee refundable if you are unable to get any results? Or some part of the fee for you to determine that you cannot get anything from it.

Johnny

Cheryl, 28. May 2009, 12:55

Hi,

I have a WD Passport 80 GB external hard drive. It just stopped working today for some reason and the computer does not see it. The blue light goes on on the external hardrive though. I have a lot of important information on including my students grades!What can I do? Do you think a data recovery company can at least recover all my data? What is your opinion?

Cheryl

Pablo Garcia, 28. May 2009, 12:17

Cheryl: From what you describe, it sound like you might not have to open you hard drive at all. The mbr probably got corrupted and now you can’t see the files or the partition. I dont think it is the casing either since the computer is seeing the drive but is not seeing the partition….

Lee Klein, 28. May 2009, 12:06

I have a Maxtor One Touch 4 500gb that just disappeared off My Computer. The drive letter no longer shows up. I go to My Computer/Manage and it shows an unknown drive with 0 space/partitions. There is no clicking noise or anything. The light comes on when it’s plugged in. I tried it on another computer which does the same thing and can’t find it.

I don’t have a dust-free room to open it up and I don’t know enough to know how to make it a ‘slave’ and try again.

The most important content is video and snapshots of my son’s baseball games. Is this a situation where I can buy a like model and have my university’s student repair crew swap it out for me?

Pablo Garcia, 16. May 2009, 13:31

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi Jules, your case looks promising, I sent you an email.

Jules Chan, 16. May 2009, 2:48

Hi Pablo! I am a soldier currently stationed in Afghanistan and on the way here, my hard drive messed up…

Pablo Garcia, 8. May 2009, 9:44

Hi Cathy: Since you have an external hard drive, your data might still be accessible. The hard drive would have to be removed from its enclosure and connected to another computer as a slave drive or inserted onto another enclosure. I sent you an email.

Cathy Allen, 6. May 2009, 15:12

I have a 20 GB hard drive I took out of a dell laptop to use as an external hard drive. I was transferring data from my laptop to this hard drive and in the middle of the transfer the 20 GB hard drive got full. I tried to plug it into another computer to transfer the data off of this drive but now it won’t even recognize the hard drive. I don’t even feel it spinning any more. Please help I just need one folder taken off that has pictures on it a bunch of pictures from when my kids were babies until now. Please help me get them off.

Pablo Garcia, 7. April 2009, 9:11

Sachiko:

If I am not mistaken, the Maxtor one touch III turbo edition is a RAID storage device, which mean you have more than one drive inside the enclosure (most likely only two). You have to find out if the drives were setup using RAID 0 or RAID 1, if they were setup using RAID 0, your data will be rather difficult to recover, since this type of RAID uses both drives and combines the space of both into one without any redundancy. For example, if you have two 750 drives on a RAID 0 array, then your total storage capacity will be 1.5TB but if you loose one the array becomes useless. Now if you had two 1.5TB drives in a RAID 1 array. then the combined capacity will be just 1.5TB with the drives but the data will be mirrored into one of the drives, which means, if you loose one the same data will be on the other one. Find out what you have first.

Pablo Garcia, 7. April 2009, 8:52

Danielle:

Have you taken the drive out of the enclosure and plug it directly to a PC as a slave drive and see if it is detected by the BIOS? try that if you can. But be careful not to touch any of the electronics on the drive when you take it out of the enclosure you can zap the board and make matters worse. Also if the hard drive is a Laptop hard drive (2.5″) then you will need an adapter, since regular IDE cables have bigger connectors. If you are able to do this and the hard drive gets detected by the BIOS then the problem might not be with your board. You might not even have a bad hard drive after all, the problem could also be with the enclosure.

Sachiko Sato, 6. April 2009, 17:06

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Hi I have my Maxtore one touch III turbo edition (1.5 Tb)… it suddenly decided to be quite today. while I have 4 of those, it never happend to me for a year. I transferred a lot of data (more than 1 Tb transfer) for 6 hr. So like you said that this procedure might burn the circuit board…. I have one new unused same Maxtor with me which cost me $400. I am now thinking if I should open those two and transfer the broken one to new one so that I can recover the data out of it… I contacted to a company and tell me that it would cost at least 2000$ .. if that expensive, then I can spare $400 for this or could you please help me out??

Danielle Homer, 4. April 2009, 20:11

Hi Pablo,

I have a 500g western digital external HD that I’ve had for a few years. Now, for some reason, when I plug it in, I hear a beeping sound (not a clunking or grinding sound) three our four times. None of my pc’s are able to detect it.

Do you think I should put it in the freezer or is it even the heads that are stuck? I’m not sure what it could be. I’ve been searching all over the web and even watched a YouTube video on how to remove the HD from the case to check if the powersupply was dying instead.

Please help.

Pablo Garcia, 31. March 2009, 7:39

Due to the popularity of this subject I have decided to start a new data recovery service in exchange for preset donation to the website. I am currently working on the details, in the mean time if you have a hard hard drive you would like data extracted out of, please send me an email describing the problem in detail and I would let you know the steps you need to follow to ship the hard drive to us. The service would be provided at a $199 flat fee. Probably the most affordable on the web.

Stella, 31. March 2009, 7:21

My computer can’t boot and I had sent it to the technician and he said that my main drive dead. I don’t really understand what does that mean. Can I recover all my important documents in it?

Daren Rochard, 29. March 2009, 4:07

I have a maxtor basic external hard drive that is not detected by windows. It makes sort bursts of noise like a stuck record.I have all of my family photos on this drive and really need to recover the data. The hard drive is only 2 months old and i did look on there forums about broken drives and they would just replace it and i would lose all my data.. not good..So if theres any tips i would be most grateful. Reguards Daren

Besim, Kosovo, 17. March 2009, 15:48

Hard drive does not get detected, I opened my pc pull out my hard drive and placed to other pc, then suddenly I saw a smoke from my hard drive, I stopped by pulling out electric cable, than started again I saw small red light, and then for a short time hard drive was not detected, I ask around, most of people said that if I found same hard drive changing some stuffs I can pull the data from my hard drive, I need the data that I have in hard drive, but not spending much money, I am not rich

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

my hard drive is 120 GB- Maxtor I found one with 160 GB -Maxtor, so what else should I check to be sure before I opened, cause I heard that if I open my hard drive in open space (air) my data will be lost, so please can someone told me that Is it save to open it and if is save to open what else should I check, in hard drive, Thank you had a time to ready it,

SHIRLEY SSHEASBY, 9. March 2009, 10:42

Dear sir

I have a 250gb Freecom Hard Drive. It has stopped working, and doesnt show in My Computer, so I am unable to open it up, I have a lot of Movies, photos, and Music. Is there a way to solve this problem.

Can you let me have a reply stating charges etc

Mrs S M Sheasby

Alithia, 2. March 2009, 4:51

Hi All, I was wondering what happens to the harddrive after you let in heat up again. I have the same situation as case 2 and have been told that its going to cost between $1000-$4000 to recover my WD hardrive. I am wanting any help I can because that is too much and has to be my last resort!

Has anyone tried to place their hard drive in the freezer like it says?

Don, 24. February 2009, 0:47

Hi Pablo, I have a WD 500G SATA external hard drive. I try to open a file from it but when I turn it on, its just not showing in my drive list. I tried to unplug then plug it again but I only hear short movement on the hard drive then no more. I removed the the drive from the enclosure and I smell a burned board. I bought a new enclosure but still no luck at all. If you’re going to suggest to replace the board on the buttom of the drive, can please give me detailed procedure, because as you’ve said I can’t open the hard drive itself. Please help me so I can retrieve my important pictures of my baby. Thank you so much in advance.

Konrad, 6. February 2009, 11:13

i have a drive with broken electronics, and want to buy a drive of the same model but there are a lot of numbers written on the disk besides the model-number. An important one seems to be the one named P/N, because it is mostly provided in the ebay- descripions of the drives, but there are also numbers labeled as OEM, MLC and FR each of them different. Do you know what those numbers mean and which of them should be the same on the replacement drive?

Mark, 30. January 2009, 20:38

Gillware quoted me 800$ not real affordable still looking for another option.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Luca, 29. December 2008, 22:01

i dont know the problem, but mine, the light goes on and off, i dont know what it is the click of death but with a light instead of the noise, well it makes no noise, and my pc doesnt recognize it.

Tom, 9. December 2008, 2:45

i neeed help! i cant quite diagnose my problem. i get certain errors that say there is something wrong with my hard drive and memory. i cant log into windows and i sumtimes get a strange noise. ill be asking around a lot of forums in the next couple of days, but starting here id like to know if i can Do it myself or if i need a third party to do it for me..

George, 4. December 2008, 16:13

HI! Because of a bad power source i’ve managed to burn 2 hard drives. None of them are spinning when i power up the computer.Now i’m trying to recover my data. One of the hard drive is WD 80 GB: WD800JB-00JJA0. I’ve bought the model WD800JB-00JJC0 and switch the electronic board. As u can see there is a small difference between model. After making the board switch, the sick hard started to spin and had been recognized in BIOS as some WD hard drive, but it doesn’t know the exact model. I get some warning before boot that one of my hard drive is not correctly recognized and Windows XP is getting stuck because of that. Any chances to recover my files if i found the exact model WD800JB-00JJA0 and use that electronic board?

Pablo Garcia, 20. October 2008, 13:08

I would take one of the Hard Drives out of the computer and connect it to a second computer as a slave or using an external enclosure, that way you can prove that the hard drives are in good condition. If they are then you probably have a bad motherboard on your hands.

CluelessCarl, 20. October 2008, 12:40

Hi everyone, I think i might have a major problem with my PC…the other day my computer suddenly died. After talking to a couple of people i changed my graphics card and this helped to the point that I can now watch the thing on screen NOT booting. I have also noticed that my 2 hard drives are clicking, and after a while waiting to boot, they slow down and stop. I looked in the BIOS and there are no hard drives listed. I tried to use vista to repair and even re-install, but it does not see the drives…what can i do

Pablo Garcia, 16. October 2008, 14:49

Brian: I would take it out of the case its currently on and try it on a different case, they sell them for about $25 anywere on the web. If you are going to buy an external enclosure make sure is is the right size and type. They have them for laptop hard drives and for regular hard drives (2.5? and 3.5? respectively) Also you need to find out if your drive is IDE or SATA.

Brian, 16. October 2008, 11:37

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Do you have any information on how to recover portable hard drive data?

I’ve got a Seagate external hard drive that’s about 5 years old and my computer no longer shows the drive.

thanks for any info

Brian

Pablo Garcia, 20. August 2008, 9:38

Depends on the store and how knowledgeable the person that sees the hard drive is. If you buy a used hard drive on ebay and swap the boards and that happned not to be the problem, you can always sell it back and your loss will be minimal.

Frank, 15. August 2008, 12:40

Is there any way they can tell me at the computer store that the board is in fact defective. Like with a currency test? I don’t want to waste $50 you know.

Pablo Garcia, 15. August 2008, 12:32

Yes that what it sounds like.

Frank, 15. August 2008, 12:21

I have an external WD 250GB that all of a sudden stop working. The only thing that happens now is the light comes on. There is no recognition from my computer even after I took it out of it’s case and put it in my tower. Please help. Could it be the board?

Jamahl B., 7. August 2008, 18:25

I changed the external device and pluged it in via usb but I still do not get the drive to come up in my computer menu. I still do not have a click in the drive or a noise of any kind it seems to be running fine but still the external dive do not show up. Can u help me please and thank you in advance.

Pablo Garcia, 6. August 2008, 16:45

Jamahl B: I would take it out of the case its currently on and try it on a different case, they sell them for about $25 anywere on the web. If you are going to buy an external enclosure make sure is is the right size and type. They have them for laptop hard drives and for regular hard drives (2.5′ and 3.5′ respectively) Also you need to find out if your drive is IDE or SATA.

Jamahl B., 6. August 2008, 3:10

I have an external HD that I have had for about two years. I dont know the model of the drive I

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

just know it is a HD in an external case. I use the music to put my music files on that I record from the Cubase program. I turn on the HD an it freezes my computer. I also plug it to another computer that is brand new and it reads as new hardware but also freezes the new computer. It does not show in my computer. Please help me or let me know what to do thank you in advance.

Pablo Garcia, 29. July 2008, 16:50

No I do not have a list, but you should be able to look it up in google with no problems. However sometimes is cheaper to buy another used hard drive and swap the boards. Look for them on eBay. Before you do that though, I would unscrew the board and clean the contacts on the bottom with a pencil eraser, they might be dirty. Good Luck!

newckiwi, 29. July 2008, 7:39

You mentioned that there are companies that will sell you a replacement pcb for a hard drive, do you have a list of the people? My drive is now undetectable by the bios, so I would like to try the replacement board option. Hitachi, (my drive) say that these are not user servicable parts and as such will not entertain selling me a replacement board. Any information would be a great help.

Pablo Garcia, 24. July 2008, 7:21

Gary: What I would do in your case is run a full checkdisk on your drive, since you might be developing bad sectors, after that copy all of the contents ASAP (if it lets you) to another drive and run Recover My Files on the drive to see if you can recover what you lost. Notice that I said ScanDisk and not Defrag! do not run defrag if you want the little data that you have left.

Gary, 24. July 2008, 7:11

I have a WD mybook Premium ES. I have been having problems with it and i am now at the point where my OS sees the drive, i can browse its contents , but cant open or copy any files……..any ideas ?……….also some of the folders are showing as being empty……..there was files in these folders before problems arose…..is there still a chance these can be recovered ?

nothing has been deleted by me on this drive !

p.s. I certainly wont be buying WD mybook again !! hope someone can help……….a 5 year photography project is slowly heading down the toilet !!

Pablo Garcia, 16. July 2008, 8:19

Wow another Western Digital, the big mayority of people commenting on this article are having problems with Wester Digitals. Anyway…. I think your problen calls for the “Freezer Trick” read it on my article. Remember… As a word of advise, I would recommend that you send it to a Data Recovery specialist first if you really care about your data. The freezer trick is does not work all the time maybe 50% of the time, and after doing it your hard drive might not work ever again.

Dan, 15. July 2008, 15:27

I have a western digital 250gb hard drive and its worked fine for nearly 4 years until a few days ago. IT will turn on and I can access the files on it for about 2 minutes before its starts making a

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

squeaking noise and none of the files will open.

Pablo Garcia, 14. July 2008, 9:21

If the drive is damaged as a result of physical damage, then there is nothing that you can do on your own. You need to send it to a data recovery specialist. My article covers data recovery O-N- L-Y if the hard drive fails by itself.

Robby, 14. July 2008, 8:47

I have an external hardrive that I have dropped a couple of times. Windows can detect it but it says that it is not accessable because there is an I\O device error.

I also have another external harddrive that is the exact same model. I have taken both of the hard drives out of the cases and switched them. But this does not work.

This is what I hear: click-click-click–click-click-click–err-err, and it keeps on repeating. What should I do?

Pablo, 13. July 2008, 15:12

HI Chuck, I personally have had very bad experiences with My Books, we bought 3 at work. of which 2 did not work right out of the box, and one broke with very little use. That being said… let me address you problem, there seems to be common confusion with people not knowing how to differentiate and external from and internal drive… just look at the pictures, on my article, I barely talk about external drives! Troubleshooting an external drive is the easiest thing on the world! just purchase an empty external enclosure ($25 at new egg, make sure is the right size for your drive and if it is PATA or SATA) take the actual Hard Drive out of the my book enclosure, put it inside the new case and connect it to your computer. When I talk about “the board” I talk about the one that is part of the actual drive, and not the enclosure that contains it (if it is external like yours). Internal and external drives are the same. An external drive is just a normal computer hard drive inside an enclosure, thats all.

chuck vallejos, 10. July 2008, 16:21

Hi Pablo, i have the 80gb my book. do you have any suggestions about this. when i plug in the power for my book, the light just flashes, no sign of power except for the flashing light. i believe its the little power board that is bad. i’m desperate.

Pablo, 10. July 2008, 13:18

Carl from what you are describing it seems that your hard drive has physical damage as a result of the fall. There is nothing you can do on you own, the solutions I describe on this website pertain to everything you can do if the hard drive fails on its own, and not as a result of physical damage. You need to send it to a data recovery specialist.

carl martin, 9. July 2008, 2:34

hi i dropped my maxtor one touch 4 it now dosent connect to my laptop and it makes a beeping sound the light comes on at the front and makes a clikin sound help lol

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo, 16. June 2008, 12:46

Trish: If you are sure the hard drive got damaged after the fall, chances are that you are going to need a data recovery service. Have you to listened to it, does it sound like a normal hard drive when you conect it? or does it make weird repetitive sounds? like clunk clunk clunk, like if something was stuck? If it does then you are out of luck, you need to send it. There is a few things you can try before sending it. I would take the hard drive out of its enclosure, and connect it as a slave drive directly to the computer, if you do not know how to do this then you have the alternative of buying another enclosure, they sell generic ones on the web, that do not require drivers, you can go to newegg for example. They are cheap… you can get one for arroung $25

Trish, 12. June 2008, 16:08

Hi Pablo, I hope you might be able to give me a suggestion on my daughters external WD MY Book 160, the drive is not being recoginized by any computer. We have run all the diagonostics and it has passed. You can see and hear that the drive is spinning. But what ever we have done we can’t get it recoginized. Her boyfriend and I took it out of the case and installed it in my desktop as a slave to see if we could at least recovery the info on it, but it didn’t correctly recognize the hard drive, it thought it was a dvd drive. Unable to get the correct drivers from WD because it is out of warranty. We are not sure why it stopped working, it may have been dropped at her dorm during a party. Any suggestions you could give us would be great she have very valuable data stored there i.e. final projects etc.After we took it apart we put it back together and still no go we have already invested hours toward this, so a fresh set of eyes so to speak would be welcome.

Pablo Garcia, 18. May 2008, 14:31

Luis, Have you tried using another enclosure? have you tried plugging the hard drive directly to the computer as a slave drive?

Luis, 18. May 2008, 14:21

Hey Pablo, its Luis again, thanks for getting back to me before, i have done what you said i should cleaned the contacts, but it still has not come back to live. So i believe its prob the click of death, the sound that i hear. My hard drive is an external hard drive, and when i plug it into the computer, the computer detects it, it makes the sound that its been plugged in, however, i cannot access my data. When i go to device manager, it says that one of the drivers is cannot be loaded, i tried unstalling and re-installing this driver, but everytime i do it fails. If i had the click of death would the computer still recognize the hard drive? I just don’t know what else to do, thanks again for your help earlier and the pictures of the contacts, i was hoping that would have done the trick but it seems not…

Pablo Garcia, 2. May 2008, 7:28

Look on eBay, you can either buy the board of buy the same hard drive, sometimes is cheaper to buy a used hard drive and use it for parts. I discussed all of this in my article.

albert, 2. May 2008, 1:20

i can not put it into an encloseure that wont do anything because the board is still fried and i

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

need power to make it spin up….have any idea where i can get an extra board for it???

Pablo Garcia, 1. May 2008, 9:46

You just answered your question, if the board is fried the logical thing to do is change the board… If its an external drive, then just put it into another enclosure before changing the board on it.

albert, 30. April 2008, 21:29

i have a 250gb wd and somehow got shorted out and started smoking so i pulled the HD out of its encloser and opened it up and the board is fried….i was told there is a way to still get everything off of the hard drive…..SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME OUT I HAVE VERY IMPORTANT STUFF ON IT…..I need your help

Pablo Garcia, 22. April 2008, 18:47

Luis: I’m my article I talk about “Remove the main board from the bottom of the hard drive and clean the bottom contacts” That board can be removed without opening the hard drive. I also said in my article “Hard drives need to be opened in dust free environments, and by specialized personnel, so do not even attempt to open it if you want your data back!!!.” If you opened the hard drive it might be too late. you have to remove the bottom board not open the hard drive. If you mean that you have an external Hard Drive and you opened the case, then thats a different story. If the computer is not detecting the external hard drive, I would suggest to replace the enclosure, they sell empty ones for about $25, if that does not work then… Take the hard drive out of the case, remove the board on the bottom of the hard drive, you will see that this board is sitting on top of contacts, clean those contacts with an eraser. I posted some pictures for you.

Luis, 22. April 2008, 18:30

hey, i have a 500gb freecom hard drive, and up until last week it worked fine. suddenly it has stopped working, the computer recognizes it has been plugged in but it doesnt appear in my computer. it also makes a noise like it is trying to load the data, but it doesnt sound like a click. i think i have problem number 4 on your list. i have opened the hard drive, to ty to clean it with the rubber, however, i cannot find the contacts that you mention. i dont want to try to clean anything else, cos i migt actually break he hard drive for good, so ny help you can provide would be much appretiated. if you have any links to a picture that shows what the contacts look like then tht wuld be brilliant. i just dont want to lose 500 gb worth of data, and i cannot afford to send it to a specialist.

Pablo Garcia, 13. April 2008, 1:03

Deepak the only way I can help you is by giving you advice. What I would do in your case is take the hard drive out of the case and connect it directly to the computer or purchase an empty HD enclosure, (they sell them for around $25) that way you can find out if the problem is with the enclosure or the hard drive. If that does not work, then you could have a bad logic board on the hard drive. You could buy another HD just like that one on eBay and swap the boards.

deepak baldi, 12. April 2008, 15:51

I have a 160 GB Western digital portable external drive. For some spontaneous reason, when i am

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

plugging the device into the USB port, it does not Autorun and the drive letter do not appear in Explorer nor in Disk Management. Though when connected to computer it recognises the device as an external USB device but doesnt show any drive letter. I even tried using the Western Digital diagnostic utility but it gives me an error “Cable Test: Read diagnostics sector error”. Please let me know if you could help me in getting my data which was stored on that external hard dive.

G33K GiRL, 20. March 2008, 10:07

Ok thanks alot , much appreciated.

Pablo Garcia, 20. March 2008, 9:30

He used is A+ Computer Data Recovery Services… http://www.cmpq.com/ I have never used one of these services before so I am not endorsing them or anything. Just do your research.

G33K GiRL, 19. March 2008, 15:47

Hi Pablo, Thanks alot for ur reply I really really appreciate it,can you please tell me the specialist address to send my HD to? thanks again God bless u. [email protected]

Pablo Garcia, 19. March 2008, 11:26

Don’t worry your data is probably all there, it just can’t be retrieved at the moment. I doubt that the “Freezer” trick would work for you since your hard drive got damaged during the fall, and this trick only works when the hard drive starts failing on its own. You probably are going to have to send it to a data recovery specialist. Hopefully the arm is not scratching the surface of the plate, but do not connect it anymore just in case. I was talking to a guy at work that had the same thing happen to him and he sent his to a recovery specialist in Colorado that charged a flat fee, I think he told me from $200 to $500 depending on the type of damage, so they are not extremely expensive. He got absolutely everything back; they sent all his files by mail on several CDs.

G33K GiRL, 19. March 2008, 6:59

Hi Pablo, First thanks alot for the excellent article believe it or not its the first article I read and gives me some hope! Please have some patience to read my tragedy :”( ..two days ago my beloved external HD stopped working (100 GB storage) I can’t tell u how it means to me all my projects,stuff,artworks,articles,SW,drivers eeeeeeeeverything is in there its simply MY DIGITAL IDENTITY! don’t tell me I had to have a backup because that what I was thinking of doing the same week as it started the click click thing but it was still working fine until it fell from me on ground and..stopped working completely :”(… the case is that whenever I connect it to any computer first you can feel it moving inside then it makes clicks and keeps moving inside until it stops completely and the computer doesn’t detect it at all. Pleeeeeeease help me its a case of life or death for me :”(

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Pablo Garcia, 12. March 2008, 20:09

Make sure you have the jumpers set correctly first. If not, try to detach the circuit board and cleaning the contacts with an eraser, if that does not work try replacing the board. And if none of this works consider sending it for repair to a data recovery specialist.

Nehe, 12. March 2008, 16:27

Hi! I just moved and my 200gb external hd stoped work. It starts up as usual and it appears on the computer but it says that it got 0bytes used space and 0bytes free space. I´v tryed to run the Recover My Files program but it seems it wont search a drive with nothing in it. Any suggestions?

Pablo Garcia, 4. March 2008, 10:57

For the last two questions… Freezing can only be done once; usually after this the hard drive dies forever. However, freezing works only about 60% of the time and usually on dives which started malfunctioning by themselves. I do not think it will work on your particular case. I would send it to a data recovery service if the data is too important. If not, freezing is probably your last option, but remember if it does not work you can do more damage than good.

Raelynae, 3. March 2008, 20:24

Question about the “click click click of death” solution. My WD 500GB MyBook Essential 2.0 fell 2 feet off my endtable today and is now making that tell tale noise. How many times can freezing the unit be done? My external drive is currently doing that, and in doing so I lost upwards of 100GB. I don’t think that transfering the files would work only one time as transferring that many files takes longer than it to thaw out. Any help would be nice thanks!

jonathan M C, 3. March 2008, 15:22

Good Evening,

I managed to pull my 240GB hard drive off the coffee table last night and am now getting (as you refer) the clunking noise of death!!

I have about 50-60GB of music on the drive and dont think I can try the freezer trick as it will take time to copy this much music over.

Any solutions for me??

Thanks

Jonathan

Pablo Garcia, 23. February 2008, 17:21

Kenon: It looks to me that you filesystem may have gotten corrupted, or that the Hard Drive itself went bad, Windows is seeing it but it cannot understand whats written on it. do you hear any strange sounds comming from it? Also plug it into another computer and see what happens, if youstill do not see a drive letter take it out of the casing and connect it directly to the computer as a slave, then get and run “Recover My Files” that little program is awesome.

http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-hard-drive/[10/22/2011 5:08:39 AM] How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

Kenon Burns, 23. February 2008, 2:05

I own a WD 500GB MyBook Essential 2.0 USB that I use with my own HP laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium. I disconnected it from my laptop and did not use it for 3 or 4 days. When I plugged it back into my laptop, the button lights up like it should, and the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon pops up, but there is no drive letter assigined to it. In “My Computer” it does not show up either. When I right-click on “My Computer” and go to “Manage,” it shows up as Disk 2, Unknown, Unreadable with a little red arrow pointing down. What is it that may be wrong and what should I do about it?

Kenon Burns

Pablo Garcia, 3. February 2008, 1:28

CHETU: I do not suggest you change the arm by yourself. Hard Drives are sealed so that no dust particles get inside. Any tiny particle can damage it and that is why Data Recovery experts work in special dust-free environments. Send it to a data recovery service.

chetu, 14. December 2007, 18:12

I have one samsung 40gb hdd from that i hear a noise of clungâ€¦ clungâ€¦ clung and i have another HDD of the same make and same model and i want to swap the arm from the good harddisk to the bad one, how can i change the arm can u send me the tecniq so i recover my data

pamela, 5. December 2007, 22:22

I’m not a computer savy person, when my computer crashed I sent in my drive to Gillware. They were affordable and had my recovered data back to me in a week.

Data Recovery Service

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