How to recover data from a broken hard drive
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 drive to a data recovery service. Yes! you heard right, I’m sure you have come across articles that will tell you how to recover data from a damaged partition, you will find a ton of those on the web, but when your hard drive starts malfunctioning none of those articles are going to help you solve your problem, This article will 
1) Corrupted file system:
If the hard drive gets detected by Windows and can be accessed but you do not see any data inside, or you get a 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 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 let you recover some small files. The software does have its drawbacks. If your file type is not on their list it basically can’t be recovered. If you want to recover a file with an uncommon extension that is not on their list you are out of luck. Their list is 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 ago. It will take a long time depending on the size of the hard drive. The program will not allow you to install it on the same hard drive where the data needs to be recovered from for obvious reasons. So be prepared to install the software on a secondary drive like a USB Flash Drive or External Hard Drive.
2) Clicking noise of death:
If your hard drive is making the common “clung… clung… clung…” sound your heads are probably stuck. This is one of the worst problems you can have since the arm of the drive is not functioning properly and therefore cannot read the disks inside. As some of you might know this is not repairable, 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 hard drive to a data recovery service. However, before you do that and spend an arm and a leg, there is something you can do. This trick will actually work 60% of the cases, so you do have a good probability of getting your data back. Place the Hard Drive inside a Zip Lock bag and put it in the freezer for about 2 hours, 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. 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!!! 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.
3) Hard drive does not get detected:
If the computer does not detect the hard drive, or the computer just does not want to turn on when the hard drive is connected to it, you might have a bad hard drive board. This is the big circuit board located at the bottom of your drive. These easily replaceable boards tend to get damaged over time due to the heat generated by the hard drive itself. I will tell you how to replace this board in the following solution #4; 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 bastard you can always resort to eBay and buy a used hard drive with the same model number as yours, remove the board from the newly purchased drive, and use it on broken one. This will probably cost you less than purchasing the board alone. If your hard drive is old it makes more sense to buy another hard drive, on the other hand if the hard drive is new you are better off buying the board. These boards run around $50 each. If you decide to purchase another hard drive or the board alone, make sure you are getting the exact same board! I cannot stress this enough. You can have drives with the same brands and specifications with slight variations on their board and consequently on their firmware, if this is the case the board will not work, so make sure you are getting exactly what you need before pressing that “buy now” button!
4) Hard drive gets detected but still does not work:
If Windows detects the hard drive but it can’t be accessed, won’t give you the option to format it, or its 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 unsoldered 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.)
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 crashing on the 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
*** 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. Donations will start at $99, any other amount after will be voluntary. ***
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?
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.
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.
Pablo Garcia said:
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).
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.
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.
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!
LIL SIS: Sound like the board may be fried. If you can find the same exact hard drive with the 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.
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.
Mary Donoho: You do not have to waste your money, thats what trial versions are for, so you can try before you buy
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.
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….
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
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, 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).
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!
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.
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.
Hi Matt, yes I do have experience with this issue. have you tried to use MHDD? try it and see if it detects it.
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?
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???
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.
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?
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
Hi Ishwar… Don’t panic… try using a data recovery program, like recover my files and see if that works.
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?
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
hi my tera byte suddenly fall of in this table and now its shows 0bytes its detects show found new hardware but the file contain shows 0 bytes
Thanks Pablo, you are my hero. I’m working on recovering 350 GB. Many files irreplaceable. Thanks for this post, you saved my files.
Hi Karen, I sent you an email with details.
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
Please let me know how to donate, I want to send you my hard drive
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.
Hi Eveyln, I sent you an email, check your junk mail if you did not get it.
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!!!
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.
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.
hi, i have so many questions to ask, and i’d rather ask you via personal email if that is okay by you.
thankyou!!
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
James, I sent you an email regarding your case.
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.
Pieter I am very glad my article was able to help you. Take care.
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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?
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!
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!
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
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.
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
Hi tiffany:
Do not worry. I sent you an email regarding your case.
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…
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.
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
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.
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
I have a Seagate 500 gig that rattles. What would it cost to retrieve data
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.
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
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
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.
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.
You need to give me more details about your case, I will send you an email.
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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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?
I have an old 40G hard drive which produces a clicking sound.
Could you email me your suggestions, Pablo?
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.
CK I sent you an email regarding your case….
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?
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!!!!
Hi,
I have a maxtor basics 500gb external hard drive which has just stopped working. When i plug it in the led light flashes but the drive itself doesn’t spin, i have tried a docking station with the same voltage but nothing. There is about 450gb used which contains a lot of info to do with my work that i do need to recover. i believe that the disk etc is intact and it may be something to do with the circuit board as the drive has never been dropped and when it was working there’s wasn’t any sounds of the disks spinning off balance. Thanks for the info you’ve shared, most valuable. I wonder if you have any suggestions and also if the worst is to come, are you in a position to extract the data for me, at a price of course?!
Cheers
Rren (London, UK)
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 ?
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 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.
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,
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)
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!!
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
TY
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?
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 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
CK I sent you an email regarding your case.
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.
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!
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.
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….
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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
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
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….
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?
Hi Jules, your case looks promising, I sent you an email.
Hi Pablo! I am a soldier currently stationed in Afghanistan and on the way here, my hard drive messed up…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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??
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.
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.
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?
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
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
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,
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
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-$4000 to recover my WD hardrive. I am wanting any help I can because that is too much and has to be my last resort!
Has anyone tried to place their hard drive in the freezer like it says?
Hi Pablo,
I have a WD 500G SATA external hard drive. I try to open a file from it but when I turn it on, its just not showing in my drive list. I tried to unplug then plug it again but I only hear short movement on the hard drive then no more. I removed the the drive from the enclosure and I smell a burned board. I bought a new enclosure but still no luck at all. If you’re going to suggest to replace the board on the buttom of the drive, can please give me detailed procedure, because as you’ve said I can’t open the hard drive itself. Please help me so I can retrieve my important pictures of my baby. Thank you so much in advance.
i have a drive with broken electronics, and want to buy a drive of the same model but there are a lot of numbers written on the disk besides the model-number.
An important one seems to be the one named P/N, because it is mostly provided in the ebay-descripions of the drives, but there are also numbers labeled as OEM, MLC and FR each of them different.
Do you know what those numbers mean and which of them should be the same on the replacement drive?
Gillware quoted me 800$ not real affordable still looking for another option.
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.
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..
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Yes that what it sounds like.
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?
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.
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.
I have an external HD that I have had for about two years. I dont know the model of the drive I 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.
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!
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.
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.
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 !!
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.
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 squeaking noise and none of the files will open.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Luis, Have you tried using another enclosure? have you tried plugging the hard drive directly to the computer as a slave drive?
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…
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.
i can not put it into an encloseure that wont do anything because the board is still fried and i need power to make it spin up….have any idea where i can get an extra board for it???
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I have a 160 GB Western digital portable external drive. For some spontaneous reason, when i am 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.
Ok thanks alot , much appreciated.
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.
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.
g33ki.girl@gmail.com
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.
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 :”(
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.
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?
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.
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!
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
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.
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
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.
I have one samsung 40gb hdd from that i hear a noise of clung… clung… 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
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