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
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