Common Faults observed in Hard Disk Drives - Failure - Failed - Dead!
Defective Hard Disk Drive Heads
Commonly known as the 'Click of Death'. Your hard drive is on its way out, along with your data. One of the noisy hd faults.
A common fault which is usually easy to spot. When the drive is initially powered up, a logic check ensures that the drive has attained the necessary speed before launching the heads across the platter. If the drive can not attain a 'Ready' state, the logic is repeated for a pre-determined number of times causing a clicking sound, after which it stops trying.Your hard disk drive now appears dead.

Do not run 'software' recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and this places increased stress on the heads, which causes errors to be written to the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

Crashed Hard Disk Drive Heads
The hard drive is most likely making a grinding and scraping noise. Think dentist drill, its painful, and thats how it feels for your drive. Sounds nasty and is stripping the magnetic coating off the platters. Immediately turn the drive off and disconnect it from your computer. Then call us. Repeated use in this state is rapidly decreasing the chances of recovery. The sooner we can start the recovery, the greater the chance of success before it totally corrupts the hard drive data platter.

Again, do not run 'software' recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and this places increased stress on the heads, which causes errors to be written to the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

Hard Disk Drive Motor Failure
The motor spins usually between 4200rpm upwards to around 15000rpm in todays higher end desktop drives. It is precisely controlled to enable synchronisation for reading the data off the platters. It fails in two main ways. The first is fairly obvious, it simply doesn't spin or won't start. You can usually feel a slight vibration or hear a humming sound on the drive when it powers up. If you can't then it is likely the motor isn't spinning. Erratic speed variations of the motor may cause the drive to take an extended period of time to come to the 'Ready' state. Prolonged or repeatedly powering the drives could well cause further damage. Disconnect the drive and give us a call for recovery of the data from the drive.

Again, do not run 'software' recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and this places increased stress on the heads, which causes errors to be written to the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

Hard Disk Drive not seen in BIOS
You may wonder what the BIOS is? BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System and in simple terms it provides a set of instructions to your computer, telling it how to start, and interface to the first 'Boot' device. When it has reached the first boot device, it can receive further instructions from there, and eventually load your operating system. During the start-up, the BIOS may have failed to detect the Hard Drive, and therefore is not shown. First check all connections and try again.

If it still won't work, then the recognition failure may be caused by a number of factors, eg corrupt boot sector, however, at startup on your computer you can tell whether the drive is being seen by the system BIOS. Power up the computer, and look for the on-screen instruction to tell you how to enter the BIOS. Usually this is achieved by pressing F1, F2 or DEL keys. Examine the menus for options on viewing the BIOS IDE peripheral setup and set your BIOS to automatically detect IDE drives. On some BIOSes there is an option to "automatically detect hard drives now". If you run this option and the computer 'hangs' or appears inactive for a a minute or more then it is likely that your Hard Disk Drive had failed to be recognised by the system BIOS.

Power Surge, Reversed Polarity, Power Supply plugged in the wrong way around
This is a frequent occurence - particularly plugging the power lead in the wrong way around. Despite the shape of the molex connector, the cheaper versions are often made of soft plastic and can easily be plugged in incorrectly. Often this results in the drive appearing totally dead with no noise coming from the motor and an unpleasant burning smell. Similar faults occur when a mains power surge can damage the computer motherbaord and hard drive circuitry. Immediately unplug the computer from the mains supply and withdraw the hard drive to a safe place until recovery can take place.

Useful Data Sheets on Hard Disk Drives

We recover data and repair the following Hard Disk Drives
Western Digital, Fujitsu, IBM, Hitachi, Toshiba, Quantum, Seagate, Conner, TEAC, Samsung, Kalok, Iomega
Click here to see a list of hard disks we recover data from or repair when they are not recognised in BIOS

Hard Disk Drive Knowledgebase and Database

Fujitsu MPG3 series Hard Drive Data Sheets

Fujitsu MPF3 series Hard Drive Data Sheets

Desktop Laptop Notebook USB & Firewire IEEE1394 harddisks
We recover desktop and laptop notebook harddisks, master/slave discdrives, USB Firewire hard discs, and have our own Class 100 clean room facilities as required by harddisc manufacturers for rebuilding failed drives.

Repair / Recover fix Mechanical / Electrical / Firmware Hard Diskdrive Problems
Hard Disk Drive not recognised in BIOS. Dropped harddiscs, smoking harddrives!
Hard Disk Drive Noisy, Clicking, Scraping, Sound. Disc Drive Head crashes.

Repair / Recover from following Operating File Systems
Data recovery for FAT FAT32 and NTFS file systems.
Linux with EXT2fs, EXT3, XFS, reiserfs & jfs filesystems on standalone & RAID volumes
Recover from partitions, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged
Recover files with the original time and date stamp
Recover files on network drives
Recover from all Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, NT 4.0, Windows™ XP and Windows™ 2000 systems.

Recover / retrieve files in the following situations
- UNC Uncorrectable Data Error - especially Maxtor SATA
- Mains Power Surge
- Reversed power polarity / voltage from incorrectly plugging in power leads or cable
- Corruption of file systems FAT
- Corrupt Files
- Recycle Bin emptied or files were deleted without Recycle Bin
- Hardware or software failures
- Power failure
- HDD (Hard Disk Drive) not recognised in BIOS, computer not detecting harddiscs
- Virus attack
- Formatted Hard drives
- System shutdown
- Partitioning or boot-up sector problems
- Controller pcb Board failure / burnt
- Discdrive making repeated clicking sound
- No spin on diskdrive motor
- Forgotten or Lost Password removal from Hard Disk