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How to Recover Data From a Broken Hard Drive

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18. May 2007, 3:09 Uhr Pablo GarciaHow to Recover Data From a Broken Hard DriveIf 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.

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. This software is included in my article: Best Data Recovery Software.

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. There are also a free alternatives

which work as well or even better than “Recover My Files”. If your disk read my article: How To Repair A

Damaged Partition or MBR. If you are unable to recover the damaged partition but still want to recover your files,

read my article: How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software.

Clicking noise of death

If your hard drive is making the common “clung… clung… clung…” sound your head are having trouble reading

the contents of the drive. 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. I have written an article just for this: How To Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is

Damaged

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

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by the hard drive itself. I will tell you how to replace this board with the following solution:

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 used 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!

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 un-soldered contacts. Many

Hard Drives operate at high temperatures, and this tends to melt the circuit board’s coating. When this happens

this coating will spill over these contacts, and since they are not soldered their dirty metal surfaces will no longer

touch. To solve this, remove the screws from the board and flip it. You will see a row of contacts usually in more

than one location. Rub the surface of the contacts with a pencil eraser, just as if you were erasing something

you wrote. This will actually clean those contacts better than any other method. Screw the board back in place

and try it. (If your hard drive happens to have pin connectors rather than flat ones, disregard this tip and buy a

new board.)

Clicking noise of death (Last Resort Solution)

This trick will actually

work 60% of the cases, so

you do have a good

probability of getting your

data back. I have to warn

you that after freezing

your hard drive there is

also a good chance that

the hard drive won’t work

ever again, therefore this

procedure should only be

attempted as a very last

resort.

1 – Place the Hard Drive

inside a Zip Lock bag and

put it in the freezer for

about 2 hours.

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13.09.11, 07:31: How to Install VMware 7 on Ubuntu 11.04(from Cyrano)

10.09.11, 04:35: How to Recover Data Even When HardDrive is Damaged (from Prashant)

09.09.11, 18:26: How to Install VMware 7 on Ubuntu 11.04(from Pablo Garcia)

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09.09.11, 04:46: Setup a Clonezilla Server on Ubuntu (frommansoor)

07.09.11, 09:22: How to Format a USB External Hard Drivefor Linux (from wpteddy)

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2 – After that take it out and connect it to the computer as fast as you can so that it does not have time to

warm up. Make sure that you do not remove the hard drive out of the bag and that you open it as little as

possible when connecting it to the power and data cables, so that outside air doesn’t come in and create

condensation on the drive.

3 - Turn your computer on, look for your data and take it out as fast as you possibly can. Time is key here

because you do not know if that drive is going to ever work again. Make sure you do this on a fast computer that

does not take to long to boot up, if possible connect the hard drive to an external USB enclosure so that you do

not waste time with the computer booting up. Also make sure you know the exact location of your data; is better

if you go to straight to the folder rather than using Windows search utility, as searching the drive will heat it up

faster due to the amount of work the arm will have to make. Drives usually work for a few minutes and stop

working once they heat up. So hurry!!!

4 – If after freezing the hard drive and connecting it to the computer you are still not able to access it and you

still hear the noise, hold the drive in your hand and, without taking it out of the bag, tap it with your knuckles on

one side to see if this releases the heads, you obviously have to do this while the hard drive is powered on and

connected to the computer.

Final Thoughts

If none of these tips work for you and you still want your data back is time to send your drive to a data recovery

service, there are number of those on the web, I have never actually tried one, but some of them will charge you

a flat fee regardless of the problem. However, these services will not guarantee your back all of the time, in fact

most of them regardless of what they claim, will just have a 75% to 80% success rate. There are some things you

just can’t recover from, like an arm scratching the whole surface of a plate. Best thing is to back up your data

regularly. I suggest you read my article on building your own NAS server

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

How to Recover Data Even When the Hard Drive is Damaged

How to Repair a Damaged Partition Table or MBR

Best Data Recovery Software – Top 10 List

How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software

How to Retrieve Files From a Dead Computer

How to Recover Your Files When Windows Won’t Boot

Related Posts :

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473 comments:

Pablo Garcia, 3. September 2011, 17:40

Hi Judah: It might be a necessity. That is the problem with buying the PCB board that it has to be

exactly like yours including firmware, etc.

Judah, 3. September 2011, 13:32

I want to verify that I’m at the end of my rope. I got the blue screen of death one day and could

not boot the laptop up again. It said did not have a bootable device. I did drive diagnostics using

bios utilities (HP laptop) and it got to 40% and told me to replace the drive. The drive is a

Western Digital. I bought a new drive and an external enclosure. When the drive spins up in the

external enclosure it starts to read and then stops and tells me to reformat. It will even try twice

sometimes, but if I go into disk utilities it does not recognize any drive except my replacement. I

downloaded Recover My Disk and it does not see the drive. I tried putting the drive in the second

slot. The bios looks like it recognizes there is a drive but when I attempt to do diagnostics it just

sits at zero. Because of the position of the drive (board down) it makes clicking noises while in the

laptop. When I use it externally I put the board up and don’t get any noise except when it

terminates attempt to read. The drive does continue to spin. I have not tried replacing board or

freezing the drive. Should I bother? I have congregational financial data, so I have to recover (I

was using my backup drive for another purpose, won’t do that again :( ). If I freeze can it still be

recovered if it does not work?

Dimitra, 27. August 2011, 16:38

Thanks very much for the answer.

I hope that Racuva or Photorec will work!

Thanks again!

Pablo Garcia, 27. August 2011, 16:18

Hi Wahida: Again… Provided you hard drive is healthy you can use Recuva or Photorec to recover

your files, Both programs are free and reliable.

















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Hi Malama:

In order for you to be able to access your files you need to log into Windows 7 with Administrator

rights and “take ownership” of the folder you are trying to access.


Hi Dimitra

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


HI Akashlina:

If you see the drive as a drive letter in windows try using Recuva or Photorec to recover your

files.


Hi Martin, never heard of that before. But a quick search in Google returned this:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive-

have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11

Malama, 27. August 2011, 8:46

Hi

My computer had a problem of “NTLDR IS MISSING” However i tried to correct the problem but

wasnt successful. i then decided to recover by connecting the HDD to the other computer but also

was able to succed. It tells me that “Access is denied” Is there any other solution that you can

help me to recover the data?

Dimitra, 26. August 2011, 12:04

Hello!

I’ m desperate! I have an ADATA 500GB external hard drive, which I used with my desktop pc

(windows xp), I bought a new laptop now with windows 7, at first the HD worked fine, sometimes

when I was connecting it with the laptop, a message will pop that was suggesting a format, but as

everything was working fine, I ignored it. Yesterday all of the sudden (or maybe not), my hard

drive gets detected by Windows and can be accessed but I don’ t see any of my data inside and I

get a message saying that the drive needs to be formatted. If I do format, I’ ll lose all my data,

right?

Is there anything that can be done at all?

I read about software ”recover my files”, does it works?

Please, if there is any idea or suggestion will be more than welcome and much appreciated.

Akashlina, 26. August 2011, 5:26

Thanks for writing such informative post. My Transcend 320GB external hard drive just stopped

working. The device is being recognized by windows but I am getting error messages like – cannot

open drive, format drive to use it, drive is corrupted etc. It had almost 150-200 gb of digital

pictures and movie files. Could you please suggest which of the data recovery s/w should be

useful to recover the digital pictures (that’s all I care about)?

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive-have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive-have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11



martin fabram, 25. August 2011, 15:57

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

my data back..thanks


Hi Peter, its possible although I have never heard that before. I would suggest you connect the

drive directly to a desktop computer’s SATA / IDE interface, then transfer you data using

Windows.

wahida, 24. August 2011, 4:03

Dear sir,

I’m using my external hard drive Buffalo 500GB anti-shock to store all my movie and photo.

Recently my HDD unable to save some photos and when i tried to connect to my netbook,it no

longer recognise my HDD.

I did tried on a different PC which sees the drive displays it in the directory but doesn’t recognise

it a having any capacity or files it is simply a shell. Device manager still reads the drive

properties however no data.

I have spent ages collecting the data, vidoes, music, photos etc. on my external hardrive and i

was wondering what i should do to recover that data ..

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

Peter Neski, 22. August 2011, 18:10

My problem is that My WD My book usb port is loose in the case,I took the drive out ,But trying

one type of case for the drive didn’t work because the WD Software on the drive caused problem

for the case not showing up on my Computer,The tech guy said it wouldn’t work with that case


Hi Remy:

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

shipping.

Remy, 21. August 2011, 11:47

Pablo,

I still haven’t had a chance to take the external apart and attach it as a slave but I noticed

something in my inspection. It looks as if my cats have been chewing on the usb cable. The

external still makes the “window’s recognizing something is plugged in” noise which makes me

believe the cable is still working…. but yet the drive still does not show up and the drive still

whirls and clicks. Is it possible because of the very badly damaged cord that perhaps its not

getting enough power? Should I bother trying to buy a cord and replace it, or should I just assume

that it makes the “Windows plugged in noise” and therefore is fine?



Thanks for all your help!

shane, 21. August 2011, 6:56

Hi pablo,

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

alive.

cheers

Paulie, 20. August 2011, 15:04

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


Hi Paulie

“Don’t appear” but they might be. These boards have a clear coating that can spill over contacts

when the board gets to hot. I would try cleaning them anyways, it won’t hurt, (provided that you

are properly grounded of course)


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


HI Paulie

It might be a bad board or dirty contacts in the board, have you tried removing the board and

cleaning the contacts? the ones underneath the board and the ones that connect to the sata and

power cables.


Hi Shane

If the computer’s BIOS can’t detect the hard rive, no program will. Is the hard drive making any

noises? Is it completely dead? If it is you might have a bad board.


thanks for this post. if i understand you correctly, it sounds like i may need a new hard drive

board, please tell me what you think…

-i have a wd external hard drive; it is a few years old.

-for the past few months i have had to constantly plug in and unplug the power and/or usb cord

for my cpu and ps3 to recognize it.

-recently, it stopped being recognized at all. the power comes on, but it does not connect to the



cpu or ps3.

-i purchased a docking station, and my cpu acknowledged the station, but when i insert the hard

drive, it does nothing. it doesnt run.

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

advance.

Shane, 18. August 2011, 2:48

Hi,

I have a 500GB seagate internal HDD that has windows vista on it and loads of data i’m trying to

get back. It cant load windows vista anymore. after calling Hp support they told be i have a dead

HDD. so i went and purchased a new 500GB HDD and installed XP on it (working fine), i also got

some extra sata cables so i could recover some data off the so called dead HDD, to no avail! The

setup won’t detect the seagate drive, and the get-data-back program also cant find it. however i

can hear it making some noise so somthing is going on in there!! any ideas on how i can get my

data back??????

Cheers,Shane

Robert, 15. August 2011, 7:00

hey ive got a seagate 2tb external expansion hard drive and i have dropped it, my computer now

does not recognise it and the hard drive itself just beeps, im not real good with the technical side

of things. any help is greatly appreciated


Dimetri:

A partition is a section of a hard drive. Most hard drives have a single partition while others can

have many. If a hard drive has two partitions for example you will see two drives instead of one.

But that is besides the point here. The partition contains your file structure, if that structure is

corrupted then the files you recover are probably not going to have their original names or be in

their original folders, as this information got corrupted. An external hard drive is just an regular

drive inside an external enclosure. (this is explained in the article)


HI Remy:

I suggest taking the hard drive out or its enclosure and connect it directly to a desktop computer

SATA or IDE cable. Then read the part of my article titled “Hard Drive Developed Noise on its

Own”.

Remy, 14. August 2011, 15:20

I have a maxtor external hard drive I’ve had for a long time. I just recently bought a new goflex

to replace the old maxtor. I haven’t had a chance to move the data over and this morning I

noticed my maxtor wasn’t showing in the drive list and its making the clicking noise. Awfull

timing. Its never been dropped or had any problems. The power light goes on and it spins and

clicks and windows makes the noise as if something has been connected but the drive never

appears in my computer? What do you suggest? I was thinking of trying to stick it in another

enclosure or to my computer as a slave just to get the data off of it. Is it possible to connect one

backup to the new one and just move the data? Any help would be appreciated!




Hi Rajkumar

Reading your comment I can see that the reason the BIOS is not detecting the hard drive due to

internal damage, so you probably won’t be able to recover anything on your own. The BIOS needs

to detect the hard drive in order for any program use it.

Rajkumar Shrestha, 11. August 2011, 1:04

I have seagate 320 gb hard drive. firstly its has a problem of i/o when i checked, after a few days

when i try to join it fall in floor and now cannot see my hard drive in bios and any partation of

that hard drive. when i connet to the computer its vibrate and after long time it seems like to be

silence. Do u have any Idea, how can i recover me document from that hard drive

Dimetri, 10. August 2011, 0:22

I see how in the pictures its a regular hard drive, I’m talking about an external harddrive if there

is a differnce, and thanks for responding so quickly, I am very bad when it comes to this stuff

also what is a partition?

-Dimetri


Dimetri:

If you your partition is in good condition you should be able to boot and do the same things you

were able to do before. When you make a raw copy of a hard drive you are coying

A.B.S.O.L.U.T.E.L.Y everything even the blank space, this is why you need a hard drive of the

same size or bigger to recover the data.


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

-Dimetri


Hi Dimetri

Read the section titled “Hard Drive Developed Noise After it Was Dropped”. With that method you

can make a “raw” copy of absolutely all the contents in your drive.


Hi Pablo, a while back my seagate external hard drive fell and now it makes a beep noise and its

light flashes, I tryed freezing and my computer made a tone like something connected but it

showed up as a usb controller, do I have to take it to a data recovery service?

-Dimetri



David, 7. August 2011, 16:59

Hi Pablo thanks for the update and telling us about it. I wish I knew which part you added.

For my case, in the meantime I bought a 320GB internal drive to get my laptop usable again

(priority #1 for me), and in the meantime while I googled my problem I found a site called

datacent and they told me that the heads of the drive needed to be replaced (under clean

atmosphere etc) so I either replace it, or their fee to retrieve the data was around 1000 CAD.

That’s quite steep.

The thing is, from reading your guide it could very well be the contacts/overheating (I sure know

how many times my laptop was so hot I could not hold it on my lap, or suffer actual burns),

however the problem occurred when the laptop took a minor bump (it took harder ones in the

past without problems).

I will buy a screwdriver to remove the board and follow your advice, but wanted to have your

opinion about this datacent. :)

Thanks again for the help to the community!


Hi Joe:

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

Joe, 6. August 2011, 19:49

Thank you a lot for this helpful. I tried one of repair methods and problem was solved, My

Seagate external hdd 1TB,it’s still under warranty but i can not find where’s i keep the document,

maybe on the bin? Mainly, i use for storage documents,software,movies, music and moves it, room

to room for watch movie in there.Last couple days, it started reading bad from time to time and

last night stopped respond completely (undetectable). I removed it from the case and took the

hdd out and put it on Desktop,it’s sometimes deteched, sometimes none, but it is not

Accessible.Then I search on Web and found this side, and did “CLEANING THE BOARD’S

CONTACT’S”,after put its back “WOW”,yes, it working as normal now. Don’t know how’s long, it

happens again? But at least,i can copy and transfer all my important documents to other HDD.

Once again, thanks a lot.


Ok everyone!

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


Hi David:

I am reorganizing the article so that people can understand it better, I will post the new version

tonight.

David, 5. August 2011, 14:27

Love the site, but I don’t know if one of two options will work for me. I’m not sure which I should

try:

My laptop took s light bump and froze, then I saw the dark blue screen saying an error was



detected, and shut off. When I turned it on I got the black screen with white text letting me

reboot, run diagnostics etc. Apparently the hard drive can’t be found, it advises me to reassess it

(or some other word that sounds like it:).

So I remembered I had cables (from an ext hard drive crash incident) bought to attach “naked”

hard drives (out of their shells) and I removed my hard drive (WD 5000 BEVT – 75ZATO) and

hooked it up with the cables to one of my pcs. As soon as I plug it in, the hard drive starts to

show signs of life, it vibrates, I hear one click or two when I attach it. No weird sounds other than

the vibrations. The PC takes a while to recognize something was attached, one of my two pcs

even recognizes the model, but none will show it in My Computer or even let me “safely remove

hardware”.

What should I do to access this and copy out my very important files?

Thank you in advance! :)

Jessica, 4. August 2011, 23:39

My hard drive died. I took it to the local computer shop and they worked on trying to recover my

data. They could not. They said the problem is that the disc is not spinning. Would this mean

none of these steps would work to help me get my info off the hard drive? Am I out of luck?

Bashir, 4. August 2011, 19:39

I love this post!! Thanks in advance :)

Nathaniel, 3. August 2011, 17:36

I dropped my 1TB external drive; it make the clicking sound of death. Windows wouldn’t recognize

it. Someone suggested running it in Linux, and it worked! Not without a bit of hassle, but I ran off

of a knoppix Live CD and copied from the external to my internal and saved 50 gigs of files so far.

Apparently, Linux will accept “sloppier” file systems than windows, and instead of failing it will

go to a backup and still work. Worth a shot to those of you with this problem.

ME, 3. August 2011, 3:13

thank u pablo


Hi Alex:

It is very hard to tell from here what is going on with your drive from here. You can try cleaning

the contact with an eraser, it won’t hurt just make sure you are properly grounded so that the

board does not get damaged if you static electricity. However first I would check the hard drive

to make sure it is in good condition (it does not have any bad sectors, etc. ) there are free

utilities on the web for this purpose; check your hard drive manufacturer’s website for this. If the

hard drive has mechanical failure or bad sectors, try that ddrescue (the Linux method) because

you do not know how much time your hard drive has left; it might be about to die. Sometimes

hard drives are affected by the heat they produce, so it help if you try to keep the hard drive as

cool as possible during the operation. You can do this by flipping the hard drive upside down, so

that gravity helps if the arm is close to the plates and putting a 125mm case fan on top to keep it

cool. Sometimes just doing this helps you recover all the data without the need of imaging. Hope

this helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.

http://www.howwedostuff.com/




Hi Me:

You are in the best situation possible, you are getting a message from Windows that means that

your hard drive is still accessible, it might not even be fine. All you need to do is take copy the

data to an external hard drive. Read this article:


Alex, 2. August 2011, 15:04

Hey Pablo,

Amazing site. Before I found it I was about to freak out (I had lost the same info two years ago on

an external drive, went through a costly recovery process, and now lost it all again on the new

one).

So here’s my situation. I know you’re more familiar with PCs than with Macs, but maybe you can

still help. I have a CMS 500 gb external hard drive, formatted for mac. It doesn’t make any weird

noises (unlike my old broken drive), doesn’t have the click of death — it just won’t mount…on

either of my macs (it used to). I ran disk utility (a mac feature), and clicked repair drive. It said

it was unable to repair the drive. So here’s my question. Should I open the casing and try cleaning

the contacts/replacing the board? If so, how do I power/connect my hard drive afterwards?

Or should I forego opening the casing and use that linux method on

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

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

ME, 2. August 2011, 0:09

windows canont find ”…….” Make sure you typed name correctly, and then try again. to search for

a file, click the start button, and then click search


Sounds like a corrupt partition. Use Recuva to get your files out. If Recuva does not get

everything, use Photorec. It will be wise to make a raw image of the hard drive using DDrescue

before attempting anything, just in case the hard drive is suffering from some kind of mechanical

failure or is developing bad sectors, since you never know when it might die.


Hi Me:

Well… what does the error say?


Hi Manuel:

You need to go into the BIOS of the laptop and see if the laptop recognizes the drive and displays

its correct size. IF it does then use DDrescue to get the data out.





Manuel, 1. August 2011, 10:25

Thank you a lot for this helpful, I hope, notice. I’ll try one of repair methods. My problem is quite

different. My hard disk is undetectable. I remove it from the laptop and the laptop recognises the

absence of hard disk. When I insert again into the laptop, no message appears. I think the Hard

disk is dead.

ME, 1. August 2011, 7:44

i plug in my external mass storage device my folders are shown and files are still in it but when i

try to access them an error message shows and i wont be able to access the folders

what can i do ?!

Pablo Garcia, 31. July 2011, 23:25

Hi ulujm:

If you connect the hard drive directly to a computer’s sata or ide cable (I am talking about a PC

here not a MAC) and the compute BIOS detect the hard drive and reports the correct size. Then

use this method:


ulujm, 31. July 2011, 13:54

hi ok here my problem. my external HA make a spinning roaming sound. It’s not detected by my

computer (PC) noanymore. I try to use a universal sata/usb adapter. no success. I try also to plug

it on a mac no success. I put in a freezer, no change. still the spining sound. what can I do. Best

buy charge you $100/ 10GB. I have around 300GB so I can’t afford.

How can I have my HD recognized?


Hi Leana:

I am not familiar with MACs, sorry.


Hi Magnus:

Install a data recovery software on your main drive, not on the affected drive. Try Recuva first

which will give you your files back with their original names. If you still feel that you did not get

all your files back, then try photorec.

Leana Rosetti, 31. July 2011, 11:00

Hello Pablo,

I have a Mac and was in the process of uploading data from Seagate time machine when I

disconnected it without stopping the upload and ejecting it. I know, totally stupid. Now when I

connect the time machine, it is not detected, or it comes up asking me if I’d like to upload




everything on the computer to what it seems to think is a “blank” time machine. Is there anything

I can do?

Thank you so much.

Magnus, 31. July 2011, 5:45

Hi,

I have a TOSHIBA laptop (Vista) that is now 3 years old. Two days ago I returned home from

vacation and turned on my computer. It froze, and eventually the System Restore tool scanned the

hard drive. The error was that the “System Volume is corrupted”. I spoke to their (TOSHIBA)

telephone support and they recommended installing a new hard drive and then using the old drive

as a secondary drive, plugged in using USB.

Here’s the problem: When I plug in the malfunctioning hard drive using USB, it does show up in

Device Manager. But not in My Computer. (Disk Manager was not interested in starting up at all)

Also, Windows Explorer freezes when I connect the hard drive. I attempted to use GetDataBack,

but although it found the malfunctioning drive, it froze too. I am hearing slight clicking noises

from the drive (so click of death I fear).

Is there anything I can do by myself, or is my only option now to use a data recovery company?

How big are my chances of successful recovery?

Thanks in advance

Al, 31. July 2011, 5:18

Hello Pablo,

My 2 TB Western Digital Elements External HD (WD seems to be the culprit in many cases here.) is

only about 4 months old, and shortly after I loaded it almost half full with photos, music and

videos, my pc will now only recognize it in My Computer, but will not let me access the data on

it. If I click on OPEN, nothing will happen and not a sound will come out. Then, after about a

minute, a “This drive needs to be formatted, Would you like to format it now?” message will pop

up. I have tried to access it on 4 different pc’s (Vista or XP, but not Win 7, and with different

cables) and get the same message every time. What’s unusual about this, is when I plug the hard

drive into the USB port of my Samsung hi-def tv, it will recognize it and allow me to see the

photos, listen to the music and watch most, (but not all), of the videos I have on it. That tells me

that at least the hard drive does work, but of course my tv will not let me add or remove any of

the data, or email or print any pictures, or burn any music or videos from it, or change anything

on it at all. A Western Digital recommended recovery affiliate, will recover the data on it, but for

a considerable fee. There is no critical, must-have, data on the drive that I don’t already have

burned to cd’s or dvd’s, but it’s a lot easier to access it all on a single drive. I would like to try

and backup the data to a new hard drive and just leave the old drive connected to the tv. Is

there any software you think might allow me to do this, or allow my pc to access the data? And is

there any other reliable external hd’s you would recommend that I can back it up to? Any help

would be appreciated!


Hi Som

The only thing that comes to mind is create another account on the computer with administrator

privileges, log in using that new account and go to c:\users and

settings\yourprevioususername\desktop (in windows XP) or c:\users\yourprevioususername\desktop

(in vista or 7) and organize/delete the files.

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



Dear sirs,

I had extracted the zip files from one folder and I extracted to my desk top then there are so

many files spread over my desk top and then I try to deleted them off from my desk top and then

I had restarted my computer but after my computer restarting those files still appears again even

though I try to delete them many times . so could you please tell me how to delete those files

permanently , so that it can not appear again ?


Hi Anton:

Try flipping the hard drive upside down, and put a big computer fan over it, (if you have one) to

keep it cool. Then Use DDrescue to extract the data. Read the following article:


Anton, 28. July 2011, 17:00

Hi all,

I have a problem with my 2 TB WDC HDD. Its only 6 month old but its obviously broken. Win 7

does not recognize it anymore (nowhere – not even GetDataBack or stuff). However it shows up in

BIOS and Linux (rescue CD).

TestDisk fails even in the quick test (it would stop at 90%). I started copying the files 1:1 with

Parition saving – and it works. But it detects bad sectors all the time – and slows down – its at

400 Errors at sector 500k out of 2 Billion sectors!

I would like to recover some data – but its not like I need every single byte. Is there a faster way

of skipping the bad sectors or avoiding them? At this speed it will take 200 days!!! to finish.

Thanks for any help

Anton


Hi Merian

It is difficult to get the data out of a hard drive that developed a clicking sound as a result of

being dropped. That being said… try the article I suggested in the previous comment (to Tara). it

is best if you take the hard drive out of the enclosure and connect it directly to a computer.


Hi Tara.

If your hard drive has a “clicking” sound you need to get your data our ASAP because you do not

know how much time is has left (if it has any at all). #1 you need to see if your hard drive is

detected by the BIOS and that it displays more or less its correct size. #2 If it is you need to

image it using Ubuntu Rescue Remix and ddrescue. Read this article:


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






Hi Ting:

I suggest you make an image of the broken hard drive before you loose everything.


Ting, 25. July 2011, 1:21

Okay, when I turn on my laptop,it shows the acer logo and then restart. It won’t even boot from

cd. So I tried another hard drive, it just said boot manager don’t find. I plug into an enclosure.

Waited and waited, then it show up but take ages to open. Before I could get into them, it

disappear. It make the cling sound a few times. Now when I plug in, it would be just a disk with

no data. But in the disk control thing from the control panel, it didn’t show up. Arrr what’s wrong

with it…. :(

Merian, 22. July 2011, 4:37

I don’t know what happened exactly to my external mobile harddrive (WD Scoprio Blue). Left it

connected to my laptop as i was copying some files. When I got back, the computer cannot detect

the mobile harddrive. Noticed that the position where I left my mobile harddrive was not the

same. So I asked my flatmate if it was moved or what. He said he didn’t do anything. But I

assume that it fell as it is now making some noises.

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

Have already done the following:

1. tried to connect to different computers — all failed.

2. swap the harddrive to another similar enclosure — the new disk in my old enclosure was

detected/read — however the old disk in the new enclosure still cannot be detected/read — so

meaning harddrive is the problem.

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

tara, 21. July 2011, 22:00

Hi all

So I have seen the same problem as mine put on here a couple of times but the answer is never

very clear

I have a western digital 1 tb it was working fine until it clicked a few times and then stopped, I

have put new cables on it change the Sata cable part on it neither worked so im up to thinking I

can take the internal part of my laptop out and attach the external via a cable though I’m not too

sure if this is right and can some one help please or send me in the right direction for a you tube

vid


Carlo:

Before you try changing the “MB of disk” like you said, have you tried connecting the hard drive

to another computer? have you tries a different hard drive on your computer to rule out a

motherboard controller issue?

carlo, 15. July 2011, 13:20

hi pablo , we have a seagate 500 gb 7200.12 sata2

works fine for 6 month ….




today blu screen and no hdd was detected by bios

now i unmount the drive and i hear that is stopped

i try to change mb of disk with another of same type

and drive seem started

but i can’t see it on the bios and i can’t see it via usb cable connected …

any suggestion?


Hi Dev:

Other data recovery companies can probably recover your data, as long as the drive is not too

scratched. But there is nothing you can do on your own.


Anand

I would if you give me more details. Is this an internal or external drive. If it it an external drive

you need to take it out of its enclosure and test it directly with the SATA or IDE cables of the

motherboard.


Hi Luke

If it is making a clicking sound and it is not being detected by the BIOS, I do not think its a PCB

problem. If you cant get the BIOS to recognize the hard drive, send it to a data recovery

company.


Hi Dan

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

Dan, 14. July 2011, 23:45

Thanks Pablo. It is not being detected at all. When you say there is nothing I can do on my own –

do you mean that it would be possible for an expert in this field to recover the data? I am happy

to pay someone if it is possible, Io idea what I am doing so I had never intended to attmept it

myself!

Thanks again.


Hi Dan

If the computer detect the drive and it is not showing up as a drive under “My computer” you can

probably try photorec to recover your files. If the computer is not detecting the drive at all, then

I doubt there is anything you can do on your own.




Hi Harrish

Is this an external or internal drive? If this is an internal drive, you hear clicking noises and it is

not detected by the BIOS, you probably do not have any options left. If the drive is external you

might have some options. Yo have to give me more details.


Den:

Whenever you format a drive the data is still there, but if you write something to the hard drive

it overwrites whatever you had in there. The hard drive writes data randomly so if you re-

installed windows you do not know what parts of the hard drive got overwritten. You might be

able to get some of it back, but whatever was overwritten by Windows is gone.

Den, 14. July 2011, 19:14

Hi, i had important data on a laptop running on windows XP which got formatted. After formation,

windows XP was installed on it again. How do i get the data i had on it before it was formatted

Dan, 13. July 2011, 21:25

Hi

I have a USB memory stick that is not working. It is not making any noise, I just cant locate it on

the system after I plug it in. I have tried it on many computers without luck. Is there any hope for

me to retrieve the data or is it lost forever?

Thanks for your help!

Luke, 12. July 2011, 6:10

I forgot to mention that my HDD has worked once since this problem occurred, which was at the

very start – but I have had no such luck since.

Luke, 12. July 2011, 5:59

Hello

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

this.

I have a Toshiba HDD that is making 2 types of clicking sounds, they eventually stop and it

appears to spin as normal, but whatever the case I cannot get it detected in the BIOS ( I have

tried external methods and they do not work either).

I understand from what I’ve read that this could be either a head crash or a PCB problem. I have

tried the freezer method and have had no luck with that.

I was about to buy a replacement PCB just to give it a try but am now reading that Toshiba PCB’s

have individual firmware on them and that I would need to replace certain chips as well to have

any chance on it working.

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




Anand, 11. July 2011, 23:44

I bought a 320 GB WD 2 years back and it was working fine till last month. But now when I

connect the WD to my laptop and navigate to My Computer the laptop is getting hanged. I had

tried various solutions provided in internet but nothing is working out.

Can you please help me on this?

Dev, 11. July 2011, 11:35

Hi Guys,

I really need your help here.

I have a Western Digital 500 GB Hard disk that i have made external. It stopped spinning for some

reason and i had taken it to one of Thailand’s Data Recovery center. They had told me that the

Hard Disk cant be recovered because there is a scratch on the disc plate and it wouldnt spin. They

changed the spinning head, and the drive began spinning for 2 seconds and stopped again. Is there

any chance you guys can help me out ?? The data is really important to me. Thank you.


Hi Jared.

Looks like you lost the partition. You can use TestDisk to try to fix the partition. However before

doing that I would try to recover the files using Photorec, just in case you do more damage than

good using TestDisk improperly. Read the following two articles:



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

unexpectedly.

JaredAvery, 10. July 2011, 11:21

Hi I have a Free Agent go Seagate 500gb and I’m using it for almost 2 years now. When I connect

it to my desktop computer it reads the hard disk but I can’t open it and keep telling me that it is

not formatted. is there any possible solution for me to recover the files inside it? thanks..


Sylvainbruley

Nothing further from the truth. YES, you can recover data out of a hard drive with a clicking

noise, I have done it myself plenty of times with DDrescue. Like everything else, it does not work

100% of the time but it does work in a big percentage of them.


Hi Wangchuk

The drive is most likely dying. If the transfer time is not unbearable, try to get as much as you

can out of the drive in one shot and don’t interrupt the copy process. Don’t do it in parts, you do

not know if your drive will start again next time.





sylvainbruley, 7. July 2011, 14:26

One more thing….for a clicking noise there is no need to try any software base solution. It will

simply not work. The SA area can’t be read this is it….You need to fix the drive first then use a

soft if required….

Getting the drive cold is a great thing. If this is clicking there is no point to it. But if your drive is

recognized with a “weak” ROM or PCB performance , then yes keep it as cool as possible and you

can get back things….I would recommend fan more than ice….

wangchuk, 7. July 2011, 4:45

hello..

recently my transcend hard drive of 320 GB showed format it when i connected to in my PC. then

i did format it but after this when ever i transfer any files in my hard drive, it is taking too long

to copy…..what is the problem with it….can any one suggest me to make my drive effective.


Hi Ferdinand

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

Ferdinand, 2. July 2011, 11:52

Hey!

I got an iomega portable hard drive USB 2.0 500GB.

it is about 4 months since i just got my hard drive, but today it stopped working. The hard drive

was running, and my computer (Vista) was reacting to it, but it could not recognize it. when i

click on my computer it does not show up next to all the hard drives that the computer use as it

used to. But i still can click on the safe remove option. i don’t really care too much about what is

stored on it, but is there a way to make it work again?

Some information:

Stopped working after 4 months

Lights are working and it is making a normal sound

i have tried it on 3 different computers

A friend of mine that works with computers said the cause was that it was unplugged while still

running

computer does detect it but cant communicate with it

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

else to suggest.

Mohan, 29. June 2011, 9:11

I am having a TOSHIBA external hard disk with 512GB Memory. Unknowingly,My friend sat on top of

the hard disk when the data was getting transferred. Since then it was not detected by computer.

I checked in data recovery centre.They told it could be a media problem and gave me 50% chance

that data can be recovered.at the same time they cautioned me that if they open the hard disk it

would become useless then.Please let me know if there is any chance to recover data from my

hard disk.

http://www.deadhardrive.com/



Pablo Garcia, 25. June 2011, 12:07

You must take the hard drive out of the plastic enclosure and use a new one, connect it as a slave

on a desktop computer or use an IDE/SATA to USB cable, that is the first step. Then you can rule

out an enclosure problem. If none of that works, and it turns out that the drive is the culprit.

Then use DDrescue to recover your files. Read this article:

How to recover data even when your hard drive is damaged

zah, 25. June 2011, 2:32

hey i have a problem with my external hard disk. Mine can be found on the device manager but

not in my computer.

tried many software out there to extract important data from it but i found no luck. they just

don’t find it or i’m not doing it right.

the instruction usually towards like the hdd is there but i can’t find it. Sometime i gave up and i

just want to re-format it but again, I can’t even find the external hard disk (im using WD) the

time just wasn’t right. i just re-formatted my computer and my backup files are in the broken

external hard disk.

please help me =(

mario, 24. June 2011, 23:38

Pablo Garcia is correct…..

I took out the crashed hard drive out of my computer and bought a new hard drive for the

computer for 50 bucks. I needed to get old pictures and videos from the crashed drive so I bought

an 350 IDE enclosure case for another 30 bucks and placed the crashed drive in the enclosure

which now became an external drive. I connected the external drive to the USB port of the

computer, hit local E drive and hit “search” to locate my old files. Voila! I found the old files in

again.


Hi Moiz… Its hard to say, but in order to recover your data your hard drive needs to be detected

by the BIOS period. If the hard drive it is not detected be the BIOS, no software will see it.

Moiz, 18. June 2011, 20:32

Recently i had a virus and every time i tried to format my Main partition it would show me the

blue screen so i took my friends hard drive made his primary and mine secondary. Right click on

my computer and format, and boom it worked. Restarted it and now its not being detected. Not

on my computer or the bios. Connected it with 3 different computers but nothing. What do people

think is wrong and how can i get my stuff back. I had 3 partitions C:/ D:/ and E:/.. I formatted C

and E and forgot to transfer my stuff from D.. :( And now i lost my stuff and would love to have

it back. Its about 12gb of stuff.. Any one with help can email me at [email protected]


Don’t listen to your friend, Use Photorec.


mailto:[email protected]




Nelle, 8. June 2011, 8:10

Hi can i still recover files and pictures from a corrupted hard drive? when i turn on the laptop is

says ERROR NTLDR is missing..a friend of mine says the best solution is to reformat it, but they

checked it and they said that the hard drive is not functioning, they said that the “circle” that

runs inside it is not running anymore..is there still hope?

TaLibanUFB, 6. June 2011, 11:50

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


Hi Sally

You need to give more details about what the drive is doing. Is it making any sounds? What is the

error you see on the screen when you start your computer? Does it get detected by the BIOS? Give

as many details as you can. Do not tell us how it happened or when it happened, that is not

important, just what it is doing now.

Sally Widener, 3. June 2011, 20:51

Hard Drive went out on Old Computer. I am a Genealogist and Would love to Find a Way to get

my Huge amount of pictures. Put into another hard Drive or Find some way to Recover them. on

Disk, This is a Very big Loss for me. Does Anyone have a Suggestion of Where i should take it.

Have had 3 people look at it so far. Say I cant do anything. I am Hopeing for a Miracle that will

not cost me alot of Money please I Hope someone can help me. It would mean so much

yazz, 2. June 2011, 7:30

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


Hi Rick:

I politely disagree with your opinion.

1) If you read the article, the article describes freezing the drive in a ziplock bag, to prevent

condensation from getting to the drive when you take it out.

2) When you have tried all other alternatives, photorec, ddrescue, etc, etc. and nothing has

worked and you do not have $1000 or more to spend in data recovery this is a good alternative

that works; not all the time but it does work. And, if it does not, you can still use a data recovery

company, in case you come up with the money later.


Hi yazz:



You need to take the hard drive out of its eclosure and connect it directly to a computer, and see

if the BIOS detects it and if it shows its correct capacity. If it does, you have a prety good chance

of getting your data back. Anything is possible, but I have never seem a hard drive with the USB

connection built in, all hard drives are the same. Have you ever tried opening the enclosure?

Rick, 1. June 2011, 9:50

Just thought I’d throw my two pence in. I wouldn’t recommend putting your hdd (hard disk drive)

in the freezer… ever. They are not air tight and thus when you cool them down in your freezer

frost/moister can “get in”. Then you warm them back up when you turn them on and you get

condensation.

Also some of the motors use fluid bearings… so when you freeze them they can crack..(liquid

expanding when you freeze it.) And again when they thaw they drip lubrication fluid all over your

the insides of your drive.

I can recommend though perhaps putting a heat sink on the drive to help keep it cooler as it

works. Oh and PCB swaps don’t really work any more on modern drives, the boards have unique

data on them individual to each drive, you have to reprogram your “donor” board with this info.

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

yazz, 31. May 2011, 21:14

hi i have a a portable WD BAAA5000ABK-00 500 gb hard drive, i dropped it a while ago , and when

i connect it to my laptop it spins for like 10 seconds and i hear a ticking sound,then it stops

spinnig, i tried to find another enclosure for it but i cant find one , the micro usb seems to be

biult in the hard disk itself ,it doesnt look like SATA o IDE, i dont know what to do , plz help me i

have very important data on it

Pablo Garcia, 31. May 2011, 20:32

Hi Joshua

You can buy a used had drive on Ebay, it has to be of the same model number, firmware and even

serial number have to be as close as possible sometimes. Then you swap the boards.

Joshua Forbes, 29. May 2011, 20:40

Hi i have a 1tb seagate drive and the usb connection has broken of board/ is there a way to fix

this with out sending in to seagate. Thanks in advance

Jenny, 29. May 2011, 11:28

Help!!!

I accidentally dropped my Seagate external hard drive and now it cannot be detected by my

laptop!!

I need to recover those data inside my external hard drive but i don’t know how.. help me

please…

jp, 25. May 2011, 17:10



what can i do if my friend acidentally removed my externals’ power supply while i was

transferring data to it, and now my external doesnt even power on when i connect it to my pc?(its

the hdd with USB AND external power supply). there’s work on their that i cant afford to lose.

please help!!!


Hi Tom:

CGSecurity is the page of the makers of PhotoRec and TestDisk. I have several tutorials on how to

use them on this site. These are some of them:

How to Recover Erased Data Using Free Software

How to Repair a Damaged Partition Table or MBR

Best Data Recovery Software – Top 10 List

Tom, 25. May 2011, 8:17

hi guys, haven’t read the article in full detail (sorry) but i recently lost all my files on my hard

drive (the computer wouldn’t read it) and i spent days looking for a program that would help

restore all the files, in the end, which worked for me, i found this website called CG Security, its

nothing huge, just a homemade looking webpage, but the program it offers works. the programs

nothing special looking, but its free, and it worked for me. thought id post this if anyone else is in

a similar situation like me, here’s the link to the programs.


Arnav:

Hard Drives do not have USB slots so I am assuming you are talking about an external USB hard

drive. Your problem is very simple to fix. You need to take the actual hard drive out of its

current enclosure, purchase a new one and install it. Enclosures are cheap, but you have to make

sure you purchase the correct one. (SATA or IDE). Take the hard drive to a computer store like,

Tiger Direct, CompUSA, or Fry’s and they can tell you what you need.

milanoi mell, 17. May 2011, 5:26

hi, my 1TB WD dropped in water accidentally i havent used it in 6 hours although i shook it all up

it wasnt much but am afraid to use it coz i dont know if i will find anything or if something needs

to be done…

arnav, 12. May 2011, 23:32

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

Thank you


Hi Kiara:

Read this article:

How to Retrieve Files From a Dead Computer







Kiara, 11. May 2011, 15:51

My laptop ran out of battery. When I tried to turn it on the screen is completely black and there

is a blinking horizontal line in the corner of the screen. Also, whenever I press a button the

computer beeps. WHAT DO I DO?! T_T


Daster:

See if this works for you:

How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged


Hi Josh, if your hard drive is in good mechanical condition, Photorec or Recover My files should

have been able to recover at least some of the data. Have you tried DDrescue? Read this article….

How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged

Josh, 9. May 2011, 7:31

Hi Guy’s, Dropped my 1TB WD Passport HDD the other day while transferring files. Continued to

work for a while but all user rights changed and wouldn’t unlock. un plugged and tried the next

day on a different PC which sees the drive displays it in the directory but doesn’t recognise it a

having any capacity or files it is simply a shell. Device manager still reads the drive properties

however no data.

Drive still spins freely. no ‘noise of death’, cleaned contacts but made no difference. Don’t mind

as much if the data is not able to be recovered but would be good if the drive could be brought

back to life. Tried Recover My Files and photrec, also tried to run the reformatting tool and disk

defrag but none work. Any other suggestions? A office IT guy thinks the segment or partitioning

may be completely corrupted or no longer recognised. I have no idea what this means

Daster, 8. May 2011, 6:49

Hey i have an Iomega external 2.0 Usb external hard rive, im not too computer savy but i get

around. Here’s my problem. A few days ago i noticed my external as having trouble booting up but

it started up when the cord was pushed to a specific side or angle so i tried a different cable but

nope same problem so i thought it was a faulty jack on the external, so i sticky taped the cable in

a way so it was working. A few days later however the hardrive stopped working at all, when

plugged in it says “This hardrive has malfunctioned and windows cannot recognise this drive etc…”

when i listen to it the hardrive when plugged in it starts booting up then abruptly there is a single

click, like a switch being thrown”

i have spent ages collecting the data, vidoes, music, photos etc. on the hardrive and i was

wondering what i should to to recover that data if possible.

Kikoba, 6. May 2011, 13:34





HI every one,

I also have my Toshiba external hard drive. I dropped it down accidentally when it was running i.e

it was connected to my laptop, on moving my laptop it dropped down from a table, from that

time it started running very slowly while requiring me to format one partition after another,

finally the whole disk cant work any more i.e the PC cant show it though the sound of detection is

heard. What can i do guys?


Tim:

Time for Photorec, read this article:

How to Recover Data Using Free Software


Adam

Time for Photorec, read this article:

How to Recover Data Using Free Software

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

Hi, I have had a WD 1tb external hard drive for some time now, and my laptop recently was

reformatted. Now. When I put the HD on my computer, it recognizes the name of it, as well as

the amount of data used on it, which is correct, but no files are displayed inside the folder at all.

The icon on the my computer screen does not display for the hard drive either. I’m deploying soon

to afghanistan and could really used the data on there. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Tim Rudziensky, 4. May 2011, 14:11

My hard drive appears to be blank – asks if I want to REFORMAT NOW?

Have been using a WD7500P032 drive for a few years. Turned it on

and got a big surprise, the drive seems to be empty. This certainly is not

the case (hopefully). One person I spoke to said the drive likely has all the information still on it

just the

directory is missing. What is the best procedure for recovering the data? I have reviewed a lot of

information but cannot find my specific situation. The program RECOVER MY FILES seems

appropriate using the Recover Drive function, any advise you can pass along would be greatly

appreciated!

Pablo Garcia, 28. April 2011, 14:38

Thomas:

I do not know what your specific case is. But, you need something to extract the data to. You can

use photorec for example and a USB flash drive.

Thomas Baklund, 28. April 2011, 4:46






How about if the drive is the only drive in the computer, the computer will not boot, and that is

the only computer in the house. How should you retrive data from it before replacing the disk?

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


It spinned and now it does not spin anymore? If the drive does not spin you are going to have to

send it to a data recovery specialist. IF if DOES spin when you unplug it and plug it back in, you

might have a chance, read mi article:

How to Recover Data Even When a Hard Drive is Damaged

Shan, 26. April 2011, 14:10

Hi,

I have dropped my Seagate free agent 1.5 external hard drive. It has rrrr sound, and flashing light.

I sent it to data recovery specialist, and he said it is not spining. After he changed the head, it

spinned for 3-4 minutes, and stop. What can I do with this situation?

Marian, 18. April 2011, 6:03

I recovered the data, however, when I attached the recovered drive to a Windows 7 computer

(USB) the only options available to me in disk management is new simple volume. Mark partition

as active is not an option. Thank you


HI Isabel

I do not know if you will be able to get your drive to be bootable again, but you can certainly

extract the data. I would try extracting the data first with Photorec, and then use TestDisk to fix

the drive. TestDisk can probably get it to be bootable again (so you do not have to reinstall

Windows). The reason why I am telling you to use photorec first is so you can have your data

before running testdisk, just in case you make a mistake with testdisk and make matters worse.

newbie, 14. April 2011, 3:48

Hi,

So I made the critical error of initializing my C drive when I was downloading some software (big

mistake, dont ask…). Not a few seconds after hitting the initialize button, my pc went black and

said ‘No Operating System Found’. The computer store said the driver was gone, at best they

could do a super scan and this may help them retreive the lost data. Is it retreivable or should I

accept that it is gone?

Thanks


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




directly to the SATA or IDE cables as a slave drive. And see if they get detected by the computer’s

BIOS, if they do then you have a good chance of getting your data back.

If the drives are identical you can probably swap boards and the one that does not make a sound

might have a bad board.

You should be able to recover the other one, you just have to do some reading :)

BLP, 12. April 2011, 16:33

Pablo,

This is a very informative website. I read all instructions and comments but before doing anything

else, I wanted to get your input on my situation.

A couple of months ago, I plugged one of my WD external hard drives (passport or something like

that) into the USB port (computer runs Vista). Never had any issues with any of my external hard

drives before. Although the little white light turned on as soon I plugged it, the drive did not get

detected. Shortly after that, I plugged another WD external drive (passport essential, I think) and

exactly the same thing happened. The white light was on but the drive was not detected. I then

plugged a third external hard drive (Toshiba) and it worked without any issues. I tried a fourth

hard drive (WD but with a fire-wire connection) and that worked just fine as well.

My initial reaction was that this was due to the known issue with WD drives and the USB cables.

Tried different USB cables, no luck. Called WD technical support, they sent me double USB cables

– that did not help either. Of course, they suggested that I send the drives to a data recovery

service and they would then send me new drives as part of the warranty. No thanks – no more

WDs.

I bought a docking station, removed the hard drives from the enclosure kits and connected the

drives. Same thing – the drives were not detected. Then I thought that the drives were affected

by some electric circuit issue, even though my computer is connected through a UPS station. I had

noticed some issue with the power at home the day before.

In any case, the issues with the two drives seem to be identical, except for the following minor

differences:

- one of the drives is detected as a “WD” with a red “X” under disk management, indicating that

the device is working properly. Yet, none of its properties can be seen. This same drive makes a

quiet “rrrrrr” noise for about 3-4 seconds, but this does not sound like the “clicking noise of

death” described above.

- the other drive does not make any noise, does not get detected at all by the computer.

Note that I have tried connecting the drives to different computers (desktops with Vista and

laptops with Windows 7). Any help would be appreciated. I am willing to make a donation to your

website if I can avoid sending the drives to data recovery services.

Thank you very much in advance!

BLP


You can find them on Ebay, just be sure of what you are buying, ask questions if the information is

not clear.

Eugene, 8. April 2011, 7:20

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

3volt line of the board…?

Paul langan, 2. April 2011, 16:04



I have a WD My Book external drive WD500032-00, I backed up everything there, all family photos,

videos, data files. Because that is what it is supposed to be a backup drive. I am freaking out as

it as stopped working. It fails the Western Digital diagnostic test ( – too many damaged sectors!!!).

When You click on drive to open it says it needs formatting. Help, Help. Should I buy Recover My

Files software? PLEASE HELP!

Diablo, 21. March 2011, 4:03

Hi Dennis. Try to ask tech people to load your drive as a slave one on other computer. Then use

Acronis or Partition Magic to watch your HDD

Ahmed, 19. March 2011, 13:41

Hi Pablo….

A very nice article. I have a seagate Momentus 5400.5 160GB HD, it was in a plastic external case.

It dropped from my laptop bag. And now its not working. When i connect it the light with the

casing turns on and there is beeping sound from the HD, but it is not detectable on my laptop.

Please suggest what is wrong or what item may be broken and replaceable. Much of my office

work and some private data is stored in the HD which I really need.

cole, 14. March 2011, 23:35

hi can u please email me, my hard drive makes noises wen i plug it in and makes that noise wen

something get connected but i cant find it in documents only in the control panel, it says there its

working properley, but its not lol. it has all my photos of my 2 lil baby girls i put them all on

there 2days before it stopped working :(

Dennis, 8. March 2011, 12:52

Hello Pablo,

Very informative site, well anyways since I found this website and im also having this problem

with my WD 1 terabyt inernal hd. It was running well the past few days nothing out of the

ordinary until when I turned on the computer and took really long just to boot up the windows.

Then I found out that the drive is not on the “my computer” Ive partition the drive in 2 so that I

would be more organize. The bios can detect the drive but the windows can’t. The tech people in

place tried to do it on another computer with a result of long booting time. You might not

happened to have a solution on this? Need to save all that date. ^_^

Pablo Garcia, 2. March 2011, 8:59

Hi Kari:

Its really hard to diagnose your problem if I do not have the drive with me. There is a lot of good

information on this and other sites, I suggest you start reading. One thing I suggest is that you

take the hard drive out of its current enclosure and connect it directly to a computer’s IDE or

SATA cable and see if the BIOS detects it, if it does not then you are going to have to send it to a

data recovery service. If does then purchase a new enclosure, or a USB to SATA adapter, they are

very inexpensive, that way you can rule out a problem with the enclosure. Now if this does not

work I suggest you use photorec to recover your files. Finally if that does not work, use DDrescue.

I suggest you get one of your friends that are experienced with computers to do all of this for

you.





Kari, 2. March 2011, 4:01

help! i have a seagate freeagent desk 1tb usb drive. last saturday i turned off my system, ignoring

the voice in the back of my head that was telling me something really bad would happen if i did

it. i awoke sunday morning and turned it back on and my freeagent’s lights wouldn’t come on,

computer management couldn’t detect it either in the device screen or in the disks screen, and in

terms of vehicle engines, it sounds like it is trying to start up but it just woke fully kick over.

there’s no beep, no squeal, and not really a click to speak of. yes, i am in a panic, i just had to

tear down my case to replace a bad pci adapter and in doing so, replaced the local drive for a

larger one & added a secondary internal drive. ALL of my data had been moved to the seagate

during this process and i had just barely began to restore and rebuild pathways. there was data

that had not been baked up online or elsewhere yet and i also had backups of my friends’s pc’s

on it, and bakups of all 3 of my household’s pc’s. for various reasons, starting with i live in a

solely tourist industry based area and winter is layoff season and i am literally FLAT broke, i

cannot afford a service. however, i do have 2 friends locally and one available thru the internet

and his wife that i can turn to for the extremely advanced stuff and the stuff that i am confident

or experienced in. one of them is even threatening to put a server in my house. please help! at

this point, i’d even accept someone lying to me to give me hope. yes, after 2 days of crying, i am

desperate and nearly dry eyed

andrew, 25. February 2011, 12:02

my hard drive, a nexstar3 1TB, fell about a foot and a half from an end table to the floor last

night. Now when I start it (which I have only done twice because I am nervous) it just makes an

intermittent buzzing sound (buuuuzz . . . buuuuzz . . . buuuzz . . . ). It is not detected by the

computer. I am a photographer, had recently moved all my five years of files over to that drive

and not yet backed it up. It was a very short fall, when I think back on it I have to imagine that

the actual disc must be fine. It was running at the time it fell. I’m worried. Any thoughts?

dave, 23. February 2011, 16:53

hello all, i just bought a 2 terabyte WD Elements external HD 2 days ago, i filled it up 3/5 full

with movies. it was working fine but today when i tried to hook it up it would not show up as a

drive in my computer. i have another external that shows up fine. when going into disc

managment i can see it in there as 2028 gb of unallocated space, i tried to create a new volume

but it said that the disc was not initialized. i then tried to initialize the disc but it said that the

media was write protected. i dont need to recover the data on it i just want to get it working

again. any suggestions?

josfin, 21. February 2011, 21:17

hi

please help my WD my passport essential fell down since then it is making the clung noise,

can any one please help me sort the problem and to recover the data or make it work.

Theresa, 15. February 2011, 21:37

Had a wd my book external hard drive – the computer no longer detects the hard drive – as i have

all my pictures and videos on this i really need to get my data off – i removed from case and

plugged directly into computer sata slot – now my computer does not boot up – get the screen to

boot into diagnostics etc and freezes on that screen – any suggestions

http://www.spiritstandsstill.squarespace.com/



Pablo Garcia, 6. February 2011, 19:01

There is not reason to panic. you are probably in one of the best situations for data recovery.

What broke is not part of the hard drive is part of the external case, just open the case, take

actual hard drive out, insert it into a new case and thats it, you are done. Those cases are really

cheap by the way, but you have to make sure you purchase the right one. Take the hard drive to

the computer store and they should be able to tell you what case to buy.

robert, 5. February 2011, 20:58

the usb port has broken off inside my hard drive??? WTF DO I DO?????? i haven’t used it in a new

days and i wanted to play some wow and i discovered that is has broken off…. it is now rattling

around the HDD. i am on the edge of breaking point everything on there was put on there from my

brother that came over to NZ from ausy just to do so pritty much H.E.L.P

Xero, 30. January 2011, 16:50

hey , i tried everything to get my external to work , but nothing worked! I have very important

files in there … please let me know if you have other solutions please let me know.

regards

Rose Parisi, 18. January 2011, 16:17

I turned on my Dell lnspiron 1525 laptop and it is asking me for a password for OWNER. There was

never a password set. It would have been under the name Mike. I tried the password for Mike but

it will not take it. I am locked out of the laptop. I tried several suggestions, even re-installing the

software and it keeps bringing me back to that screen. HELP!

sydnei, 15. January 2011, 9:47

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

I have an 80Gig Hitachi drive from a Mac (internal drive from about 2007). 5400rpm. The drive

“died” and gave me the white screen of death. When the IT geeks plugged it into another

macbook …the disk spun and the lights went on but the laptop couldnt see the drive.

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

Help. – please email me.

Ta.

Pablo Garcia, 14. January 2011, 14:11

Hi EdhelDil:

I followed your advise and updated the article and included a link to another of my articles which

talks about how to use Ddrescue: How to Recover Data Even When Hard Drive is Damaged

EdhelDil, 13. January 2011, 5:48




Hello,

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

However, I’d highly recommend that you change the ORDER they are written in on this page:

I think you should START with all the things to try to do if the drive is in any way accessible

BEFORE you put the section on how to try to freeze it if it’s not at all accessible…

Otherwise, I guess many people will just follow the webpage order and therefore will completely

damage their drive by the freeze method before they tried the other methods, even though their

disk was maybe accessible (and therefore could be saved with ddrescue or the like).

Hope this helps ^^

EdhelDil.

Chuck, 11. January 2011, 14:06

I just bought a 320 GB Western Digital ATA to replace my 120 drive in my older powerbook G4 Hi-

Res A1139. It was making kind of a grinding noise for a couple day and I got lax backing up.

Anyway it stopped, I did get an apple icon once trying to restart but then i shut it down and I can

not get it to restart, so I guess it is dead. I have now taken the drive out of the computer. But

before put in the new WD 320 ATA I would like to try to find a way to recoup my data. All my

iTunes are there as well as many other things. I spent quite a git on iTunes would like to recover,

I have read some articles on trying to get the data off that drive, can you help, thanks.

Pablo Garcia, 29. December 2010, 8:22

Hi Lisa, if you look at the bottom of the article there are links to more data recovery articles.

Click on the one named “How to recover data even when hard drive is damaged”

Lisa, 28. December 2010, 20:45

I tried doing as this tutorial suggests, I put my seagate freeagent storage device in the freezer for

2 hours and made sure it was sealed in a bag i took it out and made sure to carefully connect it

to my computer once again and this did not work. I also tried tapping the device which did not

help anymore. It sounds like it is not the “click of death” but rather an rrrrrrrrrrrrrr – rrrrrrrrrrrrrr

sound….and it just keeps going over and over again. Is there anything else I can do that may help

to get my data off of the device. My device is under warranty but I would like to get some of the

data off of the device before sending it in because I realize that they will not recover my data for

free.

Ruslan, 27. December 2010, 15:29

Help please… I have Western Digital External hard Drive 500 GB.It was nearly full, such there was

only 50 gb free space. Day by day it worked slow and one day It stopped working, not only I am

unable to access it but even I couldn’t see it in My Computer window. . I can feel the disk

rotating and the light is on on the HDD. It used to flicker when it was accessible now the light is

just on.. plus there got some sound inside.. after 10 seconds this sound stops…

Pls help me in getting disk accessible to me.. I am using Toshiba Laptop

Pls help me

Thanks in anticipation

Regards

Ruslan

http://flagsacrossamerica.net/



anirudh kuksal, 24. December 2010, 11:20

sir.. i have 2 hardisk one of 320 gb [segate ] and anotherof 500gb [segate 620 as] .In 320 gb i have

installed window xp only. and in another 500 gb hardisk i have stored my valuable data upto 450

gb..which is very precious.now the problem starts in 500 gb hardisk from somedays as …when i

start my pc it checks for error in 500gb like stage 1 of 2 ..2 of 2 .. and finally 3 of 3 ….. and

process ends with replacing files.it repeates for 2 -3 days when i start my pc. now my pc is not

detecting the 500gb hardisk …. it says on statup …secondary slave hardisk error … or primarmary

slave hardisk error… and the system ask for resume or f1 .when i disconnect the 500 gb hardisk my

pc starts normally.if by hit & trail i start my pc with both 320 & 500 gb hardisk…. in device

manager it shows both the hardisk but in disk managment it shows only 320 gb hardisk..

also when i connect my 500 gb hardisk it also gives crr crr sounds . plz help …. i dont’ want my

data lost …if it can be recoverable.

Mun, 16. December 2010, 6:45

I have a Western Digital External HDD. It’s a few years old and I’ve never had any problems with

it….. until when my sister by mistake inserted its cable into a DVD Port. After that it just stopped

showing up all together on my laptop, and desktop. When I plug it in to a computer, it makes

little sound as the header spins and then goes up again making click at the end and then starts

spinning again but will not appear under “my computer”. My laptop is running vista, and my

desktop is running W7. I have already read probably 50 forums on this yet nothing has seemed to

help. I have unplugged and replugged, changed cables, changed computers, disabled and re-

enabled under “disk manager”, unistalled drivers and let windows refind/install them, searched

for new drivers, etc. I have even attempted to go into disk manager and try to rename it, yet it

doesn’t give me the option to do so. It shows up as “Disk 1″ and the details under that show

“unknown” and “not initialized”… When I attempt to initialize it, the “virtual disk manager” just

displays an error message that says “incorrect function”. When I right click on the device under

disk management it only gives me the options of “initialize disk” (error message: Invalid Function

or Cyclic Redudancy Check), “offline” (same error message), other than that I can just access

“properties”, and “help”. I have literally tried everything I can.

I don’t want to lose my data. Can you tell me how I can recover my data in this particular case.

The serial number of my ext. HDD is : WD800U017-001

Ashish, 15. December 2010, 1:42

Hi Pablo,

I have 500 gb Seagate external Hard Disk. I have purchased it 8 months back. It has very cruicial

data on it.

When i connect to my laptop, it does not detect and the light continuing blinking on the hard

disk. when I connected to the PC windows XP it detects and ask for the drivers. I have given the

path of the drivers but it does not work. any of the systems are not able to detect the Hard disk.

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

my data from hard disk.

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

my hard disk. please help

Regards,

Ashish

sola, 13. December 2010, 8:24

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



can i do.

SeanPaul, 13. December 2010, 7:26

HI Pablo , help needed.

i have a 500gb iomega external harddrive. i’ve had it only about a year/ year and a half.

about 2 days ago, it dropped about a metre onto the floor. when i plug it in, the blue light still

comes on and stays on, however the external hardrive is not recoqnised on my computer and i

tried on data management etc and it also doesn’t show up. i believe the usb itself that plugs into

the side of my laptop is slightly broken as it does not feel secure in the port.

Any idea if its broken, or any ways i can still recover the files in the external drive ;)

thank you!

sahil, 23. November 2010, 6:40

hii i have a seagate 500gb still in warrenty till 1h back working fine but now i plug it in the laptop

makes a sound that isomethingis plugged in but nothing in my computer and the light blinks

continously it has data which is priceless no unusual sound proper vibration can my data be

recovered or should give to the company will getting it repaired erase my data please answer

L Lim, 18. November 2010, 23:21

Hi Pablo,

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

I wondered if you could point me in the right direction, as my problem is just slightly different

from the scenarios that you have painted.

I dropped my 500GB Seagate portable external hard drive, while moving my laptop but luckily, it

was still attached to my laptop via its USB cable. However, the jolt from its fall may be the

reason for why my external HD is no longer working properly.

The symptoms are as follows:

1) After the jolt, there may have been a whirring noise – I can’t remember. However, I do

remember the external HD beeping every second, for a minute or so.

2) The green light on my external HD started flashing about once every 3 seconds (when it is

operating normally, the green light fades in and out instead of flashing abruptly). This carried on

until I switched off my laptop, below.

3) A file that I had opened, from my external HD, froze.

4) After I had closed the file, it would not open again.

5) I attempted to safely disconnect my HD but my laptop informed me that my HD was still in use.

6) My HD was not reacting, so I tried to shut down my laptop.

7) My laptop was taking unusually long to shut down, so I switched it off without waiting for it to

power down.

8) I disconnected the laptop from its power source and disconnected my HD from my laptop.

9) After a suitable wait, I reconnected the laptop and connected my HD after my computer booted

up.

10) My HD started beeping in the same way described above, followed by the flashing light.

11) An icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen informed me that my HD was being

installed.

12) After a spell, my external hard drive’s light started fading in and out, normally.

13) My external HD did not show up in My Computer but did appear in Device Manager, where it

was stated as working normally, in General Properties.

14) In Disk Management, my exetrnal HD did not appear in the upper window panel. It appeared in

the lower window panel as “Disk 1″, with a red arrow pointing downwards and a black bar above

its description of “unallocated” (if I recall correctly).



15) Under its properties, in the stated x amount of storage within my external HD, the same

amount was stated as available, although I have substantial amounts of data stored within the HD.

I should be grateful if you could kindly advise me as to: a) what the problem appears to be, here

and 2) whether I should send my HD to Seagate’s recovery specialists (i365). Additionally, would

you happen to know of other reliable recovery specialists in the U.K.?

Many thanks for your time.

Jack, 18. November 2010, 15:31

I have a 1TB SATA drive on my 6 month old gateway desktop which has apparently failed recently.

The first symptom was the system freezing at the gateway logo screen on startup. Nothing worked

(no safe mode, setup screen, etc.) I had the HDD tested and the tech couldn’t get to any of the

data. the drive would start to spin up and then abruptly wind down and stop. No sounds, grinding

or otherwise. My guess is that the drive has finally failed. The problem is that I really need to

access data on that drive (mostly family photos, videos, etc.). Is it worth trying to freeze

technique on this one??

Ren, 12. November 2010, 1:03

Hey there!

i have a Toshiba external hard disk(320 gb), when i plug it in through USB my laptop can detect

that there is a generic external hard disk but it wont show up in My Computer and there is a noise

whenever i plug it in then suddenly the noise stops and when i check if the disk is spinning i found

out its not spinning . I need to access it, because of very important file that is in there. Can you

tell me what to do?

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

Benjamin, 9. November 2010, 23:26

hello there,

I desperately need help here, as I need my files to back in order for me to work on my tasks tat is

due 2 days time.

I have this D: Drive in my com, which no idea how the manufacturer combines all 3 HDD and show

it as 1 to me.

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

conencted”

Any solutions ?

Looking fwd for ur answer. Thanks!

francine, 30. October 2010, 16:55

thank you very much for the link to ‘recover my files- getdata’. i had dropped my hard drive, and

after bringing it out into the frosty weather, it stopped running smoothly (and couldn’t be

recognized by my computer). after running the getdata program, not only did it find all my files,

but has guided my harddrive to run smoothly again! : ) it has been a HUGE relief to have my files

back+ copied to a safe place

thanks!




Sam, 28. October 2010, 21:56

Hi,

i have a 3.5″ IDE Seagate Quantum Fireball where the Pin is broken.. So its not been detected. I

have plenty of priceless files. Would be great if you recommend me any solutions without going to

the Data recovery service.

LisaB, 27. October 2010, 17:21

Please help….

I am a consultant, and have been using a “NEW” WD passport external hard drive to back up my

data…and my 2 co-workers. The data on here can’t be replaced, and my old laptop has been

returned to the vendor. I haven’t had a chance to copy the data off the backup drive.

Today I plugged it in, and it made a quiet wincing sound 3-4 times then it’s just quiet…the light

it on, but I can’t hear it spinning and it’s not being reccognized on My Computer. My lapptop

makes the sound to tell he it knows something is attached, but nothing shows up. I tried using it

on my husbands PC and it does the same thing.

Does anyone know where to go to have the data recovered in the Toronto area…

Thanks, LisaB

Sam, 18. October 2010, 6:15

Hi, my 500 gb external HD (Transcend) gets detected by windows but its not showing up in

windows explorer.

I tried for changing letter path but the option doesn’t appear.

In the disk management when i go to that drive and do right click i get option of initializing and

when I click it .. It says incorrect function.

Please help me.. Thank you!!

Daniel, 16. October 2010, 8:29

I just conected my External Seagate Barracuda 1.5 Tb in the plug and usb: and i heard a strange

sound… A metallic and long cliiiiiinc cllliiiiinc cliiiiiinc… Then, i realized that the disks were not

spinning at all (dead!).

I tried to connect the drive at the sata port of the computer, but nothing changed, only that

metallic sound and disks not spinning at all… I suppose this is a mechanichal failure. Can you

please confirm me this? Is there a way to access to the data? Thanks.

SRK, 11. October 2010, 10:19

Hi,

I accidentally dropped my Seagate go flex1TB Portable HDD, and now it is not detecting by my

laptop (Vista OS) , the light still turns on and the HD sound seems normal. its a brand new and

2months old , though i have 500GB data , i have back up for that ..i wanted to knowwhether it

can still work as usual after any repair ?

Thanks!

SRK

xenia, 9. October 2010, 11:51



hello, how are you?

I have this external hard drive, a Freeagent Seagate, it was working fine for ~4 years, I had lots of

things stored in it. However, the little “teeth” inside the USB port have bent for some reason,

although I have been handling it with lots of care, and now the drive won’t work. How can I get it

working or get the data off it? is it possible to put a new USB port in? Many many thanks

Kali Placencia, 7. October 2010, 13:17

Okay so I am not sure if you can help me but I have a 1.5TB that was pretty much full. I saved

photos, school papers, and thousands of dollars of digital scrap kits. Pretty much years of

collecting stuff. One day the USB port broke off in it. So my buddy who runs his own computer

repair company ordered me a new external case and got it working. Well the problem is, when he

plugged it in, everything was gone. He ran a 24 hour data recovery program but nothing came

back. NOTHING! I lost everything. I am ready to have a break down- literally. Is there anything

else I can do or is it all gone? Please help!!!

Thanks!!

[email protected]

Craig, 3. October 2010, 1:10

I have a 40gig external hard drive that I dropped on the hard tiled floor, ever since my hard drive

is not detected by windows at all, the lights usually flashed green now it’s flashing green then red

constantly when plugged in via USB, I can hear the drive making the noise it normally makes yet

windows does not detect it. Is there any hope of me recovering the data. Please help???

Anish Shenoy, 30. September 2010, 6:34

Help.. my 1.5 year old Iomega 500 GB external HD seized for no reason.. One day I used it for just

30 mins then put it off and an hour later when I put it on Windows didn’t detect it.. The blue

indicator lights up constantly, its casing gets warm normally, disks spin normally without any

clicking sound.. The vibrations are normal, only thing is that the indicator LED glows

constantly..otherwise it would blink whenever data is being accessed.. So it appears that the PC

doesn’t recognize it.. I changed USB cable, switched ports but no luck.. I tried everything I could

do.. it is not shown in My Computer or Device manager.. I tried the HDD on a different computer

and also on Ubuntu.. Condition is the same.. The problem appears to be case 3…right..? Could

changing it from SATA to internal IDE using an adapter solve the problem.?? Does changing its

existing SATA to USB adapter solve the problem..? Does Iomega provide spare adapters..?

Susan, 27. September 2010, 18:17

I have an eGo portable drive which I use to back up my photos and files. I have only used it twice

since purchasing the device earlier this year. Last week, I tried to back up my files but my

computer couldn’t establish connection with the portable device. I had to wiggle the cable to a

certain position to get the device working. I contacted Iomega about the problem and was told to

try a similar cable and see what happens. I tried and it not only didn’t work, but now the port on

the device is broken. I don’t want to spend a lot of money in the recovery if possible. If there’s

an alternative, I would like to try that first.

Hope you can help.

Jane, 27. September 2010, 16:24




Hi Pablo

I lent my 500Gb external Meccer Bravo to a friend (who has a degree in computer science!) and

he plugged it in using a cord with the wrong power supply. That drive has all the project data on

for one of my majors and was the only back up because my computer’s internal had to be

reformatted at the same time after it stopped working. :(

really really really need to get that hard drive working again soon. Any advice?

please please please help. :(

thanks so much

natalie, 21. September 2010, 22:22

hi there, i have a maxtor external hardrive that has stopped working….the comp doesnt pick it up

and i occasionally get a pop up error msg telling me the drive had malfunctioned. i have all of my

son’s baby photos on there :( and stupid naive me thought they would be save on the external as

it was always treated well ( i thought)

i have had the drive sitting here for about 12 months now im scared if i try to fix it i’ll lose

everything forever :( but im now at my wits end and need to try to get my baby photos back!

any advice? please email me back

[email protected]

Dario, 20. September 2010, 16:43

Hi Pablo,

I have a WD3200BEV (surprise!) that underwent a very short fall while I was watching a video off

of it. The video got choppy, so I stupidly ejected the drive.

If I plug in the device, the I can hear/feel the disk spinning, the led goes on but then starts

blinking. No noise whatsoever, but I get the message: the disk you inserted was not readable by

this computer

When I try to verify the disk using disk utility I get:

invalid record count

catalog file entry not found for extent

the volume needs to be repaired

error: the underlying task reported failure on exit.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Dario

Noorul, 19. September 2010, 0:58

i have an external hard drive, and it has 4 partition one the partitions is not opening, it has lot of

file so i want open it pls help me

Ste Morris, 7. September 2010, 6:56

My pc will get to my desktop, hang for about a min, then bsod appears, and restarts. This also

does this on safe mode. When i put my restore disc in, it will not detect the hard drive. Any

answers will be supurb

Vipul Sanghani, 4. September 2010, 5:37

Hi Pablo

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


http://yahoo/



and it’s stopped working

When it is plugged to the computer (but not clicking sounds) for a few seconds, the computer

detects Lights on Hard Drive but the drive is not showing in My computer. I have My wedding

clipping and so many Photographs on my Hard Drive

Please help me to recover my files from hard drive

please

thanks

Vipul Sanghani

[email protected]

John Andrews, 25. August 2010, 4:57

Please help me. My 1TB hard drive fell off of my table when i was watching a movie with my

little sister. It seems that the problem is the “Clunk cluck” noise of death. I am well in high

school so i doubt that i have enough money for a specilist to help me if their is anything i can try

or anything i can do to fix it myself please tell me. Also how much would it cost to get 700GB

worth of files recovered. Yep 700GB they are all my files. I put files on their to free up space and

don’t lecture me about backing up becasue that was my only backups. So please if anyone could

help me i would highly appreciate it. Oh and do the recovery specialest check the files i have

some files that are not 100% legal on it.

Thanxs in advance

Sakthi Ananth, 22. August 2010, 23:25

I accidentally put my hard disk on my room surface , since that my HD didn’t work .

i want my HD data .

please help me.

lazai, 18. August 2010, 2:27

I accidentally plugged my pc cable on my hard drive..

since then my pc does not recognise it…

is this something easily remedied???

tha..

Vandidaz, 10. August 2010, 1:28

My hardly used 250GB Seagate external HDD started to make whining noises. I had it opened and

it appears the disc is not turning. I only got 60GB data on it (including my wedding clips). I would

really love to get my data back. Does any of the above trick work? Is there a way to recover my

data? Needless to say I will never buy any crap made in China again!! Many thanks.

gurpreet, 9. August 2010, 3:34

hi …

my WD hdd 500gb detected by the pc and light also glow

but the hd is not workin when it meant to run

i ve use recover my files software for recovering my but all went in vain

plz suggs me sm tips asap

so i m able to my run hd again


http://non/



thanks in adv

waitin for ur reply

Abbey Joe, 3. August 2010, 7:05

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

Aaron Walker, 30. July 2010, 5:26

I really ned help to recover a hard drive that wasw an external hard drive. my usb port broke off

completely and now i cannot get access to the information i need for court and if i lose my kids i

will have nothing left to live for. so please help me fix my problem cause i know it can be done

but i just don know how to do it \\

Thanks Aaron Walker

michael, 23. July 2010, 10:54

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

Kyle Turner, 20. July 2010, 19:43

Hi Pablo,

I have a WD Passport portable hard drive and I’ve had it for about three years. It was a 320 GB

model, and it had been working fine until the last month. The computer refuses to read it. I took

it to a Geek Squad member today and they said that the disk does not spin. Is there anyway I can

retrieve the data from this hard drive. I have all my music on it, and it would be about $500 or so

down the drain. Please help! Thanks! :D

- Kyle Turner

Shaitian, 11. July 2010, 2:57

I had an interesting problem with my hard drive recently, and i was seeking answers but couldn’t

find them until i got here and saw your number 4 option and tried it but it didn’t work; but after

doing that i decided to remove the foam that was put between the hard drive and the hard drive

chip and clean the chip off and that fixed the problem instantly. The foam itself had melted onto

half the board was was really bad on some of the chips. Someone more tech savvy can probably

explain why the foam was hindering the hard drive but i cannot. Hopes this helps someone else.

Kelly Dz, 9. July 2010, 15:56

This tutorial is wonderful but I am hoping someone can help me with a problem with my external

hard drive. When I hook it up to the USB, the computer detects that it is there (it shows up on

the task bar with the icon to Safely Remove Hardware) but when I go to My Computer it doesn’t

show up. I tried to follow another site directions to fix the problem and went to Manage under My

Computer and then Disk Management to change the drive it goes to. It says Disk 1 — Unknown —

Not Initialized and there is a little red arrow pointing down on the icon of the drive. But when I

click on Disk 1 Properties it says Western Digital and says it is working properly. When I try to

initialize the disk it lets me choose partition style (MBR or GPT). When I click MBR and initialize it

http://freerecoversoftware/

http://[email protected]/



says Incorrect Function. So I am at a complete loss. I was going to try cleaning the connectors as

suggested but I have no idea how to get it out of the external hard drive casing. ANY help or

suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Andy, 5. July 2010, 17:28

hiya hope i can be helped my sata hard drive started making a clicking noise and when it went to

boot up i got a black screen saying operating system not found can any 1 help me plz as i have

precious data i need to get off it

edu, 5. July 2010, 3:21

My hard drive is making the click of death. How long can i keep it before sending it to the

specialist because i do not have the kind of money they are demanding. I hope it can stay for as

long as possible. Their charge is more than what i earn in a month, but i have hope of being rich

one day.lol. really i do.

Suril, 2. July 2010, 14:40

I have a Western Digital My pasport Hard drive and it makes the sound of death,,

i tried the refrigerator plan and it didnt work..do i have to send it to recovery center or is there

another way around?Thanks

kennedy, 1. July 2010, 11:52

I am lucky i come a cross your home page interesting

Yura, 30. June 2010, 10:48

Hi, I dropped my WD passport external hard drive by accident. The blue light of the hard drive is

on, it produces interruputed buzzing voiced sounds when it is plugged to the computer (but not

clicking sounds) for a few seconds, the computer detects it but the drive is not showing in My

computer. It says: the usb mass storage device has malfunctioned. Can I recover my photos in any

way? Many thanks

James, 15. June 2010, 7:14

Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955

Windows error recovery

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be there cause

If windows files have been damaged or configured incorrectly, startup repair can help diagnose

and fix the problem. if power was interrupted during startup, choose windows start normally.

Launch Startup repair(recommended)

Start windows normally

Then when I press enter on ”start windows normally”, it shows as loading… but never loads

completely to take me to the SIGN IN screen to put my password.

http://www.zumakosh.co.ke/



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

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

Then it says,

This error can be cause by unplugging a removeable storage device such as an external usb drive

while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is

failing. Make sure any removeable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer.

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

Status: 0xc00000e9

Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred.

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

the results are the same.

Is is possible for me to recover valuable data?(All saved on a Notepad)

Is there a solution? I really can’t afford to lose it.

Please help.

Thank You


Michael

Follow these steps:

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

detected by Windows

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

detected by the BIOS of the computer.

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

recovery service.

Michael Nieckoski, 9. June 2010, 13:56

OK got one for you… I haven’t been able to do much with this.

Hitachi Deskstar 500GB T7K500. I was using it in an external USB enclosure and it fell off the CPU

and banged on the floor (less than 3 feet).

It now makes musical tones when powered up, a repeating set of humming-like tones, very

musical for about 30 seconds then goes quiet. Sometimes, the CPU will give the sound that it

knows a device has been plugged in. The drive does NOT spin up.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

–mike


Hi Devkrishna

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

my Files”

devkrishna, 6. June 2010, 10:37




Hi dear

i have WD external portable 120 gb hard drive MDL NO WD1200XMSB-00 S/N WXEY07Q89223 R/N

A4B, This hardrive i using from 1.5 years back. but now it will dedect by computer i mean drive

will apper on computer and also opne but their will not any may document and file.i try to

recovery but i unable. it has approx 29 gb document very importent so can you please please

advise to me how to get this file and documents.

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

Hi.

Is there any chance of accessing an external hard drive after it says it has malfunctioned.. its

saying it is now an unknown device.. as it manage to install but nothing is popping up for the

device?

I can’t access anything.. And Its about 6 months of photography work

Please help

Lucy

Usman, 1. June 2010, 3:45

I have a problem with my hard disk. My hard disk is WD300. It is affected with bad sector and i

have very important data in it. I try to attach with another hard drive. But its speed is very very

slow. And when i open my computer it take nearly 15 mints. The hard is detected and i can see it

clearly. But not of his partition is opening while i have tried many time and wait nearly 1 hour of

it. Plz tell me how i can get data from it the data is very important for me. Thanks.

For give me guidance My email address is [email protected], [email protected]

katherine medlin, 30. May 2010, 11:19

Dude you saved years of games pics music and tons of movies for me thanks a lot i really mean it.I

put it in freezer like u said had to a few times but oh my gosh way worth it.It really does work

thanks kat

Tyna, 24. May 2010, 20:07

Hi Pablo,

I have a 320gb WD external drive that I’ve been using for a little over a year now and one day it

does not get detect by Windows XP. I had try to use Linux to boot it, but still unable to get

detection.

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

data on the hdd.

Jeff, 24. May 2010, 18:34

Hi Pablo, I have a problem with my external hard drive, basically is making that clicking noise. I

already tried to put it on the freezer, but it won’t work. My external hard drive is 500GB and I

have around 250 GB of files on my drive. I was wondering if you would be able to help me fix my

drive if i mail it to you, and if you could tell me your charge as well. Thank You

http://none/





Nick, 21. May 2010, 11:18

Hi there,

I got a problem with my seagate 500GB seaagent Desk. I dropped my external hard disk on the

carpet from the computer tower and also when the computer connects with the harddisk, and

then the computer automatically restarts too. After that, my hd does not work anymore. The

computer does not detect the hardisk, and also the harddisk does not turn on the light when I

connect with the power. When I put the hd close to my ear, I can hear the hd runs, but it sticks.

I have some important data in the hard disk!!!So please give me a solution for me to find out how

to retrieve the data or make the harddisk work again. THANKS

Kristen, 16. May 2010, 8:18

Hi,

Are you still running your data recovery service?

This is my situation…

I have treated my WD external drive like gold, then one day I was transporting it to a different

room and it fell out of my hands and hit the wood floor.

I didn’t think much of it, until I went to use it a couple days later and the drive clicked ~4 times

and went undetected.

Would you be able to help?!

Thank you,

~Kristen

Steven Bayne, 15. May 2010, 5:03

Hi!

Incident:

A couple of days ago, I ejected my WD 1 TB external from my laptop. First, I unplugged it from

the back of the laptop. I then waited till the light turned off on the external. From there, I

unplugged the power from the external, followed by the USB cable. Here is where things went

awry. After unplugging the cables from the back of the external, I started to stand up(I was

kneeling because my laptop was on a flat wooden chair) and my hand hit the bottom of the chair.

I was not expecting to hit the chair so in surprise I dropped the external.

Aftermath:

I moved everything to a table and tried plugging up my external again to my laptop. It detected a

new device, said it was installed and should work properly. That, of course, was strange to me. I

look under My Computer to see the drive and nothing. I eject the device, try again. Nothing. I can

hear it make the same spinning sounds like it used to when you first plug it in, but nothing.

Attempt to fix:

My problem sounds like number 4 exactly, so I tried the eraser. It did clean off the contacts quite

well like you said in this article, but it still didn’t help. What to do now?

Salvador, 14. May 2010, 12:09

Hi Pablo

I’ve got a Western Digital Passport

and it’s stopped working like it should

I own a mac

I plug it in and it appears in the finder menu (list)

but when I click on it – it does not open – it just disappears (Finder closes down)

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



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

please

thanks

Salvador

Dan, 11. May 2010, 20:19

Thanks for this Pablo. Was slighly suspicious at first this article was a promotional write-up

Recover My File, but just using the program now to drag all my photos off an external drive that

would just prompt me to format it whenever it was connected. Looks like I might of lost a few of

the long filenames, but apart from that, a very happy camper here :)

Mitchplaza888, 9. May 2010, 12:14

In my case i have a 350Gb WD drive and when i start it i hear it spin for a total of 20 seconds

while making clunking noises then i just stops. It even had enough time to install the drivers on

my computer but has an error in my disk management.My question is, if I should freeze the drive

and is there any way that i would be able to fall back on the option of sending it out to be

recovered after freezing.

Warren C, 6. May 2010, 22:07

Pablo Please Help!

I used the wrong plug, my laptop plug, to power my external 500gb hard drive. The hard drive did

not turn on and I realized i was using a higher voltage plug. I found another external enclosure

and the hard drive would not turn on either, nor would the enclosure. I went to best buy and

their computer wouldnt turn in with the hard drive installed. From what system recovery

companies have said, it might just be an electrical error on the main board.

I really need to know: should I simply replace the board with a new one? and will that likely solve

an issue of this nature? I know computer companies jack up prices to do things I do for my friends

for free – but I have never delt with this yet I’ve built my own computer. Please let me know how

I might fix this on my own.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Warren

abbas esmail, 6. May 2010, 14:52

Dear pablo,

icame across your site and desperatly in need of yor help

i have 1tb Wd extr harddrive 800gb data in it .it stopped working suddenly. the drive is not

detectable even in BIOS.i have my documents and photos movies music ect .i sent the drive in two

diffrent datarecovery centre here in dubai but both returned back saying that the drive is dead

and head is gone .i dont know what they mean. now i want to send it to u ,if possible can u give

me ur email id and contacts

my email is [email protected]

thanks abbas esmail

Armando, 6. May 2010, 14:06

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




directly into a desktop with same results as when connected through the USB bridge. It spins on

and communicates its model to the computer (reading WD500GB) (the light blinks and seems to

attempt to mount in USB connection) but will not mount. It had a slight bump that morning but

not sure if that was the reason why it died. It seems like it is not hardware, but not sure. Any

recommendations?

thank you in advance…

Stefanakos, 2. May 2010, 16:04

Pablo S.O.S !!! My hard drive fell on the floor from one meter height and now it does that “cling”

noise,but also the light indicator of power doesnt get red,it looks dead,although i can hear the

fan cooling the HD.From the solutions u kindly suggest here in this article,what would u suggest

me to do? If i get the HD in the fridge, is it for sure that the HD is going to “die” after a sort

period of time,after i get it out of the fridge? Or if i try that, i will be able to get it to a

technician to see what he can do?

Jan, 30. April 2010, 19:55

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

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

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

docked

This drive is externally docked. Was using as a shared drive on a simple 2 person WinXP network.

Rebooting the PC could scramble some files occasionnally. File handles not released when software

shut down on the Network PC before reboot. Not serious and always fixed with ChkDsk f/r

Yesterday, same thing and running ChkDsk f/r took longer and when finished, there is the Drive

letter I: but without the label “1TB-2″

windows sees the I; drive with difficulty. Takes 3 to 4 minutes. But, File Explorer cannot open the

drive.

Disks Utilities

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

Disk Symptoms

running normally. Temparture OK. “After” the drive settles down after WinXP fights to access the

disk, there is a Single click every 20 seconds and the access light at same time. Normal in my

experience

This appears to be an external circuit board issue. I will try the pencil eraser. If that does’t work I

will buy a identical replacement drive today, xchange the boards and try that

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

Where do I send the drive to?

Best Regards,

Jan

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

Diane, 29. April 2010, 14:57

I work for a school system and should be working off the H drive which should be backed up each

day. To make a long story short on Tuesday my computer started making a running sound and then

started clicking as if it was not connected and within 3 minutes my computer screen went black

and came up with a message. I sent it to a local store called Save Your Data and they have just

called me to say they could not see anything on my hard drive. They are contacting a Data

Recovering service which I know will cost a fortune but my boss said she will pay it. They are



contacting a company called CBL Data Recovery right now and should call me back today. I have

not tried the freezer method or other methods you described in your article but I don’t know what

I will do without my information. What can be done in the future so this doesn’t happen again?

abi, 26. April 2010, 7:52

Hello

My Freecome 160gb extrernal hard drive has stopped working. I normally have it on permanantly

and it has a power supply. I have tried it in another socket but still no joy. It has been making a

few whirring noises when I access it lately but I didn’t give it much thought. Could it have

overheated? What can I do with it? It has 36gb of photos on! Can someone recover the data and

how much might they charge roughly?

Thanks

Abi

Mahesh, 17. April 2010, 19:47

My Laptop with SATA Hard driver does not boot. I took out the SATA Harddisk and connected to

another laptop Via SATA to USB connector, another laptop can detect extenal Harddisk driver and

however I cant access the same. It give me error saying “C:\>CD F:\

The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.”

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

Wayne Kelly, 15. April 2010, 14:02

Hello Pablo.

I am hoping you can help me.

I have a SimpleTech 320 MD External HD (Model U35/320) that is not being detected by my

computer. This HD has over eight years of the only source of family photos and I am hoping there

is a way to access/save these photos. It was working one night and simply not working the next

morning. I purchased three (3) SimpleTech 320 HD’s in December 2007 and two were gifts.

The SimpleTech 320 MD External HD has been used very little and has not been dropped. The red

AC power light shows and initially the HD blue light comes on but that is all and the HD is not

detected by the computer & I have tried several computers. There is no clicking noise and the

SimpleTech external HD has not been opened.

Pablo does this sound like the circuit board? Can you please advise what options I have to recover

the photos on my own and if necessary what companies you can recommend for data recovery.

Thank you.

Wayne Kelly

Dinora Galvan, 14. April 2010, 13:35

I own a Western Digital WDBABM0010BBK My Passport Essentia. and I believe my problem is your

first senerio, 1) Corrupted file system. The only think is that I can see all my folders but when I

try to open them to copy them somewhere else my files are not accesible to be copy. and the

ones that are accesible take from 30 min to an hour each, “could be one picture taking that

long”. Would this program work for me too.



B, 11. April 2010, 23:17

I had my hard drive in an enclosure and someone tripped over the wire causing the hard drive to

fall to the ground. I had a friend take a look for me and assured me that he knew what he was

doing, but after reading online I discovered you shouldnt open it unless its a dust free

environment and handled carefully. He opened it without gloves and i think he tried moving the

arm of the hard drive and it broke. Is there any way to fix this and if so how much? Can my data

be recovered given the circumstances? The issue I have is number two listed above. Please email

me back. Thanks!

Popular, 11. April 2010, 13:34

hi i needsome help pls… my tb wd fell from my bed and it does not show up any more…… the blue

light still comes on as normal just not coming up help pls………problem is i have some stuff on it i

cant carry for a tech. to fix stuff that will crash my career (im very very popular and well known

in my country) help pls and every thing legal and illegal is on this drive) thanks for

understanding…………………….

charles cudjoe, 9. April 2010, 11:03

my western digital hard drive fell off the ground and has stop working

my data on the, am really dying to have them on other drive but i cant

recover them

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

The best thing you could actually do providing the files were copied from your computer to your

hard drive is instead of messing with the hard drive use a programme called recover my files.

When you copy files to your hard drive it leaves the origional on your computer and even if you

have deleted them, re-formatted your hard drive it will still recover them. Its a lot cheaper than

paying for data recovery, i run a computer shop and the amount of people that ask for this service

is unbelievable, tbh its keeping me in business considering the cheapest price for recovery is $275.

cara, 4. April 2010, 2:17

Thanks for this article!

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

post here.

Basically the situation is this–I inherited my friend’s external hard drive (Samsung, 500GB,

HD501LJ) and tried to plug it into my computer. It clicks and the light is red. After a few

minutes, it stops clicking and the light turns blue, but my computer doesn’t read it. Should I use

your freezer method? Or is that only if the computer can read the drive to begin with? I have a

spare desktop and I thought I could maybe insert this one as a slave drive, but I am not sure if

that is a good solution.

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

have. Thanks again!

Denvick, 3. April 2010, 21:40

hello,



I have a 500GB Adata external 2.5″ hdd , a thin one.. I used it one day but while I selected some

files to copy to my main hard drive, I got a “windows is not responding” pop up and then

everything hang. When I turned on my laptop and plugged in back my external hdd, I got only the

drive name (eg. Local Disk G:) but no information about its size and no option for reformatting. I

don’t hear any clicking nor beeps only the “rrrrrrr”…..”rrrrrrrrrr”…. rrrrrrrr” sound. Whenever I try

to access it, my system does not respond. please help me, I don’t want to loose those treasured

memories and important files in there. I don’t have any experience fixing PCB’s.. And I don’t have

that much for a data recovery service.. Thank you,

Megs, 31. March 2010, 12:44

Hi,

I dropped my WD 250 GB MY Passport External Drive while I was moving, and the shell was slightly

open so I clicked it back together. Initially I used to get “Drive is not recognized” but, now it just

spins with a whirring noise and clicks. I think it’s the heads but, I am not sure if I should go get it

fixed with someone or if there is something I can do at home (besides the freezer trick). Can you

help me?

Megs

Donja, 29. March 2010, 17:27

Ok–you seem to be the person in the know–so here goes.

I have a SimpleTech 320Gb pininfarina–that is–without warning–without dropping–without clicking

or beeping or flashing–not recognized.

I disconnected all cords to move it–and when I plugged it back in –to the USB–it was no longer

recognized.

I tried other USB ports and tried it on my laptop–still nothing.

It does power up–but that’s it.

I have MANY irreplaceable files—HELP ME PLEASE.

MDiz, 29. March 2010, 16:15

Hey, I dropped an Aluratek 500GB external (WD HDD) from about a 2-foot distance on carpet; it

no longer works.

My computer is detecting the USB connection, but no drive shows up in My Computer. My HDD

sounds like it’s trying to run/boot up (I’m not getting any clicking noises), but it makes the

“whurrr”ing noise for about 10 seconds before falling silent.

When I locate this drive as Drive 1 in Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management and try

to initialize the disk it’s telling me “Incorrect Function.”

The HDD still gives me all of the same complications whether it’s hooked up from it’s external

casing or if I run it directly into my computer.

Is it possible to recover any data from this external without sending it in for repair, or should I

just chuck it in the garbage?

Please help ><

Yoshi, 28. March 2010, 8:23

Hello Pablo,

I know there are many people with similar problems as me and I would like to thank you for going

out of your way to help people in trouble like me. You have no idea how lucky I feel to be to find



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

I was recently transferring data to my Seagate FreeAgent Desk external hard drive, when my

computer froze and I was forced to restart it. I rebooted the computer, and noticed that the hard

drive took forever to read and when I tried copying one video file (about 300megs) it would have

an estimated 2 hours or so. When I tried to cancel the operation, it froze, and (I probably

shouldn’t have done this) I pulled out the USB cable. The next day I tried to plug in my external,

and it would take approximately 5-10 min. before the drive was recognized, but when I tried to

open the drive, I would get an “I/O device error” and cannot open the drive. I have about 400

gigs used in the external out of the 1TB. It also does not make any sounds. Properties and such

also could not be viewed.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Durga, 26. March 2010, 9:25

Hi,

I am unable to contact you via the “Contact US” link at the top of this page as I get a “Page Not

Found” when I click submit.

Here’s what my problem is -

I have a Toshiba 160GB portable hard drive that I dropped accidentally. I am hearing a clicking

noise and the hard drive is NOT getting detected. I tried connecting it to a couple of PC’s/Laptops

– one running XP and another Vista (if that makes any difference), but the Hard drive still wouldnt

get detect.

Is there a way that the files could be recovered or get the hard drive to work ?

Let me know if I need to ship it to you and the terms.

Thanks,

Durga

Doozy8, 20. March 2010, 16:40

I have a Maxtor 500GB SATA drive in a USB enclosure that I was using as additional storage. I

moved it to a new laptop in the house and it started up fine. Next time I connected it I heard

clicking. I am not able to get a PC to see this drive. Is there something you think can be done to

recover this data?

Thank you

ashish, 19. March 2010, 23:30

after using demo version of data recovery on my 320gb portable hd, i am able to takeout data

from it, but this thing is working very very slowly and not all the files i am able to recover.please

help.

Chris, 19. March 2010, 1:36

Hi

I dropped my external hard drive and when I connect the power it spins for 3 seconds and stops. I

tried the freezing but it did not help. Do you think I can still recover some files? Can you do that?

Thanks

Susan Ragsdale, 17. March 2010, 15:43

http://www.naaminternational.com/

http://www.supreme-international.com/



I have a seagate free agent 500 gb new external hard drive. Problem is I can’t plug in usb

connection. When inserted into the hard drive, it comes right out and I can here rattling which

tells me that part of the connection is probably broken off inside. Now what do I do?

Yanni, 16. March 2010, 10:26

Hello, I’ve been trying to contact Pablo Garcia by email but I get an error that the link

http://geekyprojects.com/thanks.html appears to be broken. Any other ways to contact him?

Scott Reece, 12. March 2010, 11:13

does your offer still hold for recovering data for a donation? If so, do you accept PayPal? If so,

please reply to [email protected] and I will forward a more detailed description of how I

cannot get data from wd5000c37 that fell to the floor but is still recognized as a usb mass storage

device by my pc.

soL, 10. March 2010, 6:02

what would you say my chances are at getting desktop files off my aunts laptop? it got smacked

with a spindle of dvds right above where the internal drive is, and instantly locked up. tried

rebooting and it would get to the xp progress bar, advancing about 1% every 10 minuites before

locking up at about 1/4 the way. live cds lock up when trying to detect drive, and when i

connected it as slave in my machine, you cannot access it in my computer without it causing an

error. the drive makes normal read sounds about every 5 seconds, no strange noises i can hear =(

Billy, 9. March 2010, 17:53

Greetings Pablo,

My hard drive took a spill from the top of my computer tower. The screen flashed and said all

data has been deleted. The hard drive still shows the light like its on but I cant get a usb read on

my computer. I took it to a friends computer and the usb device was detected but It would not

locate the external drive. The hard drive light flashes on and I would like to try and salvage whats

been deleted. How do I get the computer to read the hard drive? Is it to late? The brand is a

calvary external hard drive I can’t tell if the disc inside are spinning because its a pretty silent

unit. I would appreciate any advice on this matter.

Ralph, 5. March 2010, 9:04

I have a sony viao laptop which is about 4 years old, the hard drive recently stopped working, PC

world removed it and tried to connect it to 2 other computers, but they did not recognise the

hard drive hence I cannot retrieve any of my data. The only option they gave me was a lab test

which costs £700, but can I do something myself?

giulia, 4. March 2010, 13:04

ciao è stato dato un pugno al pc portatile e da quel momento schermata blu,nel bios non rileva

hdd, beh ci sono le foto dei bimbi, del resto non m’importa, come posso recuperarle? grazie

http://geekyprojects.com/thanks.html




Mary, 26. February 2010, 23:26

I have an external drive I use to back up files. Occasionally, the PC would not recognize it. Then,

later, it would work. Since I used the PC system to auto back up, the ext. drive would fill up and

I would then delete files. Now, the red light and yellow light are on constantly, but there is no

whirring sound and none of my computers will recognize it. My feeling is that it jammed with too

many files. Is this possible and how difficult would it be to recover the files?

Maung AUng, 26. February 2010, 10:27

Dear Pablo

I accidentally dropped my WD external Hard Drive (Laptop drive). My pc does not recognize it

when connected. I took it up to my IT department and they told me (they open HD) that the

“head” that read and write data is broken. Thus data cannot be recovered. Is there anyway you

can help? Any hope?I am so depressed.

Thanks

Richard, 25. February 2010, 21:28

This is very informative. thanks.

Every time a turn on my computer. it says that their was a error reading drive and to press ctrl alt

delete to restart. and when i do this, it simple says the same thing once again.

Carlos, 25. February 2010, 14:28

Very useful info!

Having a problem with WD 320GIG HDD not being recognized now?

Just happened last week, the platter is spinning & no clicking noise. I’ve connected the drive

externally but still nothing? Might getting a new board work? Because before finding this article I

was trying to find the exact same drive to replace the guts to see if that might work?

Any advice?

Thanks in advanced!

Mahmud, 22. February 2010, 7:12

hello, could somebody suggest me what should i do to recover my data, since, my Western Digital

80GB (1st ) was not being detected then i opened it and took the disk out, i put it in Western

Digital 320gb (2nd) drive (replacement with one of 3 disks). it didn’t work. i took the 80gb disk

back and expecting 320gb to work as usual with it’s own disk. but no! i m in doubt it might cause

problem to the needle of the second one. Also i had a 2to3 milimiter scratch on the 1st disk.

1. is it possible to recover data from 1st one?

2. is it possible for the 320gb drive to work again? Thanks for your help..

Mahmud

Mike, 17. February 2010, 22:28

I dropped my hammer ext. drive about a foot onto my hardwood floor. i plugged it in and it beeps

and clicks. the power light does come on. nothing appears on my computer. I have all my sons



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

thanks

Mike

JRS, 15. February 2010, 0:17

Hi,

I recently knocked over my WD external Hard drive. It powered up after, but wanted me to

reformat it. I took it out of the case, and installed it as my 2nd SATA Drive. Had to go into BIOS

and turn on Auto so my computer would recognize it.Am using XP, Followed the directions:

If you are using XP do the following

Click on Start

Settings

Control Panel

Administrative Tools

Computer Management

Disk Management

Under disk management it states the following: Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System is blank,

Status=Healthy, When I click on properties, it says

Right now I’m doing a scan with the free trial version of recover my files software. Is there any

other way for me to recover the data without purchasing the recovery software from GetData.

Thanks.

JRS

Nightly, 14. February 2010, 19:45

Hi Pablo. Recently I found this page while searching for the problem with my portable external HD

– Maxtor OneTouch III Mini.

The problem is when the drive is inserted Explorer hangs on. Especially when you try to reach My

Computer it hangs. After I plug out for a second drive appears on My Computer and then gives the

message “You need format the disk in drive before you can use it”. Device Manager shows the

Drive, and Properties available for drive except ‘Policy” section – its hanging there. and the

computer nor Shutdown nor Startt if the drive isn’t plugged out.

I tried Command prompting (both in Windows mode and with Bootable Windows Installation disk

where provided Command prompting) – it also can’t access the drive. How to be? What is the

solution for that?

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

anyway – it’s useless.

Im using Vista Ultimate on my laptop so I checked all these mostly on Vista. I also tried Windows

XP. The drive is recognized and drivers are loaded but in My Computer doesn’t show and taskbar

hangs. so almost the same result in Windows XP. Tried WIndows 7. It shows up drive (without it’s

name) on My computer (but after 1 minute) but I double click on it green bar on the upper side

(in the address bar) shows the progress but sure the device is not getting open.

I opened the case, and could get out this 2,5 Seagate Momentus 5400.3 . As it is OEM product it’s

not provided 5 year warranty. What is the solution for this?

gospelmidi, 14. February 2010, 4:00

I have read the article and all the comments. I had already frozen my HDD before reading this.

The CMOS no longer recognizes the drive (Maxtor STM3200820A 200GB). I’m shopping for another

old drive to replace the circuit board, but that probably won’t help now. I can afford to lose

anything else for which I have no backup, except I do need one 20KB .doc file. But I have to do a

search for it, which will probably use up any remaining lifetime I can get out of this drive, even if



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

Anyway, is there any specific HDD I should buy for continuous 24/7 service? I can buy a new 1

year 300 GB 10K U320 SCSI for $260 shipped. I would prefer to buy an ATA or SATA drive because

it is cheaper . . . but I get what I pay for, I know. Thank you for any suggestions.

Stephanie, 14. February 2010, 3:48

oh goodness could you help me too please!!!

1 week ago my laptop didn’t want to start up.

a blank black screen showed when trying to boot up & said some system not found.

yesterday i brought it into a repair shop & the guy tested the hard drive & told me its dead since

the hard drive ‘motor’ spoils, no cure for this or may be other specialist could help.

I’m quite worry about that because I have around 30GB ‘personal private files’ inside..(^_^”) *shy*

well like what you said, it makes the ‘click click noise’ after i on my laptop..

Nichole, 14. February 2010, 0:02

Hi Pablo,

I just came across this article and all of your great advice. I don’t know too much about

computers but I am a do-it-yourself type person with just about everything. Right now I am just

trying to figure out if it is the “click of death” that you refer to. I was not about to pay an

outrageous amount for data recovery and I was wondering how likely it was that I would be able

to recover any data.

So I have a Western Digital My Book 320GB external hard drive. It was on and I accidentally

knocked it over and it fell about 2 feet onto my carpet. This happened over a year ago but I gave

up after I found out how expensive it is for data recovery. When I turn it on it doesn’t make a

clicking sound but it makes a sort of buzz sound followed by a beep 5 times in a row. The light is

on and Windows recognizes it but it does not show up under “My Computer”. Does this sound like

I have a chance of recovering the data or am I look at a data recovery service?

Thanks so much!

Alex, 9. February 2010, 16:16

Hi Pablo Garcia, This is the great page i found ever online to recover my frozen hd, I thrilled

when I managed to pull of my data using “recover my files” from my almost dead hdd, but

unfortunately none of my videos, pictures files are workable they just seems to be icons. could yo

help with that? to pull of my data from almost dead

Rena, 5. February 2010, 12:34

Hey Pablo,

I have had a 320 GB WD HDD for over a year now that stopped working. It accidently fell down on

the floor, and now when i plug it in my PC it lights, get recognized as a hardware, then makes the

death soud :( and nothing happens. I’ve googling for a solution and tried to check DisK

Management. It’s not listed, actually there is something called DISK 1 that needs Initialization but

even if I try to initialize it it doesn’ work.

All my data is on it and I really need it :( Shall I try the freezer solution as the HDD symptoms

match with it?? If it doesn’t work will I still be able to send it to an IT professional to recover my

data? I just am trying to recover my data without paying too much money i can not afford..

Please advise

http://museum.dinosoft.uz/



Jairo Mesa, 5. February 2010, 12:25

I have a Hitachi 1tb 7200rpm hard drive… hardly with it almost 7 months, and from a while ago, it

was like hanging and the OS froze for a while, and then resumed, but several times a day. I sent

it to a technician but he said it was alright. However, i hooked it up to my pc yesterday and i

was planning to do a low level format to it just in case. but then, it stopped functioning… Power

is flowing to it, but i cant seem to hear or feel the “reading” process… I dont have any important

information in it, but i need it. I was reading some forums and i wanted to try the freezing trick,

but idk… i just want it to function… BIOS detects it as Hard Drive, but with no info.. please some

advice

DEEPAK, 5. February 2010, 1:22

THANKS BOSS WONDERFULL HELP, ALL IS WELL

Drew, 3. February 2010, 23:13

I closed my laptop too hard and the computer froze. When I restarted it goes to a black screen

for a while, then eventually to the system recovery manager. I took the hard drive out and

connected it to another computer and could not access anything. I did diagnostics and it said I

needed to replace the hard drive, so I did. I took the old drive to a friend who works at a

computer tech store and he tried to hook it up to a linux system and could not access anything. Is

there anything I can do to get the data from the old drive?

Nicole, 2. February 2010, 15:23

Hi there,

I need HELP! I have an external HD Western Digital 120GB that was working fine one day and the

next morning was not being recognized by my laptop. I plugged it into my HP and it recognizes

the X drive but doesn’t pull the data up. When the external HD is plugged in the green light is on

and you can hear a rrrrr click, rrrrr click, rrrrr click sound and then it goes quiet (like its no

longer running) but the green light is still on. I need to extract the data off this ex drive what

route would you take to do this?

Please help asap!

Thanks

Nicole

alba, 30. January 2010, 22:47

Hello Pablo, I have an external harddrive (simpletech 500GB). I tripped on the powercord and it

fell 3 feet from the ground, while it was running (listening to some music from the harddrive).

Winamp started to skip so I powered off the harddrive and powered it back on. I was left with a

minute of beeping and then silence. The drive never spins and my computer doesn’t see anything

occupying that specific USB port. I’ve tried connecting the harddrive directly to a motherboard to

no avail.

thank you in advance!!

Johnny, 28. January 2010, 8:17



Dear Pablo,

I am using a IBM R61e laptop. I normally turned it off this morning, and in the afternoon, when i

tried to turn it on again, there’s this ‘zi zi zi….zi zi zi…zi zi zi…’ noise coming out from the hard

drive, and it failed to turn on, with system warning: initializatoin error.

then i took the harddrive out and use it as an external one connecting to another running laptop,

again, this ‘ zi zi zi….zi zi zi…zi zi zi….’ noise coming again, and this one can not be recognized

by the windows system. From my observatoin, the external harddrive was not working while

connecting after the noise.

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

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

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

just copy all your data to another drive. If not read through the following articles who give step

by step instructions on how to recover data from a broken hdd. Recover a Dead Hard Disk –

wikiHow How to recover data from a broken hard drive… [...]

Roberto, 27. January 2010, 9:33

Hello, my HDD fell from table, now the computer doesnt detect it and it makes a soft noise Beep

beep…. should i try to recover? they asked me 800 euros…

Raiden, 24. January 2010, 1:11

Hi! I have WD external HDD 500gb and there is a lot of data inside i still can see the data from

inside, but the problem is I can’t open any files and i cant copy most of the data, i heard there is

a sound (tik tik tik tik). I tried to make backup using recovery program but still doesn’t work,

when I restarted my laptop it says the harddrive need to check when starting to read the

harddrive it says the harddrive is totally unreadable. Please help me to recover all my data back

thanks!!!

AUGI, 23. January 2010, 19:58

Hi,

I accidentally dropped my External WD HD, and now it is giving me a “USB Device not Recognized”

message, the light still turns on and the HD sound seems normal, any suggestions Please???

Yunus Lau, 21. January 2010, 22:13

Hi, Pablo Garcia ! thx for your information. it’s realy helpfull for me. i’ve a question, what about

if my laptop harddrive cannot detected on bios, could it recover the data using recovery softwares

? thank’s alot !

Alex, 19. January 2010, 6:44

Hi,

Thanks for the info, the problem im having is when i turn my computer on it gets to the welcome

screen then freezes. Ive tried startin in safe mode bu it still freezes, i have been told by experts

http://www.techtalkz.com/general-hardware/519009-how-detect-hard-disk-drive.html#post2064065

http://www.gbi-mk.co.cc/



it could be a hard drive fault and i shud buy a hard drive docking station to try and retrieve my

data. i havnt noticed any noises coming from the hard drive.

any ideas?

Thanks!

RaShell, 13. January 2010, 12:51

My computer will turn on, but will not get past the beginning blue hp page where you can press

the “f” keys to boot etc. It freezes on that screen. I have hooked the hard drive up to another

computer and it locks it up too. My computer runs fine with a new hard drive in it. My concern is

retrieving the data from the old hard drive. Do I have any options? I am electronically,

technically, and mechanically impaired. I have many pictures and videos of my daughter on the

drive and am desperate to get them back. Please help!!!

Ramzi, 13. January 2010, 11:14

hi… i have a problem wih the desktop, well i turned the pc on and it launched properly, then a

few minutes the screensaver as usual started but suddenly after like 5 minutes the screen went

black as if the power saver started so few minutes later i movedthe mouse so the pc wakes up but

it didnt so i pressed the esc with no results , so i restarted the pc but same thing the screen is

black but the fan of the motherboard is runing, bt i was impressed when i saw the on/off button

and the reset button both are on, so i disconnected the pc from the power and reconected it with

same results. so i bought a USB cable and took out the HD and conected directly to the power

source and hooked it to my laptop via the USB cable, but the hard disk didnt work, i spoke to

some tech ppl but seems they didnt want to get involved as the advised me to buy another HD but

the issue is that i have looots of pix for my kids for over 7 years since they were day one, guys im

desperate and really need help as these priceless pix are so important. advise me what to do.

Indra, 13. January 2010, 6:27

Thanks Pablo for the reply.

The computer won’t turn on. I already connect the hdd to my younger brother’s computer but

same things happened. The computer won’t turn on. I’m not sure what the problem. Both

computer using Windows XP.

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

have any suggestion?

Lil Sis, 12. January 2010, 19:40

Thanks Pablo. I will definitely try replacing the circuit board. I’ve got a little hope now. I think

after this experience I will make sure my data is backed up somewhere else as well.


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.



Anonymous, 12. January 2010, 11:49

Pablo Garcia said:

Please people….. don’t focus on the freezer trick! while this trick works very well, you are

risking loosing your data. Try every single alternative first before trying the freezer trick.

I’ve been doing IT work for quite a long time. Pablo is right. I’ve used it as a last resort, and only

in the right circumstances. In countless thousands of computers I’ve worked on, I’ve only used

that trick three times. One time, I used a variation of the trick which was rather dangerous. This

was for a friend of mine. I wouldn’t ever do this for a customer, as it was risky and time

consuming. The bearings inside the drive were overheating and seizing. I tried the illustrated

method first, but it only allowed for less than 5 minutes of successful access in this particular

case.

I froze the drive inside a ziplock bag. After about an hour, I submerged it almost all the way in a

tupperware full of ice water. The bag’s opening was just above the water, and the connectors

were up. I attached it to my recovery machine, and turned it on. Over the next 8 hours, I

managed to recover just over 50% of his data. During those 8 hours, I babysat it. I spent my time

siphoning out excess water, and carefully adding ice cubes by hand. Since the drive was running

very hot (because of the bearing failure), the ice melted pretty quickly. Over the 8 hours, I used

all the ice from the ice maker, which is roughly 1 cubic foot. (loose cubed ice, not one solid

block), plus whatever the ice maker made during the period. Needless to say, it would not have

been good if water got on the drive, so it was tedious work. The result was an improvement over

the 0% it looked like we could recover otherwise. With all that, I don’t recommend it to anyone,

unless you like the idea of submerging electronics in water, and frying them (or yourself).

Indra, 10. January 2010, 6:53

My computer have 2 hdd, WD 160GB as system files WD 320GB as movie and data files. Last night,

my PC suddenly shutdown without any warning. Then from that moment, my PC cannot switch ON.

After do some troubleshooting, my hdd WD 320GB problem. When I remove this hdd, my PC can

running normally. When i’m trying to connect this hdd to my system, my PC won’t start (turn on).

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

data on the hdd.


James: Try to take it out of its current enclosure and use a different one. If that does not work

and the hard drive still does not make a sound, then the plates are most likely not spinning and

you are going to have to sent it to a data recovery company.

James Rizzo, 9. January 2010, 12:12

Hello, I dropped my WD HD from the table by accident. Once i plug it into my mac it turns on for

1 sec then it turns off. The HD doesnt make a sound..the light just turns on for a sec and then

turns off as i put the firewire into the slot. 2 months ago i tried to plug it in again and it worked

for a day but then i unplugged it and then plugged it back in, it won’t turn on again. Please help

Me!


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 ;)

RHODAboii, 7. January 2010, 10:24

I also have the same problem ’cause my aunt knocked over my HD and then when I plug it, it

creates this rrrrrr click click, rrrrrr click click, sound and then nothing. What can I possibly do? Is

it jst because not TOO much power is entering I used to have that problem before wherein my HD

works with only one cable and now that cable is nowhere to be found please help.

Lil Sis, 5. January 2010, 19:18

Hi,

This it the first page that I’ve come across where people have had the same problem as me. I

have a 500gb WD external drive that I’ve been using for a little over a year now and one day it

stopped working and it smelled like something was burning in it. Since the warranty expired

already, I opened it up to put it in a HD enclosure. I plugged in the power cable and SATA cable

like it says and when I turned it on, the drive started smoking where the power cable was plugged

in. I turned it off immediately. Do you know if there is any way for me to recover the data on my

own without having to use the power source? Or would I have to send it to a recovery service? Or

is the data just gone for good? Any suggestions you could give would be greatly appreciated….

Lahavana, 5. January 2010, 17:10

Arnold – if I may suggest – try taking the hard disk out of the external casing, just be careful not

to damage the hard disk inside when scooping around with the screw-driver. The same thing

happenned to me this summer (I own a WD as well – 500 Gb – which is currently dying on me from

a different reason…) – a power shortage ocurred after a thunder-storm and when the power came

back on, it fried the part that powered the hard disk. If you remove or replace that one, your

hard disk should be just fine. And don’t worry about the data: it is completely safe. Here’s a

video I’ve found on Youtube that shows a similar process with a WD My Book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FlySnyJ0CQ&feature=related

Lahavana, 5. January 2010, 16:17

Hello there and thank you for taking the time to write this article – it brings a small ray of

sunshine for those of us who have hard disk troubles. I’m writing to you more out of desperation,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FlySnyJ0CQ&feature=related



seeking “another opinion” – I have a somewhat simmilar problem as everyone else, with my hard

disk – it’s a 500 Gb Western Digital, an “ex”- external (I say ex because it’s original USB and

power board got fried during a power shortage, so I simply extracted the drive out of its enclosure

and I’ve been using it, for the past 6 months, as a regular SATA drive, using one of those SATA to

USB connectors). The problem is that, unprotected as it is, it’s been knocked down by a careless

friend and hit the floor (marble…) with its short side – now it won’t start anymore – it starts

spinning, the SATA2USB recognizes it, but it keeps spinning, with a dreadful buzzing sound

(something like a cross between a damaged CPU fan and a kite in the wind…) with some small

clicks from time to time and it stops after a while, without showing up on the computer where

it’s hooked up. In Device Manager, it simply shows up as USB device, under the Disk Drives

category and in Details, it says “Device type: Disk drive” and that’s about it. I’ve tried the freezer

trick, seeing as nothing else worked (hooking it up on various computer, gently knocking on its

side, changing SATA cable) and it still didn’t work – I only got it to spin for a bit longer before

stopping… the SATA to USB dongle is recognised by the computer, but not the hard disk… Is there

anything else that can be done with it (except the professional data-recovery method – I am but a

poor student in her final years), or should I simply kiss it good bye and start rebuilding my data?…

Thank you in advance for your answer (and IF you have time to answer).

Mary Donoho, 5. January 2010, 15:04

I have the “blue screen of death” and took my Dell Inspiron 6000. It is about 4 years old, and I

took it to Best Buy Geek Squad. They said they couldn’t recover anything from the hard drive

(said it was bad – Dell did too and sent me a new one). Anyway, Best Buy wanted $300.00 to send

it off to “try” and recover data. My question for you is: Is there anything I can do personally? If I

download the File recovery software and put it in my CD drive will my system be able to read it? I

don’t want to waste my money buying the software if it can’t read it. Also, I am shoppoing for an

external hard drive for my laptop (so this doesn’t happen to me again) – do you have suggestions

on the “best ones to buy”. Please let me know. I have 4 years of photos I need to try and recover

as well as music, and other files.

Thanks so much!


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.

Arnold, 4. January 2010, 0:55

I may have burnt out my 1 TB WD by plugging in a different power cord by accident. It wont even

turn on at all when I plug it in. The light doesn’t come on and I don’t know what to do. I have

over 500 G of files that i need recovered. How would I do that?






Ray, 3. January 2010, 21:30

Pablo,

I have an external Iomega 500 GB USB hard drive. Today, my wife accidentally knocked it over on

the desk. Now all we get is a beep from the drive every 5 seconds. Will not spin up but powers on

and then beeps. Took cover off of carrier and the drive turns out to be a Seagate 500 GB

Barracuda SATA drive. Tried plugging drive into another PC via SATA cable and still got the beep

every 5 seconds and would not boot up. I’m trying the freezer trick you mentioned as we speak

but am not confident that will do the trick. Any guidance/suggestions???

Alex, 3. January 2010, 4:58

Hi,

I am having the “click click click of death” on my laptop hdd, now it cannot be booted or

recognized, it happened so randomly… Is it safe to place it in the freezer and give it a try?

Thanks a lot for ur help.

Matt, 31. December 2009, 14:09

Pablo:

I have a WD Caviar (WD3200JB) that was in a machine that suffered a power failure. I have moved

it to a new machine, and it is not detected by the BIOS on startup. I have tried several ribbon

cables and power plugs. I was most interested in solution #3. Do you have experience with this

sort of drive/problem?

Olivia Alston, 26. December 2009, 9:51

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

I have a DELL inspiron 1501 laptop and it just didn’t have enough space for my mass amounts of

music and downloads, so my Dad gave me a Maxtor One Touch 160GB. I’ve stored pretty much

everything on there.

The other day when I went to plug it into my laptop the cable wouldn’t go into the hard drive. I

think the hard drive has been dropped and the wire inside the hard drive has been pushed

through.. I hope this is making sense, I’m useless with these sort of things! Anyway, I’m panicing

now because I can’t access my music etc and my Dad would actually go mental with me if I told

him.. Could you please tell me how to fix this or where to send my hard drive to get it

repaired/recovered or whatever. And how much it may cost. I’d really appreciate some advice!

Thanks,

Olivia

Joe, 24. December 2009, 16:29

Pablo:

Yes, the harddrive does spin. It tuns on, begins to spin then after 10 seconds it begins to click.

And no, it does not get recognized by windows which is the problem. I tried the freezer method

and did not work either, so I’m not sure my options. Any help would be appreciated.





Joe:

Yes there are ways to get the data out. have you tried using any data extraction programs? Does

the hard drive spin at all? Does it get recognized by windows?

Joe, 22. December 2009, 14:40

My girlfriend, soon to be ex, wasn’t paying attention and knocked over my external HDD. It was in

a secure place and only fell 1 foot into thick carpet, but now it’s clicking and I hear the disc

trying to start up but after clicking repeatedly it just stops and does nothing. My hdd also does

not show up on my mac or my pc, it doesn’t come up at all. I have EVERYTHING on there, all my

tv shows, movies, etc… but that is all replaceable if need be (although I would prefer not it’s

close to 1 tb), the main thing I am worried about losing are the pictures and documents I stored

on there. If there is a way to fix or recover these files, please let me know I’m desperate and

reading a million google pages which aren’t helping.


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.

c Rosetta, 21. December 2009, 21:36

We have a WD 1T external hard drive. Recently when we tried to turn on the computer with the

hard drive attached, the computer would not completly come on – but when we unhooked the

hard drive the computer came on just fine. The hard drive would make a spin click sound and

then stop. Is there any way for us to recover our data on the external hard drive?

Ishwar, 21. December 2009, 9:40

hello sir pablo,

Iam Ishwar from India…i have a transcend 320 gb external gb harddisk which fell down recently…

now its making the click sound…the files open in my laptop dell xps…not in my computer…but they

cant be played…iam a college student and had the best of movies and song collection on it…not to

mention the tv series that only i had!!!!…..iam very desperate…..plz god help!!!!!please….please

Anuja, 14. December 2009, 23:40

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



hardware but the file contain shows 0 bytes

Felix, 14. December 2009, 10:42

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

Thanks for this post, you saved my files.


Hi Karen, I sent you an email with details.

James Foster, 13. December 2009, 7:14

Hi there,

I have a seagate 500gb ext. hardrive, it looks like where the usb cable plugs into the hardrive, it

looks slightly damaged, i was wondering what type of external hardrive enclosure i would need, as

my external hardrive is a little old and needs to be plugged into the mains aswell as my

computer? Thanks James

Karen, 10. December 2009, 20:57

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

Craig McDonald, 9. December 2009, 13:25

Thanks for the great info I havea WD sec 16 External Hard drive that was corrupted. Read this

article got all my data back. You are a Hero.


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

Evelyn, 6. December 2009, 1:24

Please contact me about help with a dropped WD external

hard drive. I see that someone just posted the same problem

a few days ago. I would be happy to make a donation for help.

My son just knocked it off of the table and now I get the

clicking noise. Looks like it’s working but I get the red

exclamation point when I plug it in that says something like

“The disk inserted cannot be read”….I think that’s what it said.

It pulls up the Disk Utility but wont let me Repair OR Verify

it. I’m on Mac OSX 10.5, I think. Gosh, I hope some of the images on this drive can be found. I’m

so upset right now!!!




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.

kes, 4. December 2009, 3:04

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

you.

thankyou!!

Chris Carson, 3. December 2009, 10:55

Hello Pablo, I was wondering if you could shed light on this similar problem, but concerning USB

pen drives? Mine is malfunctioning and has very important documents that need to be retrieved.

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

Thanks


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.

James Strand, 3. December 2009, 0:23

http://www.strandyland.com/



I have a broken external hard drive. it fell about a foot and a half onto a hard floor. I am getting

the click…click…. click…. response. “power button” still lights up. it is a Seagate. what is your

advise for externals? I would be more than happy to donate to your site and send it in as the data

onboard is irreplaceable. Thank you for your time

PS: your contact form submit button is broken.

Lara, 1. December 2009, 23:59

i have a I O magic data to go 40gb hard drive. while i was working my external hard drive must

have stopped working for some reason because when i went to go save a document it could not

find the hard drive. when i unplugged the external hard drive and plugged it back in an error

message appeared saying it malfunctioned and windows could not recognize it. is there anything i

can do to fix this?

or anything to do get the documents off the external hard drive?

thank you

Pieter Joanes, 1. December 2009, 4:46

Greetings from Portugal.

Yesterday i was transfering some files from my 500GB HDD to my 1TB HDD when,out of no where

my 500GB goes offline and silent.Must confess,i was starting to get desperate,everytime i tried to

connect it back the freaking thing wasn’t being recognized by my computer,made an online search

and found Pablo’s article.Read the entire thing and figure out that the best solution for my case

was to freeze the bastard.While i’m typing this answer i’m transfering my files.

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

Portugal.

pam smith, 30. November 2009, 1:19

i have an external hard drive wd500 gb it fell then when i plugged it up it wouldnt come on now

the light is flashing its not making any noise its not showing on comp i have 14000 karaoke songs

on there please tell me i havent lost them can you help me

Robert, 28. November 2009, 13:51

I own 1TB external hard drive thats making the click click sound and it cant connect to my

computers. Is there a way to fix it?

Pablo Garcia, 24. November 2009, 8:38

Hi Rajeev:

I tell you the same thing I tell everybody else. purchase an empty external enclosure and take the

hard drive out of its current enclosure and install it on the new one. and see if the computer

detects it then. The hard drive does not have to be necessarily damaged.

Rajeev, 24. November 2009, 5:59



Hi Pablo,

I own a WD 500GB My passport Essential USB drive and a Dell laptop with Windows Vista (single

drive C: – around 300GB). Recently i took all the backup of my system to WD and formatted the

system to install Windows 7. After the successful installation, i did the partition of the C: drive to

4 drives of around 70GB. I plugged in my WD and i was able to view all the backup data. I did a

fullscan of the WD using Avast Antivirus. It was taking a long time and my system went into

sleep/standby mode while the scanning was happening.

When i unplugged my WD and connected again, it was not getting detected in My Computer as a

drive though it shows in device manager that a drive is connected – named as WD. I don’t hear

any spinning sound of the USB also.

I tried to use GetDataBack but it didn’t detect my WD. I enquired a DataRecovery center and they

analysed my WD without opening it and told me that there is physical damage and quoted high

price. I’m not sure how they found it to be a physical damage without opening the drive. I have

also reformatted my laptop 1 or 2 times later on and did the partition again and added few data.

Can you please let me know if there is a way to recover data from my WD or from my laptop

without giving the data recovery centres.

Thanks

Daniel Penrice, 18. November 2009, 16:54

Dear Pablo,

I go to plug in my hard drive, and it makes the noise that it makes to signal its connected.

However will than make this noise every half a second or so. Such as its connecting and

disconnecting. But it makes this noise an infinite amount.

I go onto my computer, and it doesnt show that its there, however i go onto “safely remove

hardware, and it shows its there, but i go to disconnect it, and i cant.

Whats the matter with the external hard drive. Ive changed the Usb lead, tries a different port,

and computer, and nothing helps.

Thank you very much Pablo.

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


Ormond:

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

Click on Start

Settings

Control Panel

Administrative Tools

Computer Management

Disk Management

See if Disk Management sees the drive. However I highly doubt it, since you are not hearing any

noise coming from the drive. Le me know if you see it, and I will tell you what to do next.

Ormond, 17. November 2009, 9:16

Hi Pablo,

My laptop hard drive recently crashed and I am trying to retrieve some files off of it. I purchased

a USB SATA cable and tried connecting the laptop hard drive to another machine via the USB

Cable. The machine does recognize the cable as the Safely remove Icon appears by the Windows



clock but when I go to the My Computer the drive does not appear as an additional drive. Note

that I do not hear the drive spinning nor the clicking noise. Any advice would be greatly

appreciated.

Thanks

Jamey, 15. November 2009, 18:39

I had a Western 320GB external HD that could not be found – when plugged in, it just wouldn’t

stay there. Windows Explorer showed a drive appear with a ? for a second then disappear. No

weird sounds, certainly not a click, but repeated flashing, the “doink” USB sound if I plugged and

unplugged it, but never any recognition by Windows that it was really there.

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

One more thing to try.

janice price, 13. November 2009, 13:27

my dell laptop wont power up properly I just get a black and white screen that says ‘no bootable

device found’ I have purchased and fitted a new hard drive but wabt to try and recover some dtat

is this possible please?

Laszlo, 12. November 2009, 16:29

Hi Pablo,

I have a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 sata drive Firmware: SD15 used in Coolermaster

external enclosure until recently when my Windows XpSp2 stopped detecting it.

After i removed from the enclosure I’ve plugged it into motherboard.Windows still not detecting

it! However in bios shown the drive!

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

thanks in advanced!

Winter, 9. November 2009, 11:00

I have a problem can you please help, I purchased a WD Passport Essential 500gb a month ago and

i have all my family pics on it, as well as some music files. I had orignally purchased the drive for

my DVR but had never plugged it into the DVR till yesterday. When i plugged it in a dish network

screen pulled up and said for my to contact tech support with an 800 number. Well upon calling

tech support the man said it had to be set up for dish network and he proceeded to set it up. I

seen a screen pull up and it said reformatting drive in process, well i freaked and pulled the usb

cable out. I told the man i had pics on the harddrive and i dont want to lose them. i told him i

was going to plug it back into my pc and remove the files from it and then i would call him back.

Well when i plugged it back into my computer it doesnt show that there is a j/: drive like it used

to. However when i check the device manager it shows the WD 500BEV Exrenal drive is working

properly. So i looked in disk management and i see disk 1 basic 465.76 GB online 1.01 GB Healthy

(unkown partition) 464.75 Healthy (unkown partition) and the only option i get is to delete the

partition. Please i don’t want to lose my pictures and i don’t here any noise coming from the

drive. Any help you can give me is really apprecaited!

PANKAJ NAYER, 9. November 2009, 5:06



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.

Carla, 4. November 2009, 14:34

Hi there,

I’m on a MAC. My Lacie 500 gig external harddrive died and can’t be read by my computer. I got

the error message but never the clicky noise of death sound. I plug it in and it flashes but it’s not

read by my computer. I’ve tried switching computer (to my laptop), I’ve tried switching cords and

I’ve tried switching ports. Nothing!! OMG, all of my work is on there.

What can I do, I have limited funds and I’m not a mechanic and can’t do this myself. Any

recommendations?

Carla


Hi tiffany:

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

tiffany, 28. October 2009, 15:23

oh goodness could you help me please!!!

few weeks ago my Dell desktop computer didnt want to start up.

a blue screen showed when trying to boot up & said hard drive error.

yesterday i brought it into a repair shop & the guy tested the hard drive & told me its dead.

well like what you said, it makes the clicking noise. he told me the ONLY way to get back all

my data on the computer is to send it to a specialist…

John Kyakuwa, 24. October 2009, 3:01

Sir the Doctor of the IT generation troubles,

I am john from Uganda. My HDD drive fell down, it was running windows server2003. After a while

it started making noise sound. I set it to slave to another machine and it is not being recognised

by a pc. It keeps on making noise. It was our company server with 3 years old accounts, clients,

and sharepoint database. Please, I am trying finding out how I can solve the problem or who can

help fixing it or getting back my data. But if I can fix it so that I create an image out of it, will

be wonderful.

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

Thanks I am waiting with anticipation.

http://carlavanwagoner.smugmug.com/

http://www.interconnection-uganda.com/



Battulga, 23. October 2009, 7:23

My hard drive is not functioning properly. It doesn’t open. It spins up and after few seconds it

spins down. What cause this happen and how to recover my data on hard drive? Please anyone

help

Pablo Garcia, 20. October 2009, 8:41

Everybody, I can’t post my email address on the website due to spam. However if you wite a

comment with your email address I will respond as quickly as possible.

Fred, 19. October 2009, 8:51

Hi Pablo,

thanks for your helpful service first. Same old story with me really: I just accidentally dropped my

750 Maxtor One Touch while unplugged from the computer and switched off.

I tried plugging it back: the light comes on but it doesnt appear on the hard drive list of the

computer, and keeps doing a “blip” sound every 5 seconds – it seams like is trying to start or

something.

Any chance to bringing it back?

Any chance to recoup the data?

HELP!

Thanks,

Fred

James Cagle, 15. October 2009, 17:31

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

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

Help me please! I need your help. My Mybook 500gb HDD was knocked from the kitchen counter to

the floor and now when i plug it in it starts to spin up and then just stops. No abnormal sounds

come from it and i took it out of the casing and plugged it into my PC and both ways it will not

recognize the drive at all. This has very important pics of my family on it. Long story short my

laptop which was my home pc crashed and my mybook was my back up source, i bought a desktop

pc and have not had a chance to put all my stuff on the new one before it started acting up. I am

in desperate need of your help, please any info on sending it to you or anything else would be

greatly appreciated.

OC Smith, 11. October 2009, 20:24

Hey. I just saw where you might be starting a recovery business for broken hard drives. I wanted

to send you an email, but couldn’t find your email address. Please email me at the address I gave

you so I can donate, getting shipping info. and see if you can get my info off this broken HDD.

Thanx. OC Smith



yusuf, 11. October 2009, 6:02

Am a computer engineer by proffesion i have a cracked hardrive that is not detect and i need to

retrieve the datas in it..i cant even use my data recovery sofeware for it

Helen, 10. October 2009, 0:31

Hello, my Mac hard drive has just died, and I’m looking to try to recover data from it. Can you

help?? Email me and I can give you more details. Thanks so much – looking forward to receiving

your message.


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.

Dan, 4. October 2009, 4:35

I have a seagate barracuda 7200.10 750 Gbytes Hdd bought last year that i only used it for a few

times. When I start up, BIOS recognizes it, it boots up ( it’s the HDD that contains the operating

system), but it doesn’t finish loading windows and it crashes, sometimes doing a “clung”. it’s not

the windows install with the problem as it doesn’t crash at the same file(when I try starting

windows in safe mode), sometimes the HDD can go for like 20 seconds, sometimes like 30 before

it crashes.

Can I recover my data? well, at least without voiding the warranty

Kaled, 3. October 2009, 15:32

Hi Pablo!

My computer’s hard disk got broken and i have very important things in it.

Can you please help me to recover the data from it..

I actually took it to my pc company cause it gots still warranty, and they told me that they

replace a new one to my pc but they can’t recover the hard disk. They also told me that i can

take my hard disk to some place where they should be able to recover it((((but it’ll be very

expencieve around 1000€ !!! ))) :/ so if you could help me i’ll be very happy. //AND SORRY FOR

MY BAD ENGLISH

thnx

http://-/



ac, 30. September 2009, 13:16

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

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

It makes a somewhat repetitive sound and then stops after a while.. doesnt sound like scratching…

like zzzzhhh zzzzhhhh zzzhhhhh zhhhhh zhhhh and stops after a while. If i plug it back in, it starts

doing that again and then stops.

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

Brad, 24. September 2009, 10:11

Hey Pablo…

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

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

and then powers down.

Is there any software that can detect this HDD even though its not detected in the BIOS? The

freezer thing is an option but a last resort cos I’m afraid I wont get anything off it again. Is there

ANYTHING out there that can be used/done to help with recovery?

Thanks for help. appreciate it.

Pablo Garcia, 24. September 2009, 7:15

Yes, just open the enclosure, take the hard drive out if the enclosure, install it on another

enclosure and that is it! they sell empty enclosures on the web, really cheap too.

Kevin, 23. September 2009, 19:37

I have a 2.5 Toshiba USB 180GB portable HD. I dropped it and ever since it shows up on my

computer but then disappears. I have to hold the USB cable into it at a certain angle for it to

work. Is this easily fixed?

Brian Batayola, 22. September 2009, 23:12

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

Could you email me your suggestions, Pablo?

Rene, 16. September 2009, 17:16

I have a 500GB WD Essential Edition. When I plug it in it makes 7 clicks, spins, 3 clicks, spins, a

few more clicks then stops. Under Device Manager it says the unit is working properly but it

doesn’t assign it a drive. I did open the case and check the board contacts as your suggestion

above but the contacts are pins.

Androlewicz, 7. September 2009, 23:06

http://francophonerss.com/



CK I sent you an email regarding your case….

david, 26. August 2009, 2:28

my old computer crashed, i got the error message “NTLDR is missing”.It would never boot up

again and someone told me it was that my hard drive had blown, i have a different computer now

but want to get the data off my old hard drive if i can, is there any way of doing it? if so how

and what do i need?

musicdan, 25. August 2009, 11:57

hi iv a maxata 500 gig extural hard drive . yesterday it stopped the hard drive is not spinning but

the light is comming on my computer dose not pick up anything when i usb it in iv backed up but

iv just finished recording a song wiv a cliant whos gone back to the usa HELP!!!!

tomas, 21. August 2009, 10:24

Hi,

I have 1TB internal Maxtor drive. about 2 weeks ago it started to work really slow. extracting

100mb rar file sometimes took 15 minutes. after couple days my computer started to freeze

randomly for 5-10 seconds every half a minute or so. I run chkdsk and it didn’t find any errors or

bad blocks. I started to burn data on DVDs (and it took forever because reading from the drive

was very slow) but before I finished it got worse. one day my computer shot down itself. after

that every time I tried to turn it on it would start up slowly and then completely freeze after

couple minutes (usually while windows was still loading).

yesterday i bought a new drive. i installed the drive and windows on it. everyting is working

great. now i still need to retrieve some importand data from that broken drive. i connected that

drive as a slave. my computer detects the drive but i can’t start windows when it’s connected.

what happens is i start up the computer, both drives are visible, and then when windows starts

loading it kind of hangs at that point. windows never starts. if i disconnect the broken drive

everything is back to normal. i think the drive gets disconnected (goes dead ?) after it gets

powered (around 1 minute after i start my computer).

i’ll take a look at the board today. any other ideas ? what else should i try ? connecting it through

usb ?

Tabi, 20. August 2009, 4:43

Hi…i came across this site while i was searching for a solution for my problem…i have purchased a

maxtor one touch III external drive 7 months ago at first it worked fine and i have stored lots of

data in it and didn’t use it much only used it when i had to transfer anything to it and then kept

it off but it stayed plugged in with the computer…and now few days ago i used it and in for 3-4

times while i was using it when i turned my pc on and then turned the external hd on i did not see

the hd icon in the system tray and the computer did not detect it but when i turned the switch off

and on again few times the icon showed up and then after that this happened again and even

turning the on and off switch didn’t show the drive icon and the computer didn’t detect it so i

rebooted the pc and after the reboot the icon showed and the drive was detected but yesterday

when i turned it on it didn’t detect again and now its not working at all i don’t hear any sound

which i used to hear before when the drive used to start running and also the front light used to

flash that is also still now the light does turn on but nothing else happens….please i need help

very badly because i have so much precious data on it and i can’t afford to lose it it’s like losing

a house full of valuable items and then sitting in an empty house if i lose that data….what can i

do to recover the data from the drive?? and is it possible to recover it without taking the drive

http://www.myspace.com/musicdans



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

anyway you can….thank you so much.

miri cohn, 18. August 2009, 21:03

HI , browsed thru ur web page and was very impressed. I need ur help desperatly. I have a 250 gb

external hd that got fried, there are irreplaceable pix in there and i’d love ur help with recovery.

I already gave it to best buy and was told it wud cost me upwards of $2,000 which i definatly

cannot afford. plz let me know if i can send it into u i wud pay up to $250 for recovery. thanx in

advance. plz email me

Good nite,

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

Hi Pablo

I wrote a comment a couple of days ago but it seems to have vanished. I’m desperate, my

external Seagate drive has short circuited, I plugged the wrong power cord into it. The drive

doesn’t spin despite the circuit board being replaced. I have 170,000 words of my book and all the

research on it together with all my photos and music. It was all backed up with CARBONITE, but I

couldn’t afford the renewal and it lapsed. I’ve been told the situation is hopeless but you’ve given

me a glimmer of hope with your recovery service, I can’t find an email address for you so I hope

this works. Thanks in anticipation

Pete

Wales (UK)

Kelley, 18. August 2009, 9:06

I have a hard drive that had to be replaced. the only really critical files I have are my tax files

and pictures that I so want to recover. The hard drive crashed and was very unexpected. No noise

no slowness…no warning signs whatsoever. It is a western digital 320gb sata hdd. would you be

able to recover any data off of it all? I really could use the help!!

Peter Lewis, 16. August 2009, 11:39

Desperate for help, I plugged my laptop power lead into my Seagate external drive and shorted it

out. Several people have looked at it and the board has been replaced as you suggested but to no

avail. I’m told that no data can be recovered as the internal motor has short circuited. Is there

any way that I can recover my files, I have several thousand family photos, all my music and film

collection and the manuscript of a booke I’ve been working on for 2 years. I KNOW everything

should have been backed up and I was using web storage with CARBONITE, sadly I was broke when

the renewal came due and never did continue with it – YES I’ve paid the price – but is there any

hope. Thanks for the website, it’s great, when I win the Lottery I’mll make you a BIG donation.

Jason W, 14. August 2009, 13:42

I have a WD 80 gig drive that died on me yesterday. I am getting the clicking noise of death. I

really need to recover the files that are on this drive. Pablo are you still doing the recovery

service? If so please Email me when you can.

Dave Ramsey, 13. August 2009, 13:53



I have a seagate 500 gig external drive. It is usally on all the time. One day the drive stopped

making the normal disk noise and stopped working. When I turn it on the blue light comes on but

no noise and the computer will not reconize the drive….

Help

CER, 4. August 2009, 23:57

I have a Maxtor One Touch III. While traveling, somehow the area where the USB cable connects

into the case became damaged, and I can no longer connect the drive to my computer. Is there

anyway I can get my data out of this drive? I

michael pursel, 2. August 2009, 7:09

Pablo,

I am a Tech and I have seen and fixed many a “dead HD”, but I have one in my hands that is

actually winning the war atm. It is a maxtor 80GB DiamondMax Plus 9.

I have put it in a external enclosure and it is seen by my puter, however it will only tell me to

format….that has since stopped and now it will only make a beeping sound constantly, it is still

recognized by my puter though. I have not tried the freezer trick ad this is a customers HD. Any

ideas and how much to send to you if the customer is interested?

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

MIke

Rodolfo Fernández, 26. July 2009, 8:09

Thank you very much for your explanations. In my case I was very unlucky because my back up

external hard drive broke when I accidentally dropped it and within a few days my internal hard

drive got damaged. My 125 GB WD My passport EHD sounds like the motor is attempting to run for

a second, stops and repeat the sound intermittently. I checked with an external test connector

and it does the same. Could I send it to you with a reasonable donation? If so, how should I do?

I will appreciate your kind attention.

Stephanorf, 14. July 2009, 12:55

HI Pablo,

There’s some good stuff here. I have a 500gb Seagate 7200.11 (ST3500320AS) that started to go

south on me a few weeks ago. Whenever the PC is booted, the BIOS recognizes the HDD. Also, the

Window’s device manager also sees it. Sometimes the FAT sector is read and I can see the file

structure, and even copy some files. But sometimes the drive just shows up as a generic HDD and

I cannot access it at all. I get an I/O error. I flashed the firmware witht he latest revision, but

that didn’t change anything. For the past week or so the drive won’t do anything except spin up.

There are no sounds from the drive, except a very faint Whir, click, click, click – Whir, click,

click, click – Whir, click, click, click. I pretty much have to hold the HDD up to my ear to hear it.

I’m going to try cleaning the contacts when i get home tonight. If that doesn’t work I was going

to try an swap the PCB with another drive of the same model and part number to see if this helps.

What do you think? Does the I/O error give an clues as to where the root of the problem might

be?

Thanks,

Stephen



Eric Ewing, 10. July 2009, 10:59

Hey pablo, just has a question about your data recovery services. My powerbook g4 recently

started to make a knocking sound and I get a smiley icon with a question mark coming up on the

screen. So im guessing im dealing with the click of death which is a total bummer because i do

have some files that i would like to grab for school. Can you do anything to help me out?

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

ro, 7. July 2009, 20:29

hey pablo…my hard drive is 400 gb WD…and its not making its usually load up sounds…and the

light is on but its not loading it sounds like the motor of fan or something in it went out…what

should i do?

Hawk, 5. July 2009, 5:48

Hello!

I have bought before like 7 months a 2.5″ WD Passport Esential 250GB external usb HDD, &

recently it started to do clung… clung… clung… noise of death. I have some very important data

for my work, some movies & music I would like to backup, however, when I plug the drive in,

windows do the sound “device plugged” but hard drive is not shown anywhere. What would be

your recommendations what to do to ge the data back?


Don’t use chkdsk it can actually make things worse. Plug it into an external eclosure and connect

it to the computer. If you can’t see the files inside, the filesystem might be corrupted and you

might have to send it to a data recovery company.

Don Johnson, 24. June 2009, 10:03

I have a 60GB Seagate that is no longer working properly. I attempted to use C:\CHKDSK r and it

started to recover the data, but at 43% it stopped and revealed a unrepairable sector or volume. I

would really appreciate any sugguestions. I thought about the “Geek Squad”, but I see a lot of

negative reviews in the web.

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?

Cody, 23. June 2009, 12:01

my question is regarding a Mac hardrive. The laptop will not boot. Rather when it tries it gets to

a screen with a folder with a questionmark in teh middle. I took it to the mac store and they



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.

Tina, 11. June 2009, 13:14

Dear Pablo,

I have WD 500GB external HD for about two years and it stopped working just about a week ago. I

left my external hd on for downloading when I later came back, the problem started. The light on

the unit was still on. The computer was still able to detect a usb connection but cannot mount

up the hard drive. Then i unplugged the power and USB back into the power outlet and computer

respectively, then I heard the infamous (click… click… click… click… roommmmmmmm, click..

click) sound….

CK, 10. June 2009, 13:42

Pablo –

Sigh…. I bought a new 640g MyBook to transfer my digital music and photo archive to (my MadDog

external device was clearly dying). The transfer never successfully completed – repair shop tells

me the mechanical arm isn’t moving. So…. I’d be interested in what services you are thinking of

providing (customer 001?). The tech services arm of the Fortune 100 company I am consulting with

referred me to this website.

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



Karla, 5. June 2009, 7:32

hi there, i have a 160gb seagate external hard drive, it was working fine until last night and now

it won’t work at all, i have tried it on both my pc and laptop.

The external hard drive lights up as normal, then starts making a clicking noise for about one

minute, then stops, the pc/laptop does not see the external hard drive at all, theres nothing for it

in disk management or device manager. I have a lot of important files on this, is there anything

you can advise me on to get this fixed?

Kind Regards

tanai, 30. May 2009, 18:45

helo i need help with my 200g maxtor hard drive. as i go into bios in the advance bios features,

on the first option ‘Hard disk boot priority’ it shows my ‘SCSI-0 : Maxtor stm3200820a’. But when i

enter the ‘Standard CMOS features’ on the main BIOS menu, it shows no hard drive being detected

in any IDE channel. i played around with teh jumpers putting in all possbile slots, yet it shows no

sign of detection. i also replaced the IDE cable and switching IDE slots on the motherboard, but

still no sign. i dont think the hard drive is fried or broken as it still runs. ive run an active boot

disk and it reads the hard drive fine, but my bios wont read it therefore i cant install windows on

it.


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.

vey, 29. May 2009, 20:26

hi i have a internal maxtor diamondmax 16 80gb ata/133 hdd and iwhen i plug it into my

computer it doesnt seem to run, spin or antyhing. no movement within the hdd. couple days ago i

was trying to fix my computer due to window update problems and my situation seem to have

escalated from there. due to some problem with window files, my bio then does not detect the

hard drive. so i unplug and plug it back in, number of times, yet still no changes. i also tried o



spin the hdd and i hear the disk spining inside, but im not sure if that would damage it. do you

think if i take out the board and do the pencil “cleaning” will it fix it? i dont thik it is my

motherboard because i have a 200gig maxtor internal hdd connected and it is detected in the

bios. any suggestions? i would like to try to avoid sending it to the specialist as its not that

important of datas but still worth trying to save since its 4 years of memories.

on another topic:

im also haveing problem with my 200 gig maxtor hdd. it is being detected on my bios, but it does

not detect any hard drive when i tried to run the window xp boot cd (im trying to install

windows). its a 200 gig hdd but i have it partition into 4 sections; thus, creating 4, 40 gig drive.

any ideas?

johnny, 28. May 2009, 18:56

Pablo,

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

for the $199 flat fee will you do anything more than what you have told us about here? Is the fee

refundable if you are unable to get any results? Or some part of the fee for you to determine that

you cannot get anything from it.

Johnny

Cheryl, 28. May 2009, 12:55

Hi,

I have a WD Passport 80 GB external hard drive. It just stopped working today for some reason

and the computer does not see it. The blue light goes on on the external hardrive though. I have a

lot of important information on including my students grades!What can I do? Do you think a data

recovery company can at least recover all my data? What is your opinion?

Cheryl


Cheryl:

From what you describe, it sound like you might not have to open you hard drive at all. The mbr

probably got corrupted and now you can’t see the files or the partition. I dont think it is the

casing either since the computer is seeing the drive but is not seeing the partition….

Lee Klein, 28. May 2009, 12:06

I have a Maxtor One Touch 4 500gb that just disappeared off My Computer. The drive letter no

longer shows up. I go to My Computer/Manage and it shows an unknown drive with 0

space/partitions. There is no clicking noise or anything. The light comes on when it’s plugged in. I

tried it on another computer which does the same thing and can’t find it.

I don’t have a dust-free room to open it up and I don’t know enough to know how to make it a

‘slave’ and try again.

The most important content is video and snapshots of my son’s baseball games. Is this a situation

where I can buy a like model and have my university’s student repair crew swap it out for me?


http://[email protected]/



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

Jules Chan, 16. May 2009, 2:48

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

messed up…


Hi Cathy: Since you have an external hard drive, your data might still be accessible. The hard

drive would have to be removed from its enclosure and connected to another computer as a slave

drive or inserted onto another enclosure. I sent you an email.

Cathy Allen, 6. May 2009, 15:12

I have a 20 GB hard drive I took out of a dell laptop to use as an external hard drive. I was

transferring data from my laptop to this hard drive and in the middle of the transfer the 20 GB

hard drive got full. I tried to plug it into another computer to transfer the data off of this drive

but now it won’t even recognize the hard drive. I don’t even feel it spinning any more. Please

help I just need one folder taken off that has pictures on it a bunch of pictures from when my

kids were babies until now. Please help me get them off.


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.

Sachiko Sato, 6. April 2009, 17:06

http://www.allen-bunch.com/



Hi I have my Maxtore one touch III turbo edition (1.5 Tb)… it suddenly decided to be quite today.

while I have 4 of those, it never happend to me for a year. I transferred a lot of data (more than

1 Tb transfer) for 6 hr. So like you said that this procedure might burn the circuit board…. I have

one new unused same Maxtor with me which cost me $400. I am now thinking if I should open

those two and transfer the broken one to new one so that I can recover the data out of it… I

contacted to a company and tell me that it would cost at least 2000$ .. if that expensive, then I

can spare $400 for this or could you please help me out??

Danielle Homer, 4. April 2009, 20:11

Hi Pablo,

I have a 500g western digital external HD that I’ve had for a few years. Now, for some reason,

when I plug it in, I hear a beeping sound (not a clunking or grinding sound) three our four times.

None of my pc’s are able to detect it.

Do you think I should put it in the freezer or is it even the heads that are stuck? I’m not sure

what it could be. I’ve been searching all over the web and even watched a YouTube video on how

to remove the HD from the case to check if the powersupply was dying instead.

Please help.


Due to the popularity of this subject I have decided to start a new data recovery service in

exchange for preset donation to the website. I am currently working on the details, in the mean

time if you have a hard hard drive you would like data extracted out of, please send me an email

describing the problem in detail and I would let you know the steps you need to follow to ship the

hard drive to us. The service would be provided at a $199 flat fee. Probably the most affordable

on the web.

Stella, 31. March 2009, 7:21

My computer can’t boot and I had sent it to the technician and he said that my main drive dead. I

don’t really understand what does that mean. Can I recover all my important documents in it?

Daren Rochard, 29. March 2009, 4:07

I have a maxtor basic external hard drive that is not detected by windows. It makes sort bursts of

noise like a stuck record.I have all of my family photos on this drive and really need to recover

the data. The hard drive is only 2 months old and i did look on there forums about broken drives

and they would just replace it and i would lose all my data.. not good..So if theres any tips i

would be most grateful.

Reguards Daren

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

Hard drive does not get detected,

I opened my pc pull out my hard drive and placed to other pc, then suddenly

I saw a smoke from my hard drive, I stopped by pulling out electric cable, than started again I

saw small red light, and then for a short time hard drive was not detected, I ask around, most of

people said that if I found same hard drive changing some stuffs I can pull the data from my hard

drive, I need the data that I have in hard drive, but not spending much money, I am not rich

http://none/



my hard drive is 120 GB- Maxtor I found one with 160 GB -Maxtor, so what else should I check to

be sure before I opened, cause I heard that if I open my hard drive in open space (air) my data

will be lost, so please can someone told me that

Is it save to open it and if is save to open what else should I check, in hard drive,

Thank you had a time to ready it,

SHIRLEY SSHEASBY, 9. March 2009, 10:42

Dear sir

I have a 250gb Freecom Hard Drive. It has stopped working, and doesnt show in My Computer, so I

am unable to open it up, I have a lot of Movies, photos, and Music.

Is there a way to solve this problem.

Can you let me have a reply stating charges etc

Mrs S M Sheasby

Alithia, 2. March 2009, 4:51

Hi All,

I was wondering what happens to the harddrive after you let in heat up again. I have the same

situation as case 2 and have been told that its going to cost between $1000-$4000 to recover my

WD hardrive. I am wanting any help I can because that is too much and has to be my last resort!

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

Don, 24. February 2009, 0:47

Hi Pablo,

I have a WD 500G SATA external hard drive. I try to open a file from it but when I turn it on, its

just not showing in my drive list. I tried to unplug then plug it again but I only hear short

movement on the hard drive then no more. I removed the the drive from the enclosure and I smell

a burned board. I bought a new enclosure but still no luck at all. If you’re going to suggest to

replace the board on the buttom of the drive, can please give me detailed procedure, because as

you’ve said I can’t open the hard drive itself. Please help me so I can retrieve my important

pictures of my baby. Thank you so much in advance.

Konrad, 6. February 2009, 11:13

i have a drive with broken electronics, and want to buy a drive of the same model but there are a

lot of numbers written on the disk besides the model-number.

An important one seems to be the one named P/N, because it is mostly provided in the ebay-

descripions of the drives, but there are also numbers labeled as OEM, MLC and FR each of them

different.

Do you know what those numbers mean and which of them should be the same on the replacement

drive?

Mark, 30. January 2009, 20:38

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



Luca, 29. December 2008, 22:01

i dont know the problem, but mine, the light goes on and off, i dont know what it is the click of

death but with a light instead of the noise, well it makes no noise, and my pc doesnt recognize it.

Tom, 9. December 2008, 2:45

i neeed help!

i cant quite diagnose my problem.

i get certain errors that say there is something wrong with my hard drive and memory.

i cant log into windows and i sumtimes get a strange noise.

ill be asking around a lot of forums in the next couple of days, but starting here id like to know if

i can Do it myself or if i need a third party to do it for me..

George, 4. December 2008, 16:13

HI!

Because of a bad power source i’ve managed to burn 2 hard drives. None of them are spinning

when i power up the computer.Now i’m trying to recover my data. One of the hard drive is WD 80

GB: WD800JB-00JJA0. I’ve bought the model WD800JB-00JJC0 and switch the electronic board. As

u can see there is a small difference between model. After making the board switch, the sick hard

started to spin and had been recognized in BIOS as some WD hard drive, but it doesn’t know the

exact model. I get some warning before boot that one of my hard drive is not correctly recognized

and Windows XP is getting stuck because of that. Any chances to recover my files if i found the

exact model WD800JB-00JJA0 and use that electronic board?


I would take one of the Hard Drives out of the computer and connect it to a second computer as a

slave or using an external enclosure, that way you can prove that the hard drives are in good

condition. If they are then you probably have a bad motherboard on your hands.

CluelessCarl, 20. October 2008, 12:40

Hi everyone, I think i might have a major problem with my PC…the other day my computer

suddenly died. After talking to a couple of people i changed my graphics card and this helped to

the point that I can now watch the thing on screen NOT booting. I have also noticed that my 2

hard drives are clicking, and after a while waiting to boot, they slow down and stop. I looked in

the BIOS and there are no hard drives listed. I tried to use vista to repair and even re-install, but

it does not see the drives…what can i do


Brian: I would take it out of the case its currently on and try it on a different case, they sell

them for about $25 anywere on the web. If you are going to buy an external enclosure make sure

is is the right size and type. They have them for laptop hard drives and for regular hard drives

(2.5? and 3.5? respectively) Also you need to find out if your drive is IDE or SATA.

Brian, 16. October 2008, 11:37

http://www.progfuse.tk/



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.

Frank, 15. August 2008, 12:40

Is there any way they can tell me at the computer store that the board is in fact defective. Like

with a currency test? I don’t want to waste $50 you know.


Yes that what it sounds like.

Frank, 15. August 2008, 12:21

I have an external WD 250GB that all of a sudden stop working. The only thing that happens now

is the light comes on. There is no recognition from my computer even after I took it out of it’s

case and put it in my tower. Please help. Could it be the board?

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

I changed the external device and pluged it in via usb but I still do not get the drive to come up

in my computer menu. I still do not have a click in the drive or a noise of any kind it seems to be

running fine but still the external dive do not show up. Can u help me please and thank you in

advance.


Jamahl B: I would take it out of the case its currently on and try it on a different case, they sell

them for about $25 anywere on the web. If you are going to buy an external enclosure make sure

is is the right size and type. They have them for laptop hard drives and for regular hard drives

(2.5″ and 3.5″ respectively) Also you need to find out if your drive is IDE or SATA.

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

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



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!

newckiwi, 29. July 2008, 7:39

You mentioned that there are companies that will sell you a replacement pcb for a hard drive, do

you have a list of the people? My drive is now undetectable by the bios, so I would like to try the

replacement board option. Hitachi, (my drive) say that these are not user servicable parts and as

such will not entertain selling me a replacement board. Any information would be a great help.


Gary:

What I would do in your case is run a full checkdisk on your drive, since you might be developing

bad sectors, after that copy all of the contents ASAP (if it lets you) to another drive and run

Recover My Files on the drive to see if you can recover what you lost. Notice that I said ScanDisk

and not Defrag! do not run defrag if you want the little data that you have left.

Gary, 24. July 2008, 7:11

I have a WD mybook Premium ES. I have been having problems with it and i am now at the point

where my OS sees the drive, i can browse its contents , but cant open or copy any files……..any

ideas ?……….also some of the folders are showing as being empty……..there was files in these

folders before problems arose…..is there still a chance these can be recovered ?

nothing has been deleted by me on this drive !

p.s. I certainly wont be buying WD mybook again !!

hope someone can help……….a 5 year photography project is slowly heading down the toilet !!


Wow another Western Digital, the big mayority of people commenting on this article are having

problems with Wester Digitals. Anyway…. I think your problen calls for the “Freezer Trick” read it

on my article. Remember… As a word of advise, I would recommend that you send it to a Data

Recovery specialist first if you really care about your data. The freezer trick is does not work all

the time maybe 50% of the time, and after doing it your hard drive might not work ever again.

Dan, 15. July 2008, 15:27

I have a western digital 250gb hard drive and its worked fine for nearly 4 years until a few days

ago. IT will turn on and I can access the files on it for about 2 minutes before its starts making a



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.

Robby, 14. July 2008, 8:47

I have an external hardrive that I have dropped a couple of times. Windows can detect it but it

says that it is not accessable because there is an I\O device error.

I also have another external harddrive that is the exact same model. I have taken both of the

hard drives out of the cases and switched them. But this does not work.

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

What should I do?

Pablo, 13. July 2008, 15:12

HI Chuck, I personally have had very bad experiences with My Books, we bought 3 at work. of

which 2 did not work right out of the box, and one broke with very little use. That being said… let

me address you problem, there seems to be common confusion with people not knowing how to

differentiate and external from and internal drive… just look at the pictures, on my article, I

barely talk about external drives! Troubleshooting an external drive is the easiest thing on the

world! just purchase an empty external enclosure ($25 at new egg, make sure is the right size for

your drive and if it is PATA or SATA) take the actual Hard Drive out of the my book enclosure, put

it inside the new case and connect it to your computer. When I talk about “the board” I talk

about the one that is part of the actual drive, and not the enclosure that contains it (if it is

external like yours). Internal and external drives are the same. An external drive is just a normal

computer hard drive inside an enclosure, thats all.

chuck vallejos, 10. July 2008, 16:21

Hi Pablo, i have the 80gb my book. do you have any suggestions about this. when i plug in the

power for my book, the light just flashes, no sign of power except for the flashing light. i believe

its the little power board that is bad. i’m desperate.

Pablo, 10. July 2008, 13:18

Carl from what you are describing it seems that your hard drive has physical damage as a result of

the fall. There is nothing you can do on you own, the solutions I describe on this website pertain

to everything you can do if the hard drive fails on its own, and not as a result of physical damage.

You need to send it to a data recovery specialist.

carl martin, 9. July 2008, 2:34

hi i dropped my maxtor one touch 4 it now dosent connect to my laptop and it makes a beeping

sound the light comes on at the front and makes a clikin sound help lol



Pablo, 16. June 2008, 12:46

Trish: If you are sure the hard drive got damaged after the fall, chances are that you are going to

need a data recovery service. Have you to listened to it, does it sound like a normal hard drive

when you conect it? or does it make weird repetitive sounds? like clunk clunk clunk, like if

something was stuck? If it does then you are out of luck, you need to send it. There is a few

things you can try before sending it. I would take the hard drive out of its enclosure, and connect

it as a slave drive directly to the computer, if you do not know how to do this then you have the

alternative of buying another enclosure, they sell generic ones on the web, that do not require

drivers, you can go to newegg for example. They are cheap… you can get one for arroung $25

Trish, 12. June 2008, 16:08

Hi Pablo,

I hope you might be able to give me a suggestion on my daughters external WD MY Book 160, the

drive is not being recoginized by any computer. We have run all the diagonostics and it has

passed. You can see and hear that the drive is spinning. But what ever we have done we can’t get

it recoginized. Her boyfriend and I took it out of the case and installed it in my desktop as a slave

to see if we could at least recovery the info on it, but it didn’t correctly recognize the hard drive,

it thought it was a dvd drive. Unable to get the correct drivers from WD because it is out of

warranty. We are not sure why it stopped working, it may have been dropped at her dorm during

a party. Any suggestions you could give us would be great she have very valuable data stored

there i.e. final projects etc.After we took it apart we put it back together and still no go we have

already invested hours toward this, so a fresh set of eyes so to speak would be welcome.


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

the computer as a slave drive?

Luis, 18. May 2008, 14:21

Hey Pablo, its Luis again, thanks for getting back to me before, i have done what you said i

should cleaned the contacts, but it still has not come back to live. So i believe its prob the click

of death, the sound that i hear. My hard drive is an external hard drive, and when i plug it into

the computer, the computer detects it, it makes the sound that its been plugged in, however, i

cannot access my data. When i go to device manager, it says that one of the drivers is cannot be

loaded, i tried unstalling and re-installing this driver, but everytime i do it fails. If i had the click

of death would the computer still recognize the hard drive? I just don’t know what else to do,

thanks again for your help earlier and the pictures of the contacts, i was hoping that would have

done the trick but it seems not…


Look on eBay, you can either buy the board of buy the same hard drive, sometimes is cheaper to

buy a used hard drive and use it for parts. I discussed all of this in my article.

albert, 2. May 2008, 1:20

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

http://trishsjobsearchtips.wordpress.com/



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.

albert, 30. April 2008, 21:29

i have a 250gb wd and somehow got shorted out and started smoking so i pulled the HD out of its

encloser and opened it up and the board is fried….i was told there is a way to still get everything

off of the hard drive…..SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME OUT I HAVE VERY IMPORTANT STUFF ON IT…..I

need your help


Luis: I’m my article I talk about “Remove the main board from the bottom of the hard drive and

clean the bottom contacts” That board can be removed without opening the hard drive. I also said

in my article “Hard drives need to be opened in dust free environments, and by specialized

personnel, so do not even attempt to open it if you want your data back!!!.” If you opened the

hard drive it might be too late. you have to remove the bottom board not open the hard drive. If

you mean that you have an external Hard Drive and you opened the case, then thats a different

story. If the computer is not detecting the external hard drive, I would suggest to replace the

enclosure, they sell empty ones for about $25, if that does not work then… Take the hard drive

out of the case, remove the board on the bottom of the hard drive, you will see that this board is

sitting on top of contacts, clean those contacts with an eraser. I posted some pictures for you.

Luis, 22. April 2008, 18:30

hey, i have a 500gb freecom hard drive, and up until last week it worked fine. suddenly it has

stopped working, the computer recognizes it has been plugged in but it doesnt appear in my

computer. it also makes a noise like it is trying to load the data, but it doesnt sound like a click. i

think i have problem number 4 on your list. i have opened the hard drive, to ty to clean it with

the rubber, however, i cannot find the contacts that you mention. i dont want to try to clean

anything else, cos i migt actually break he hard drive for good, so ny help you can provide would

be much appretiated. if you have any links to a picture that shows what the contacts look like

then tht wuld be brilliant. i just dont want to lose 500 gb worth of data, and i cannot afford to

send it to a specialist.


Deepak the only way I can help you is by giving you advice. What I would do in your case is take

the hard drive out of the case and connect it directly to the computer or purchase an empty HD

enclosure, (they sell them for around $25) that way you can find out if the problem is with the

enclosure or the hard drive. If that does not work, then you could have a bad logic board on the

hard drive. You could buy another HD just like that one on eBay and swap the boards.

deepak baldi, 12. April 2008, 15:51

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



plugging the device into the USB port, it does not Autorun and the drive letter do not appear in

Explorer nor in Disk Management. Though when connected to computer it recognises the device as

an external USB device but doesnt show any drive letter. I even tried using the Western Digital

diagnostic utility but it gives me an error “Cable Test: Read diagnostics sector error”. Please let

me know if you could help me in getting my data which was stored on that external hard dive.

G33K GiRL, 20. March 2008, 10:07

Ok thanks alot , much appreciated.


He used is A+ Computer Data Recovery Services… http://www.cmpq.com/ I have never used one

of these services before so I am not endorsing them or anything. Just do your research.

G33K GiRL, 19. March 2008, 15:47

Hi Pablo,

Thanks alot for ur reply I really really appreciate it,can you please tell me the specialist address

to send my HD to?

thanks again God bless u.

[email protected]


Don’t worry your data is probably all there, it just can’t be retrieved at the moment. I doubt that

the “Freezer” trick would work for you since your hard drive got damaged during the fall, and this

trick only works when the hard drive starts failing on its own. You probably are going to have to

send it to a data recovery specialist. Hopefully the arm is not scratching the surface of the plate,

but do not connect it anymore just in case. I was talking to a guy at work that had the same

thing happen to him and he sent his to a recovery specialist in Colorado that charged a flat fee, I

think he told me from $200 to $500 depending on the type of damage, so they are not extremely

expensive. He got absolutely everything back; they sent all his files by mail on several CDs.

G33K GiRL, 19. March 2008, 6:59

Hi Pablo,

First thanks alot for the excellent article believe it or not its the first article I read and gives me

some hope!

Please have some patience to read my tragedy :”(

..two days ago my beloved external HD stopped working (100 GB storage) I can’t tell u how it

means to me all my projects,stuff,artworks,articles,SW,drivers eeeeeeeeverything is in there its

simply MY DIGITAL IDENTITY! don’t tell me I had to have a backup because that what I was

thinking of doing the same week as it started the click click thing but it was still working fine

until it fell from me on ground and..stopped working completely :”(…

the case is that whenever I connect it to any computer first you can feel it moving inside then it

makes clicks and keeps moving inside until it stops completely and the computer doesn’t detect it

at all.

Pleeeeeeease help me its a case of life or death for me :”(

http://www.cmpq.com/





Make sure you have the jumpers set correctly first. If not, try to detach the circuit board and

cleaning the contacts with an eraser, if that does not work try replacing the board. And if none of

this works consider sending it for repair to a data recovery specialist.

Nehe, 12. March 2008, 16:27

Hi!

I just moved and my 200gb external hd stoped work. It starts up as usual and it appears on the

computer but it says that it got 0bytes used space and 0bytes free space. I´v tryed to run the

Recover My Files program but it seems it wont search a drive with nothing in it. Any suggestions?


For the last two questions… Freezing can only be done once; usually after this the hard drive dies

forever. However, freezing works only about 60% of the time and usually on dives which started

malfunctioning by themselves. I do not think it will work on your particular case. I would send it

to a data recovery service if the data is too important. If not, freezing is probably your last

option, but remember if it does not work you can do more damage than good.

Raelynae, 3. March 2008, 20:24

Question about the “click click click of death” solution. My WD 500GB MyBook Essential 2.0 fell 2

feet off my endtable today and is now making that tell tale noise. How many times can freezing

the unit be done? My external drive is currently doing that, and in doing so I lost upwards of

100GB. I don’t think that transfering the files would work only one time as transferring that many

files takes longer than it to thaw out. Any help would be nice thanks!

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

Good Evening,

I managed to pull my 240GB hard drive off the coffee table last night and am now getting (as you

refer) the clunking noise of death!!

I have about 50-60GB of music on the drive and dont think I can try the freezer trick as it will

take time to copy this much music over.

Any solutions for me??

Thanks

Jonathan


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.



Kenon Burns, 23. February 2008, 2:05

I own a WD 500GB MyBook Essential 2.0 USB that I use with my own HP laptop with Windows Vista

Home Premium. I disconnected it from my laptop and did not use it for 3 or 4 days. When I

plugged it back into my laptop, the button lights up like it should, and the “Safely Remove

Hardware” icon pops up, but there is no drive letter assigined to it. In “My Computer” it does not

show up either. When I right-click on “My Computer” and go to “Manage,” it shows up as Disk 2,

Unknown, Unreadable with a little red arrow pointing down. What is it that may be wrong and

what should I do about it?

Kenon Burns


CHETU: I do not suggest you change the arm by yourself. Hard Drives are sealed so that no dust

particles get inside. Any tiny particle can damage it and that is why Data Recovery experts work in

special dust-free environments. Send it to a data recovery service.

chetu, 14. December 2007, 18:12

I have one samsung 40gb hdd from that i hear a noise of clungâ€¦ clungâ€¦ clung and i have

another HDD of the same make and same model and i want to swap the arm from the good

harddisk to the bad one,

how can i change the arm can u send me the tecniq so i recover my data

pamela, 5. December 2007, 22:22

I’m not a computer savy person, when my computer crashed I sent in my drive to Gillware. They

were affordable and had my recovered data back to me in a week.

Data Recovery Service

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