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Disclaimer: This is only for when a Professional Data Recovery Service is not an option (usually due to price). You should be sure that you won't try the professional route later on, things you try here may damage the drive. It may reduce the chance of professional data recovery, or make any recovery impossible. You should be 100% sure that you won't be using a professional service before you try any techniques below. Click here to see the professional options instead.
This page will have more added to it later on, it should detail techniques, advice, software, and anything else to assist in recovering data. Some examples of failed drives I have fixed: Symptom: No power, no spinning, sometimes caused power supply to trip when drive was plugged in. Cause: The drive was from a USB Enclosure. The customer used a 18volt power adapter instead of the correct 12volt power adapter. This shorted a Capacitor. Resolution: Used a multimeter to test capacitors, found a shorted one. Removed it with soldering iron. Confirmed the short was gone. I was able to plug the drive in and recover all data. Result: I was able recover 100% of the data on the drive. Symptom: Quiet intermittent buzzing from sound, drive would not spin up. Cause: The customer dropped the hard drive (4TB USB Portable 2.5" Seagate drive). The head was out in the middle of the platter, and the platter would not spin. Resolution: I was able to get the head back into the rest position. Here is the video I used as a reference for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Y7BniaRXg Result: I was able recover 100% of the data on the drive. Symptom: Clicking sounds Cause: The drive just stopped working one day, and started making clicking sounds. Resolution: I wrapped the drive in a couple layers of paper towels (with SATA ports still sticking out). I put it in a ziplock bag and froze it for a few hours. When I removed it from the freezer I was able to plug it in and get most of the data off the drive. Result: I was able recover 80% of the data on the drive. | |
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