If the drive contains absolutely essential data, the best practice is to leave it powered off. Get it to a data recovery company and explain the situation; they’ll be able to evaluate the drive without risking platter damage, ensuring that you’ll be able to get a full recovery of the contents.

With that said, if you’re reading this article, you probably didn’t do that — you tried to start the drive, at which point you realized that your data was inaccessible. In that case, you probably encountered one of the following scenarios:

The drive “beeps.” A beeping sound usually comes from the spindle motor hub. The hard drive’s electronics aren’t able to provide enough power to the spindle to spin the platters. This can occur due to electronic issues, but it’s more commonly associated with a spindle failure. Essentially, the spindle is “locked up,” so it’s not able to run at its normal speed.

That’s a problem, since hard drives need to maintain a certain amount of speed in order to keep their read/write heads from coming into contact with their platters (the part of the drive that stores your data). If you hear a beep, we strongly recommend turning the drive off. Do not attempt to recover your own data. An engineer will need to repair or replace the spindle in order to copy the data off of the drive.

The drive “clicks.” This can occur when the hard drive’s actuator arm hits a limiter, which prevents them from going too far in one direction. If you’re hearing a persistent clicking sound, the drive’s heads are having trouble finding your data.

Again, this is a serious sign of a physical hard drive failure. It’s possible that the read/write heads are in contact with the platters, and they could remove the magnetic material that stores your data. Unplug the drive immediately and contact a data recovery professional.

The drive “whirrs.” A whirring sound can also indicate a spindle or head failure. It could mean that the read/write heads are in direct contact with the platters, which is obviously bad news. To put it simply: If you’re hearing any sort of unusual sounds from a dropped external hard drive, turn it off immediately. It’s past the point of home repair.

The drive doesn’t seem to turn on at all. It’s possible (if unlikely) that the electronic component of your hard drive was damaged. It’s more likely that the drive has sustained physical damage, and it’s simply unable to boot as a result.

If you’re absolutely sure that your hard drive won’t boot at all, you can remove it from its external enclosure — taking care to properly ground yourself before touching it — and try to hook it up to a desktop computer. If you’re lucky, it’ll boot up, at which point you can access the data, provided that the external drive’s electronics weren’t serving some essential function (for instance, disabling encryption). In most cases, opening the drive’s external enclosure will void your product warranty, so you might want to enlist the help of a data recovery provider anyways.

At Datarecovery.com, we operate fully outfitted laboratories at each of our locations, staffed with experienced engineers who can treat any type of hard drive failure. If you’ve dropped your external hard drive, contact us at 1-800-237-4200 to discuss the situation and obtain a free estimate.

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In order to learn about the hard drive data recovery process and the factors that affect hard drive failure, it’s helpful to understand how hard drives physically function. This article will provide some insight. If you need hard drive data recovery, please contact us at 1.800.237.4200 to speak with an expert.

A Look at the Components That Hard Drives Use to Read and Write Data

Modern hard drives consist of several basic components. Of course, these components are extremely complex, and data recovery requires an equally complex set of tools.

Major components include:

• Magnetic Platters – Made from glass or aluminum along with a ceramic substrate, the platters are coated with a thin magnetic film. This allows the heads to read and write magnetic charges. Hard drive platters are extremely sensitive, and if they sustain serious damage, data will become unrecoverable. However, they’re housed securely in an enclosure that prevents contamination (although contrary to popular belief, this enclosure is not airtight – an airtight enclosure would not allow the heads to operate properly).
• Spindle – A spindle spins the platters under read/write heads, which are able to magnetically write and read the data that the platters store. While in operation, the heads of the drive never actually come into contact with the hard drive’s platters unless the drive suffers a fairly severe physical failure; rather, they float slightly above the platters while reading, writing, and seeking information.
• Read/Write Heads – The heads of a hard drive can move back and forth across the surface of the platters at extremely high speeds in order to seek specific sectors of data. They’re also extremely precise, and read and write data at blindingly fast speeds. Because the heads of the hard drive are so sensitive, it’s important that hard drives aren’t subjected to large amounts of physical shock that may cause them to become damaged or misaligned.
• Printed Circuit Board – The PCB (the green electronics board on the bottom of the drive) of a hard drive often contains critical information that the drive needs to function properly in the form of specialized microcode.

This information is often specifically programmed to the board of the drive during the drive’s construction to meet each individual drive’s specifications, and as a result when a PCB fails this information must be reconstructed. However, most of the microcode is located on the platters (more on this in a moment). The board also allows your hard drive to communicate with your computer.

This is not a complete list of components. Hard drives also have air filters, a motor, and various cables and components that allow for physical functionality. Perhaps most importantly, hard drives have firmware that provides basic operational instructions, and firmware microcode plays an enormous role in the data recovery process.

A Basic Guide to Hard Drive Firmware

Hard drive firmware is located primarily within a service area on the platters, but a small amount is also located on the PCB. This microcode is often specific to its drive – transferring the firmware from one hard drive to another would cause the second drive to fail, even if it was from the same model number and drive family as the first.

Some of the most important microcode includes:

• Relational information about the drive’s heads. The drive must be programmed so its heads can work together. slight differences between drives make this information unique to every hard drive.
• Factory-born defects contained on the drive (often called a p-list). Again, this information is unique to every hard drive. By our calculations, the chances of two 300GB drives having the same factory defect table is roughly one in 500 trillion.
• A list of sectors that have gone bad since you owned the drive (called the G-list). While not as critical, a misappropriated sector can cause your data to become temporarily inaccessible. This should be recoverable by any competent data recovery company.
• The zone table of the drive. This critical piece of information tells the CPU the density of data on the platter as the heads move from the inner part of the platter to the outer edge.
• Heads map. This tells the drive in what order it should use a disk head, and also how many heads are in the drive.
• SMART log. This keeps track of operating specs, and flags the BIOS when failure is imminent.

Once again, this not a comprehensive list. In order to access or change any firmware information, however, data recovery providers need to fully understand how the firmware functions on the specific drive they’re working on; they must have detailed information about the microcode structure of that drive family. They must also have a specialized tool that can access and rewrite the microcode.

Datarecovery.com is a world leader in data technology, and we are authorized by all manufacturers to perform services on all hard drive models. We can repair or replace any component and work directly with hard drive microcode, and our various technology innovations translates to high success rates across all models.

For more information or to set up a hard drive data recovery evaluation, call us today at 1.800.237.4200.

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“We’ve already received a number of hard drives from businesses and personal computer users through our St. Louis laboratory,” said Ben Carmitchel, President of DataRecovery.com. “Over the next month or so, we expect to receive several hundred more. Major storms usually cause data loss, unfortunately, and this storm was particularly rough for our customers.”

Sensitive electronics also need protection from extreme weather. If a laptop or desktop computer sits in a cold environment with temperatures of under 60 degrees, the computer should sit in a room temperature environment for at least four hours before operation. This allows the computer’s hard drive to adjust to the new temperature, preventing hard drive read/write head issues. Computer owners should also ground themselves before handling their hard drives. Static electricity can build up during dry winters, and static discharge can instantly damage electronics.

Most importantly, computer users should regularly back up important files. A regular backup plan can prevent permanent data loss on any system, regardless of its size, and Carmitchel notes that data recovery should be a last resort.

“We offer data recovery for all types of hard drives, servers, and other storage devices,” said Carmitchel. “Of course, we’d rather help our clients avoid data loss in the first place, particularly during harsh winter weather.”

Datarecovery.com is a world leader in data recovery and computer forensics. With four locations in California, Illinois, Arizona, and Toronto, the company provides a variety of services to thousands of clients each year. Visit www.datarecovery.com for more information.

Contact Information

Datarecovery.com, Inc.
Ben Carmitchel
1-618-635-2020
www.datarecovery.com
Ph. 800.237.4200 ext. 269

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