TechGeek’s Posthaven Site

If any of the following instances sound familiar, you've got a broken hard drive. Come and see me if you want the data pulled from it.

• Hard disk has crashed, it has been enclosed in a 2.5" external ide hard disk enclosure. When connected via usb to pc drive not accessible. Need all excel,word and pdf files. Also had two companies set up on sage software which had not been backed up in a while, need access to this information also
• I have a Western Digital My Passport 500gb ext drive that is making a clicking sound after receiving a slight knock. Windows will not recognise the drive, and I receive a 'fatal' error when trying to access it via Disk Management. I need as many of the files as possible recovered from the drive.
• MacBook Air, flash storage can't find the hard drive. Apple said SSD needs a firmware update but in order to do that it needs to erase all the data, so I need a backup first or I lose everything (and I don't have a backup)
• The hard drive has been used for long time, when plugged up the light comes on, but there is no response, the drive does not move, usually you can hear it whine when running. The remote drive is a Freedom 500GB, would you please give me an price for extracting the data, I do not wish to have the drive repaired, I can supply a brand new remote drive for the data to be down loaded to.
• My 4tb harddrive has stopped working. ATA /SATA password lost
• Was working perfectly this morning and has completely stopped connecting to my laptop. Work IT guy says that it can be recovered but won't work when plugged in at the moment. I am a teacher and need this sorted immediately. Please let me know the timeline and cost.
• I have a WD external hard disk and it is not getting detected on any computer that's why I can't access any of my data in it.
• I have a 5tb Seagate Hard Drive which unfortunatelly fell from the desk on a carpet. When connected to the laptop it shows as a device (I can eject it) but it doesn't actually appear anywhere. I'm interested to know how much it would cost to get it either fixed or have the data recovered.
• Device not getting detected. Recurring clicking sound, but the platter sounds like it is spinning. Possibly the heads are moving back and forth.

Opening hours are 9am-5pm, Monday to Saturday.

Enquiry: My Hard Drive recently packed in. It was running ok the night before (although in retrospect after being asked about it, I'd heard it click a couple of times), but when I booted it up I kept getting an error message saying windows couldn't be found.
So on boot up I went to the BIOS menu to see if something had reordered the drives and discovered the hard drive couldn't be read. I then took it to a repair shop and they attempted to diagnose the problem (it was them who asked about the clicking). They left it over night for a diagnostic and said that on a couple of occasions the Hard Drive was picked up but the only info they could get off it was garbled nonsense. They said that they thought that the heads may have failed on the Hard Drive and that wasn't something they could fix and recommended someone else. The 2nd person came to the same conclusion and said he didn't want to tamper with the heads either as it wasn't something he could fix and so he recommended you.

The only other note I can think of is that the laptop seemed to be running quite hot leading up to the failure, but as I've replaced the hard drive this doesn't seem to be the problem. For reference, I live in Liverpool, just in case you need to refer me to that office.

My Response: What you have described there is a hard drive that is about to completely fail. It probably didn't help that the first repair shop you took it to kept it switched on last night. If a hard drive is running hot and slowly then my recommendation is to switch the hard drive quickly and wait a while for it to cool down - don't put it in a fridge or freezer and this will put unnecessary stress on the hard drive, instead let is cool naturally.

When it's completely cooled you can attach it again and attempt to copy your files off of it asap. If you are successful at this then you've had a lucky escape. If the hard drive begins to run slowly or is not recognised then I'm afraid it's too late for you to do anything - the hard drive is already badly damaged. If you need to remove the data from it you'll need to contact a data recovery company.

Finding a Data Recovery Company

You can look for a local data recovery company but my experience is that good data recovery companies a few and far between. Make a distinction between a data recovery specialist and a PC repair shop. They are not the same beast at all. Even though the shop may claim to perform data recovery, it's capabilities will be no where approaching what the data recovery company can do. The best way I've found is to do a countrywide internet search and then look at the reviews of the company. Another useful method is to look for bloggers who write about data recovery and hard drive issues - if you are in the UK you can visit the Recover Deleted Data web site. It deals in answering questions about all types of data recovery, not just retrieving deleted data.