They say your life flashes before your eyes earlier y'all (recollect yous) die. When I realized my difficult drive was failing, it was a little similar that. All I could recall of were the hundreds of photos I didn't have a backup of. I was determined to bring them back and I succeeded; sort of.

If your hard disk has failed, this guide volition help you with the repair and data recovery. (If the device is fine, these five methods volition assistance you go data off the hard drive.) Are you looking for help with a failed solid state drive? It's all-time to plough to an good right away.

My Dead Hard Bulldoze Story

Several years ago, I experienced a difficult bulldoze failure. My laptop acted strangely. When the problems persisted after a reboot, I knew information technology was more than an overstretched RAM. I immediately started to back up recent files. About half an hour afterwards, the hard drive failed audibly and the laptop wouldn't boot anymore.

I had backups, but not of everything. Just weeks before my backup bulldoze had reached capacity. To dorsum up important piece of work files, I had decided to delete my personal photos. Ironically, I had already purchased a new external drive, but I had not taken the fourth dimension to create a full fill-in. At present my photos were lost and I was devastated.

Over the next couple of weeks, I researched ways to recover the data and considered doing everything under the sun---and did most of it---to revive the onetime hard drive. This article is the result of that endeavour.

External Hard Drive? Check the Enclosure and Cables

When your external difficult drive fails, it can do then for all the same reasons an internal drive can fail. Sometimes, notwithstanding, it's not the drive that stops working, simply a connexion within the enclosure! And in that case, the drive is easy to revive.

Before you open up up any hardware, exist sure to belch your body'south static electricity, i.east. footing yourself. Remove the hard drive from its casing and use an IDE/SATA information cable and power connector to install the drive internally on your desktop estimator. Alternatively, you tin get an IDE/SATA to USB adapter or a new USB enclosure, then you can hook the drive up externally via USB.

SATA and IDE connector cabels.
Image Credit: ivonnewierink/DepositPhotos

The image in a higher place shows a SATA connector (front) and an IDE connector (dorsum).

Once you lot re-continued the external drive to your computer, given the enclosure was the culprit, Windows should recognize it and assign a drive letter. The drive should pop up under File Explorer > This PC. You can also check nether Disk drives in the Device Manager (printing Windows + X to detect the choice).

If the drive didn't evidence up anywhere, yous can try to manually find your bulldoze to further narrow down the issue; the process is described farther downwardly.

Internal Hard Drive? Check All Cablevision Connections

Sometimes, it's not the drive that failed, but the physical connectedness of cables that connect the drive with the computer's motherboard. Y'all can only wish that this is your problem! So before you hire someone, make sure the data and power cables are firmly connected on both ends.

This is an image of a SATA hard disk drive with a Molex connector and SATA cable

To prevent hazards to your wellness, it's essential to turn off the computer and unplug the ability cord. As mentioned above, you as well need to discharge your body's static electricity, i.e. ground yourself before you get working on your computer's internals. And so open up the instance and brand sure all connections are OK.

Our guide on how to physically install an internal hard drive shows which connections to lookout man out for.

Once you lot have made sure the connections are OK, kicking the reckoner again. If you lot have a desktop computer, y'all can leave the case open up, but stay articulate of its interior.

Does Your Hard Drive Make Sounds?

As you are trying to go the hard drive to run, heed to the sound it is making. Is it completely dead? Or is it all the same spinning? What exactly does it sound similar? Compare your sound to the list of hard drive sounds provided past Data Cent. This will assist yous diagnose the type of impairment.

Hard Disk Drive Repair
Image Credit: andreyuu/DepositPhotos

The damage tin be either internal or external. A clicking sound, for example, suggests the head may be malfunctioning, i.e. internal harm. A completely dead drive, on the other mitt, could exist due to a faulty printed circuit board (PCB), which would be external damage.

Does Windows Recognize Your Hard Drive?

Sometimes, you lot can hear your drive spinning, only it never pops upwards. Or maybe information technology'south completely expressionless. To pinpoint the blazon of damage, endeavor to manually check whether or not your computer recognizes the drive.

You can do this via the BIOS in instance it'south the chief hard bulldoze and your computer no longer boots. After you turn on the computer, enter the BIOS by pressing a trigger key, which could be Del, Esc, F2, or F10, depending on the manufacturer.

Inside the BIOS, navigate through the bachelor menus to observe where it lists which types of drives are connected to the computer. Y'all should detect this information nether the Avant-garde menu, but you might as well observe it indirectly under Boot settings.

This image depicts a BIOS Boot Settings menu

If you have hooked up the drive to some other reckoner, yous don't need to admission the BIOS at all. In Windows, click the key combination Windows + R, which will launch the Run input window.

Blazon cmd into the field and hit Enter. This volition open the Command Prompt. Hither blazon diskpart and hitting Enter, to open the corresponding tool. In the diskpart window, blazon list volume and hit Enter to bear witness all drives connected to your computer.

this image depicts a diskpart list volume menu from within the Windows Diskpart.exe executable

If Windows recognized your drive, meaning it appears under diskpart, only doesn't show upwards every bit an accessible drive, chances are Windows just recognizes the PCB, just the drive itself is damaged (internal impairment). In other words, if the drive is recognized in any shape or form, the PCB is most likely working and replacing information technology will not fix the hard drive!

Is the Printed Circuit Board Broken?

Technically, the external PCB is relatively easy to supervene upon. However, we strongly advise against swapping out the PCB yourself.It's not equally elementary equally finding a matching model.

Unless your difficult bulldoze is ancient, the PCB and disk will use a unique microcode to communicate. If you replace a PCB of a drive that requires this microcode to boot, you could permanently damage your information.

Hard Disk Drive with removed Printed Circuit Board
Image Credit: firstblood/DepositPhotos

Co-ordinate to Datarecovery.com, specialists tin "copy, rewrite, or repair the micrcode using advanced equipment."

Witchcraft and Wizardry

When my hard drive failed, the PCB was fine; the drive was yet recognized and spinning, but information technology didn't bear witness up in Windows, significant I could non access it, and no software recovery tool could assistance me, either.

And so I put my terminal hope into some of those obscure tricks that y'all'll find floating around the internet, similar shaking the drive, hitting it onto a difficult surface, exposing it to dry heat in the oven, or sticking information technology in the freezer overnight. If you have any idea how a hard drive works, and then all of these methods should give yous the shivers!

Frozen Hard Disk Drive
Epitome Credit: foxiedelmar/DepositPhotos

Well, I didn't dare to melt my bulldoze, but my suspicion was that the caput was stuck. And so I did shake information technology; to no avail. Since I could follow the reasoning, I also wrapped my bulldoze in an closed Ziploc back and stuck it in the freezer overnight. The thought is that low temperatures cause metals to compress and contract.

So if the head was stuck, the common cold might get it unstuck. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. And I probably caused condensation to settle on the hard bulldoze platter, which could have caused a lot more impairment. I somewhen gave up and stored the drive for a future in which I was hoping to be able to afford professional data recovery.

Fill-in Strategy Communication

Should yous succeed with one of the questionable methods in a higher place, notation that the fix will be temporary! So be prepared. Know exactly what you desire to back up and how. Have the right backup software to rapidly copy your data and have enough storage infinite available.

If you lot desire to copy files manually, but re-create one set of files at a time! If you make the head jump back and along between too many files by kicking off multiple re-create-and-paste processes, yous will slow down the overall fill-in procedure and increase the likelihood of a fatal head crash.

Consult a Specialist for Professional person Information Recovery

If you can afford professional aid or merely cannot afford to wait for a phenomenon, exercise consult a specialist. My recommendation is to get with a reputable company.

They should work with professional technicians and tools, be able to open your hard drive in clean rooms or under grit-gratis conditions, follow industry standards, and have solid credentials, every bit well every bit first-class recommendations. Afterward all, you will trust them with your individual data.

Kroll Ontrack, one of the near reputable companies in the market, offers a free consultation and cost evaluation.

Earlier you selection a visitor, exist sure y'all sympathize the conditions! Most charge just for looking at the drive and making a recommendation. They will charge actress for actually attempting to recover the data. Some will charge a full recovery fee, even if they failed to recover the data.

Revive Your Drive

Diagnosing and fixing a cleaved hard drive is serious business concern. Exercise take it seriously, but also try to exclude some of the more elementary-to-fix culprits before you fork out hundreds of dollars to a specialist. The more you know, the better. How far yous go to diagnose and fix your hard drive will depend on how important the data is for yous.

You probably wonder what happened with my difficult drive. Well, one fine twenty-four hour period, when I was dissolving my apartment, I decided to give information technology one terminal take a chance and and so let get of information technology. More than two years after I had tried everything I dared to go information technology to work, again and once again for weeks, I only plugged it in and information technology simply worked.

I recovered all my data. The drive actually continued to work for many more than years. Phone call me lucky!

Fifty-fifty if you managed to repair your drive and recovered all your data, I would not trust this hard bulldoze once more. Here'southward what you tin can do with your old hard drive and here'south what you should know while buying a new hard bulldoze.

And on the subject of data recovery, information technology's a proficient idea to learn how to rescue your information from a malware-infected organisation.

Image credit: Dead HDD via Flickr

We hope y'all like the items nosotros recommend and hash out! MUO has affiliate and sponsored partnerships, and then nosotros receive a share of the revenue from some of your purchases. This won't impact the price y'all pay and helps the states offer the best production recommendations.

10 Reasons Why Yous Shouldn't Use Spotify

Read Next

About The Author