A drive which does nothing (no spin, no light, no detection) usually feels like it is dead. While it almost never truly “dies”, “dead” is a symptom with three common causes which are very recoverable, as well as one less recoverable cause, and the difference between them will determine your next action. So, work the tree from top to bottom.
Eliminate what powers the drive first then what runs it and finally what spins it. Most drives which are called “dead” fail at either the first or second branch on the tree (the cheap ones).
Begin where it is free. Power and connection: try a different SATA power lead on a desktop computer for a drive that uses SATA, or try a different USB cable for an external drive. Cables fail all the time and produce an exact imitation of death; then try a different port; avoid un-powered hubs and front panel sockets in desktop computers that struggle to provide enough power for desktop-class externals. The enclosure: external hard disk drives are bare drives plus small USB bridge boards, and those boards die far more often than the bare drive itself. If comfortable with opening the enclosure, the bare drive can be tested using another docking station or enclosure. There is one caution before you do this test: some external hard disk drives (notably several Western Digital ranges) use encryption through their bridge board, therefore keep the original enclosure even if it appears dead, because its bridge board may still matter when trying to recover data. Not comfortable opening it? This will be the first thing the free diagnostic will also attempt.
Drives that draw power yet are absolutely silent (no vibrations as the drive spins up and no other noise) can be assumed to have suffered a loss of their printed circuit board due to a shorted out protection diode or controller chip caused by a power surge or a reversed plug used on an external unit. Or simply failed some component on the board. These drives are repairable benchwork, however there is one modern item that will kill the DIY version: the printed circuit board contains calibration information unique to its drive stored in a read-only memory chip. Therefore repairing this type of drive requires either repairing your board itself or transferring the calibration data to another board containing a replacement read-only memory chip, never a blind swap. In most cases, when done correctly, a drive killed by a power surge can successfully be repaired and it should once again read fully. The complete process for surges killing a drive is located on our won’t-power-on page.
The remaining types of damage are mechanical, and they typically announce themselves. Drives that produce a faint hum or buzz with no spin-up: motor trying to spin but unable to do so, which commonly occurs in drives that were dropped and caused bearing seizure or caused heads to stick to the surface of the platters. Beeping sounds (which is really just the motor whining because it is stuck due to resistance) indicate that this is in the same category. Spin followed by clicking: alive but lost; this is where the clicking guide’s advice comes in. All of these are considered benchwork repairs. Motor, head assembly transplants are involved in the repair along with careful imaging. It is highly discouraged to repeatedly power-on a stuck head that was dragged across a platter by “hopeful” retry attempts, as this causes additional damage. One power-on told you what symptoms occurred; the second power-on is for the bench. Regardless, the path forward is through hard drive recovery, which begins with our complimentary 48 hour diagnostic and a fixed written quote for repair.
Unlikely. “Dead” is descriptive of how the hard drive acts, NOT of how the data stored on the platters/chips is. Usually the platters/chips holding your files are still fine after whatever hardware failure occurred. Drive electronics can be repaired. Motors & heads can be swapped out. And the data can be retrieved using imaging techniques. Drives that have truly been rendered UNRECOVERABLE are relatively few and far between. However, drives that have been made unrecoverable through determined DIY methods are somewhat more common.
Often. If you’re dealing with an external drive, this is almost always the first test we would run. More specifically, it’s one test that we think has some real value. The USB bridge board within an external enclosure is significantly more likely to fail compared to the actual drive contained within. First try running the drive through a different cable and a powered port. Once that fails, you should be able to read the raw data from the bare drive in another enclosure or dock. But if you need access to the data and aren’t comfortable disassembling equipment, feel free to bring it in as is and we’ll make those connections for you at no charge as part of our diagnostic services.
That’s the most popular fix on the web and fails miserably on modern drives. Circuit boards contain unique calibration information specific to each individual drive in a small ROM chip located on the board. Therefore, when you swap boards with a donor board and it doesn’t have the exact same chip contents, you’ve essentially given yourself a dead or worse yet, spinning incorrectly parameterised drive. Repairing at the board level does work. Blindly swapping boards simply does not.
Our FREE 48 hour diagnostic will tell you which branch you’re currently on, and what it will take to reverse engineer your way back down it with your files.