The problem with this drive is that it "powers up ok, it just doesn't get recognised by the computer". Someone else has seen it before as well and said "all the data can be recovered" and also mentioned "something about the partitions failing". This hard drive is 14 years old. A spinning drive may be physically operational (i.e. running) yet still not ready. A drive will not report itself to a computer before reading its internal tables; these are essentially the service areas manufacturers use for storing their defect lists and translation tables. If there is damage to these (or to the partition structures above them), then the drive will spin normally and silently tell the computer nothing.
| Media | Fourteen year old hard drive · powers up and operates as normal, but not detected by the computer · previous review indicated probable failure of partitioning on this device, however, it would be possible to retrieve all data. |
| Reported situation | Hard drive approximately fourteen years old · powers up and runs smoothly · not detected by computer · previous evaluation believed it likely due to failed partitions and able to be restored. |
| Fault class | Faulty partition/firmware · operational mechanism intact; faulty partition structure/service area prevent access. Data has been undamaged by time and is available through direct accessing of structures using professional tools and rebuilding from images. |
| Equipment used | Read onto PC-3000 UDMA, a hardware-based write blocker placed in front of the device. Each of the firmware, service area, and partition tables were evaluated. Service area issues addressed through firmware, partition table rebuilt allowing access to the drive's content. Imaged out to DeepSpar. Filesystem dissected utilising R-Studio, verified through validation, and copied to clean media. |
A hard drive has a section of platter that is reserved for it, and an operating system never gets to see it. It houses all of the defect lists, adaptive parameters (to help improve performance) and translation tables (that translate what a computer is asking for in terms of address, to the physical location on the disk where the data resides). The disk reads that area first before it says "I am ready". If you damage that area of the disk, you'll end up with a hard drive that spins normally, draws normal current levels, but is completely invisible to every machine that you connect it to.
The layer above these (the structural layers) contains the partitions. The partition structure is a map showing where the usable storage has been defined. It can also fail as an independent failure mechanism and appear to be failing in such a manner externally as well. Only with appropriate hardware can you separate these failures. Both are repaired in a similar way (read the physical drive under its native interface, repair/rebuild the structures, then image the newly accessible portion of the media and work on the copy).
It may be obvious, but we want to state this simply: the age of the drive is irrelevant and should be said as such. Being fourteen years old will not cause a drive to lose its data; a fourteen year old drive still contains all that it did when new. However, the mechanical side (bearings, lubricant, etc.) and the physical willingness of a drive to keep spinning does vary with time, which is an even better reason to read it one time, correctly, instead of trying to make it show up in Windows many times. The first evaluation was justified in being optimistic about recovering every bit of information from the drive, but it was a prediction, not a promise, and we would rather make that assessment after taking an image of the drive and not before.
The drive then moved to a PC-3000 UDMA, along with a write blocker placed in front of it. This way the drive could still be queried at a firmware level even though it would not normally show up as being available for data access. Each of the service area, translation tables and partition structures were looked at individually (as opposed to assumed) and repaired to make them accessible. The drive was then made into an image using DeepSpar in a single, controlled read pass due to the drive's age, and the filesystem was then parsed out from the image using R-Studio, with the recovered files checked before anything was written out.
Firmware fixes to the structure of the hard drive, partitions were rebuilt, an image was made of the drive (including all of the data) and the data was then moved to new media. The diagnostic process was free. The next step had a fixed, written price, plus VAT. The hard drive did not need to have its casing opened up as the issue was related to the internal structure of the drive, rather than the mechanical aspect. Therefore, you only pay if we recover your data. If we cannot recover any of your data, there will be no invoice. The drive was returned with the honest recommendation that fourteen years is a good innings and it should not be asked for a fifteenth.
Don't be tempted to continue trying to plug the drive into other computers. When a spinning drive isn't recognised by computers it generally failed prior to the time any computer could assist; the issue lies with the structures the drive reads about itself, therefore a fourth computer would give you the same answer as the first three. It is definitely a bad idea to allow someone to initialise your disk, create partitions or to rewrite the partition table for your disk, since they are essentially overwriting the exact data a recovery rebuilds from. If someone tells you there is potential for recovering all of the information on your drive, consider that to be an educated guess, versus a certainty. The most accurate response to this statement will come after the image of your drive has been made and not prior.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
Intermittent is not lucky, it is a countdown — and the silence at the end of it is the motor or the heads
Two noises, two facts: the whir says the motor is fine, the click says the heads are not
No spin means no conversation — the fault is in the power path or the mechanism, and the BIOS is only reporting the silence
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and on logical work you only pay if we recover your data. Start online or ring the freephone.