It "stopped working a few months ago", though not all at once: it "would respond spiratically and then eventually stopped spinning all together". On it are university work, client material and personal files. An intermittent drive is not a drive being temperamental; it is a drive working through the last of its attempts. The pattern is depressingly consistent — a while of mostly working, then a while of sometimes working, then nothing — and it points at the mechanism rather than the filing. By the time a drive will not spin at all, the fault is a motor that cannot turn or a head assembly that will not let it, and neither is going to improve with another go at the socket.
| Media | An external hard drive that responded sporadically over several months before stopping altogether, holding university work, client material and personal files. |
| Reported situation | External hard drive · stopped working some months ago · responded only sporadically before that · eventually stopped spinning entirely · university work, client content and personal files wanted. |
| Fault class | Developing mechanical failure — the sporadic phase was the mechanism struggling, and the final silence is a motor that will not turn or heads preventing it from doing so. Data intact on the platters; further power is what threatens it. |
| Equipment used | Not powered on further given that it had stopped spinning · removed from its enclosure and put on a current-limited bench supply and profiled, the spin-up behaviour and current draw assessed · opened beneath laminar flow, examined beneath a stereo microscope, a seized or weakened motor addressed and matched donor heads fitted where needed, alignment set · imaged using DeepSpar over a PC-3000 UDMA, the data traced in R-Studio and confirmed. |
The sporadic phase is the part worth understanding, because it is the part that gets ignored. A drive that mounts on the third attempt one week and the tenth the next is not being awkward — it is failing gradually, and each success is drawn from a diminishing supply. People take those successes as reassurance and use the drive a little longer, which is entirely understandable and exactly the wrong conclusion. The right response to intermittent is to copy everything off immediately and then stop using it.
Once a drive will not spin at all, the fault has moved somewhere specific. Either the spindle motor cannot get the platters turning — worn bearings, a seizure after months of stopping and starting — or the head assembly has ended up resting on the surface and is holding everything in place. Both are mechanical, both are dealt with under laminar flow, and neither is diagnosable through the enclosure.
For the files themselves, none of this is fatal. University work, client material and family photographs are all recorded on the platters, and the platters are not what failed. What determines how much comes back is how much running the drive did while it was struggling, because that is when heads that have gone out of true do their damage. A drive retired at the first stutter usually images almost completely; one used for another three months sometimes has gaps.
It was not powered on again — there is nothing to learn from a drive that will not spin except by measuring it properly. On a current-limited bench supply the current draw and spin-up behaviour were assessed, which distinguishes a motor that cannot turn from one that is being prevented from turning. It was opened in filtered air under laminar flow, looked over under a stereo microscope, the mechanism addressed and matched donor heads fitted where they were part of the problem, then read out to an image on DeepSpar, driven through PC-3000 UDMA in controlled passes. The data was found in R-Studio and checked.
Mechanism dealt with in filtered air, the drive read out to an image, and the university work, client files and personal data handed back on fresh media. The diagnostic cost nothing, and the figure that followed was fixed, written and inclusive of VAT for the fault as found. Because the drive had to be opened, 50% of that figure was payable before the clean-air stage against donor parts and bench hours, with the balance due only on a proven recovery. The months of intermittent use had cost some surface in places, which was said honestly at quote stage rather than discovered afterwards.
If a drive is currently intermittent rather than dead, stop reading and go and copy it — right now, to anywhere else, starting with whatever you would most hate to lose. Intermittent is not a drive being moody; it is a drive spending its remaining attempts, and the fact that it worked this morning is not evidence that it will work this evening. Once it has stopped spinning entirely, the position changes: there is nothing useful left to try at home, and repeated attempts to power it up risk moving a mechanical fault onto the recorded surfaces. Leave it off, keep it flat and still, and get it in front of somebody with a laminar-flow bench and matched donor parts.
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.
Two noises, two facts: the whir says the motor is fine, the click says the heads are not
Spinning is not the same as ready — a drive with damaged structures never gets as far as introducing itself
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 logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.