Member Avatar for bill.jeffs

Hi ive been given a friends hard drive to recover some data from as his machine recently died! i said id have a look but it seems as though the drive is completely dead. Ive plugged it in as a slave on my machine and it powers up (loudly) and starts clicking as though something is getting caught inside it does this quite a few times before powering down again. the drive is picked up when the machine boots but it gets stuck on the detecting IDE drives screen with the drive listed.

I also have a usb to ide adapter which i tried and pretty much the same thing happened windows didnt pick up the drive and eventually after some loud clicking it powered itself down again.

I just wondered if there was anything else i could do to get to the data on the drive or whether it was completly dead??

any help would be much appreciated.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jessicamurray08

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Thread summary and a practical next step plan.

described a drive that powers briefly and then fails to stay available; replies from and point toward hardware/firmware level faults. Before pursuing donor-PCB swaps or lab work, collect clean diagnostics and try non‑destructive recovery steps so a technician (or you) has maximum usable information.

First, document everything: photograph the drive label and PCB sticker, note model, firmware version and serial number. Try powering the drive from a known-good desktop power supply or a powered IDE/SATA dock (some USB adapters do not provide the proper 12 V/current for 3.5" drives). Boot a Linux live system and capture kernel messages and SMART information so you know what the controller reports:

dmesg | tail -n 50
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX

If the drive is briefly visible, attempt a controlled imaging session immediately rather than working on the original filesystem. Use GNU ddrescue to make an image while minimizing stress on the device; do a fast first pass, then retries for bad areas. Example sequence:

sudo ddrescue -f -n /dev/sdX drive_image.img rescue.log
sudo ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdX drive_image.img rescue.log

See the ddrescue documentation for details and options: GNU ddrescue manual.

If the drive requires component-level repair, labs will often need the model/firmware/serial, photos, and a summary of what you tried (power source, adapters, imaging attempts and logs). Many modern drives store calibration/firmware data on a small board chip, so a simple PCB swap can fail without transferring that data. For an overview of professional procedures and why clean conditions are required, see Data recovery.

If the data is critical or the drive becomes noisier or less responsive, stop further home tinkering and contact a reputable recovery lab with the diagnostics you collected.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for freshfitz

You can pop the cover off and see if there is any physical damage to the platters. DO NOT SPIN UP THE DRIVE WITH THE COVER OFF. You can drop a head due to air pressure loss inside the drive. If there is no physical damage you may have a bad pc board you can try and find a match swap pc boards and see if it works. The pc board needs to be an exact match even the same drive manufacturer, size etc can match but the 2 drives can have a different pc boards. If the platters are damaged I think you are out of luck
good luck!

Member Avatar for bill.jeffs

sorry for the late reply - been on holiday. thanks for the advice.. ive never taken the cover off of a drive before is it easy to do? it does sound like there may be something mechanically wrong with it - a clicking sound. its quite an old drive 30Gb(im not sure they even make 30Gb) drives anymore so im not sure how easy locating a replacement pc board would be? but ill certainly give it a shot!

Member Avatar for ajit1984

if their partition structures are damaged or deleted. RAID reconstruction and Dynamic disk support are included, as well as support for recovering encrypted files, compressed files, and alternative data streams. File/disk content can be viewed and edited in the hexadecimal editor. Flexible parameter settings give you absolute control over data recovering.
SNIP

Member Avatar for anaesarora

THIS DRIVE can have a bad head or a bad smart firmware module. the drive must not be opened because its clear from the clicks and spin down that the head has gone weak and now it cant detect the firm ware in the service area.
it needs head replacement in a lab . well if its hitachi , there are certain hard ware products which help data recovery. they are expensive and usually data recovery guys have them .i could have helped you recover the drive , i have the hard ware , provided the forum allows us to pm .

Member Avatar for jessicamurray08

thanks for the info here..

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