Do not assume the worst; start working outwards, as there's a reasonable chance you'll find the issue in one of these steps: the power adapter, the cable, a different port, a different machine. We see a lot of totally dead drives that are just perfectly good hard drives with a bad power supply, and where the fault is actually internal it's usually an electrical problem, so your data remains intact.
Each of these takes two minutes to check and resolves a good number of the enquiries we receive regarding this issue.
Nearly always electronic. Typically the result of a shorted component on the main circuit board or failure of a power regulation unit, or damage due to excessive voltage surges. In most cases, the hard drive's mechanical components remain intact; this is why the cost of repair is lower compared to other types of service.
A seized spindle motor, or 'stiction': the magnetic read/write heads bond to the disk surfaces as a result of extended periods without spinning. Both require mechanical intervention and hands-on work on the bench.
The drive cannot load the necessary firmware modules during the boot process; therefore, it never identifies itself properly to the computer. There is no physical damage and there are no available programs that can access/repair it.
That is what you will find when doing research online and it destroys drives.
Replacing boards from one identical model drive to another is almost always unsuccessful in repairing today's hard drives. Each board has its own unique set of adaptive information, which was generated based on the specific drive it shipped with: calibration values specifically for the head assembly and platters used in that drive. This adaptive information resides in a Read Only Memory (ROM) chip located on the drive's board.
Using a board carrying adaptive information for another drive is telling the heads how to operate outside their specifications. At best, the drive will not be detected, and at worst, it writes incorrect calibration settings back and makes fixing the initial problem even more difficult.
To properly replace the board you should either remove the ROM chip from your board and place it in the donor, or read the adaptives and transfer them. This is how we perform repairs, which is why a board-level repair is priced as work and not as a part swap.
If somebody has already swapped a board. Please advise us during diagnostics if this has occurred. This will help us determine where to focus our initial assessment. There is no shame in having done something suggested by someone else over the internet, as it is the most commonly given piece of bad advice online.
A non-starting drive (which cannot be powered) costs from £300 +VAT. We consider electronic-class repairs as being at the low end of what we can repair since the drive itself doesn't require disassembly and typically the disks remain intact even though the drive's circuitry has failed.
When a diagnosis reveals a “sticking” problem (stiction), or when a drive's motor is stuck (seized), these types of failures fall into the mechanical-class category and therefore carry a 50% deposit. You are informed at the diagnostic whether your failure is an electronic or mechanical one, prior to agreeing to any repair services.
Generally speaking, silence is preferable to clicking. Typically, silence means that there was a problem with the drive's electronics rather than its mechanics, and electronic faults are also among the easier ones to recover due to the fact that the platters were never touched.
It won't work on anything modern and may even make things worse. There is calibration information unique to each drive stored on its PCB. Therefore, the IC needs to be moved. This can be done with soldering but not by swapping.
It's common that surge damage occurs through the PCB. Frequently this is the entire fault, and the disk behind it is usually fine. Do not try to turn it back on again: if there is a short somewhere, the next time you apply power you'll only make things worse.
This is an entirely different issue. This is due to either the firmware or file system instead of power. Also, this is often one of the easier forms of issues to recover from. Don't initialise it when asked to do so.
Stop immediately and do not attempt to power it any more. Something on the PCB has failed short. In terms of electronics, this is relatively easy to fix (as long as you don't continue to put voltage into it).
Most repairs take anywhere from three to seven working days. This would typically be faster than other types of repairs such as mechanical because we would never need to obtain donor mechanical parts or spend time on the bench.
We have access to an inventory of 10,000 parts, and our free written diagnosis helps us find the problem with your unit. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Start your recovery today.