HDD recovery

knowlton · 24 Jun 2011 at 13:36

Hi all,

I have a laptop SATA hard disk drive.. Unfortunately, I dropped my laptop and the HDD has since failed (I think I could hear the clicking noise of death...)

In my previous experience, using PC towers, I would attach the dodgy drive as a secondary drive, partition it until works...

I am about to buy a USB HDD enclosure - I'm hoping to be able to access at least some of the files (yes, it's a HDD recovery job from hell)... But I was wondering if anyone has tried this method using an external enclosure and if anyone knows of any freeware / methods that I could use to improve my chances...

It is the one or two files that I'm looking for and it is a right pain..

Philtor · 24 Jun 2011 at 15:14

Connect it to a desktop PC and run Test disk on it which is Freeware and works a treat.

knowlton · 24 Jun 2011 at 23:50

Hmm, sadly it looks like there might be some physical damage - I took it apart and I think the motor's gone... =(

mraerosmith1981 · 25 Jun 2011 at 08:51

If theres anything really important on there, send it for data recovery, it would be exspensive but if the contents is important

Philtor · 25 Jun 2011 at 11:30

Im afraid if you have opened the HDD then it may make any form of data recovery very difficult. They are only supposed to be opened in a clean room as it's called to prevent any contamination of the disk platter(s).

knowlton · 27 Jun 2011 at 09:49

I've been Googling and it looks like the drive might have 'static friction'...

I'm not overly concerned about opening it up - I took the usual precautions and it looks like the heads are 'stuck' to the discs... Read some blog about spinning it so it moves back around...