Old HDD failure - advice.

Columbo

Columbo

Columbo

Soldato
Joined
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Location
Nottinghamshire
So my pensioner neighbour knocked on my door last night to ask if I could look at his computer as he couldn't access his files.
After some investigation I managed to work out that one of his hard drives is faulty so I took it out and placed it into a docking station I have, my computer briefly sees the drive, locks up for a bit then nothing.

Its a 2TB Toshiba drive made in Feb 2014.

Its also making all the usual clicking noises an old mech hard makes when they fail which I presume is the head.
Regardless on this drive are a load of his old photo's and videos of his family, some of which are no longer here and of course they are not backed up anywhere and these are what he's most concerned about.

So is there a chance I can rescue the files for him somehow?
Any advise appreciated.
 
Sounds like a professional job - anything you can do at home at this point is usually a "Hail Mary" kind of thing unless you have experience transplanting drive parts as required.
 
Rroff said:
Sounds like a professional job - anything you can do at home at this point is usually a "Hail Mary" kind of thing unless you have experience transplanting drive parts as required.
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Nah I have none of the experience and wouldn't be confident enough to even think about messing with it beyond the basic stuff I've already done.

Any recommendations come to mind or should I just do the usual search around?
 
If it's a mechanical issue I wouldn't try anything - really needs a professional data recovery company who can transfer internal hardware components in a safe environment to try and get data off. The best places have specialist tools to read data of platters directly etc and recreate the data.

If it was an electronic or power issue there is a chance you could swap the board off a same model drive to get it working but even then it doesn't always work.

My advice - if it's important data and there's no backup then a data recovery company (whilst expensive) would be the best option in my opinion. Even then data recovery isn't guaranteed. Google search for a reputable company and cross your fingers that there isn't too much internal damage.
 
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fizzy said:
If it was an electronic or power issue there is a chance you could swap the board off a same model drive to get it working but even then it doesn't always work.
Click to expand...

Only do this if - and only if - it is the EXACT same model. Not just the same capacity, not just the same product line. You need the part nos to be identical.

One thing you can do is look for corrosion on the board and if you see it clean it with IPA.
 
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