How to Recover a Dead Hard Disk

Seven Methods:Basic StepsReplace the Drive's Controller BoardUsing Linux to Reco

ver the DataPhotorecWhack ItSqueeze ItFreeze ItQuestions and Answers
Your hard drive just stopped working. It never made any odd sounds like screechi
ng, popping, or clicking, and it didn't crash. It just quit and it has some pric
eless data that isn't backed up to another device. This guide may help you troub
leshoot and correct any problems related to your drive. (Alternatively, read up
on how to recover data from the hard drive of a dead laptop.) Be sure to read al
l warnings before proceeding.
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Method 1 of 7: Basic Steps
1
Inspect the outside of the hard drive for damage.
Stop using your computer or external hard drive.
Power down the computer or disconnect the external drive.
Remove the hard drive from the computer or device.
Examine it carefully for 'hot spots' or other damage on the external controller
board.
Check if there are broken parts.
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2
Replace the cables. Plug the hard drive in with new cables (power and data conne
ction) that you know works and try again. Note that an IDE drive will need a fla
t-ribbon cable.
3
If you have a PATA (IDE/EIDE) drive, switch drive pin settings.
If it was slave or cable select, set it to master.
Plug it in alone without any other device on that port and try again.
4
Try other IDs and/or another PCI controller and try again. If you don't have ano
ther controller, a PCI card that adds ports to your computer, just change the ID
.
5
Plug it into an external drive adapter or external drive case (i.e. USB) if you
have one.
If it does not spin up, try connecting it to another power source (include data
connection as some drives don't spin up without). If on both it does not spin up
, the fault is most likely related to the Printed Circuit Board.
6
Connect the drive into another computer and try again. If this works, it is poss
ible that the motherboard is at fault and not your hard disk.
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Method 2 of 7: Replace the Drive's Controller Board
1
Inspect the drive's controller board carefully to see if it can be removed witho
ut exposing the drive's platters. Most drives will have an externally-mounted co
ntroller board. If not, stop here.
2
Find a sacrificial drive. It is important to match the exact same model number a
nd stepping (i.e. firmware revision, printed circuit board number). Matching dri
ves can sometimes be found at places like eBay, inspect the photo in the auction
carefully to determine if the model and firmware match. Contact the seller to b
e sure the drive being auctioned matches the picture prior to buying.
3

Remove the controller board of the failing drive.

Remove the screws with the correct screwdrivers. Most drives use Torx (star driv
e) head which is available at home repair stores. Be careful, the screws are sof
t.
Learn everything about how it is connected to the drive. Most drives are connect
ed via ribbon cables and pin rows. Be gentle. Do not crimp or damage the connect
ors.
4
Remove the controller board from the working drive. Again, be extremely careful.
5
Attach the working board to the failing drive.
6
Connect the drive to your computer or device and test. If it works, immediately
copy your data onto another form of media or a different hard disk drive. If tha
t didn't work, try to re-assemble the sacrificial drive with the working control
ler board. It should still work.
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Method 3 of 7: Using Linux to Recover the Data
1
Take an image. Many times when Windows cannot see your drive, it's because the f
ile system itself is damaged. In the case of a damaged filesystem, it would be w
ise to first take an image of the hard drive before running any type of "filesys
tem repair" utility. The reason for this is if you have a drive that has both fi
lesystem damage as well as minor physical damage, you may make matters worse. Ta
king an image of the drive prior to attempting to fix it will allow you to alway
s revert back to the original state. If you are linux savvy you can use DD to im
age a hard drive. Be careful with DD as imaging the wrong way will be disastrous
.
2
Boot up off a Windows XP installation CD. Select the recovery console and once i
n a dos prompt use chkdsk to repair the file system like you see below. Replace
(DRIVELETTER) with the applicable drive letter: chkdsk (DRIVELETTER): /f . This
will force windows to attempt to repair the file system itself.
Newer versions of Linux may have the ntfs-3g program and ntfsprogs and it includ
es a program called ntfsfix which can help repair a windows ntfs file system so
it can be mounted or booted. Linux might have no issues being able to see and ac
tually access the data even if the drive is not bootable.
3
While you can try to mount the drive in a computer that is already running Linux
, you can also use a Live CD do the same without having to do anything other tha
n downloading and burning the CD or building a bootable Linux system on a USB st
ick. To find out how to build a bootable Linux USB stick you can find detailed i
nstructions up on the Pendrive Linux Website.
4
Download a live disk. System Rescue CD is a good one for this application.
5
Burn the .iso onto a blank CD with an Image Burner.
6
Boot the computer, don't forget to change the boot order in the BIOS.
7
Boot up a Linux system or mount the drive using a Linux live disk and begin to b
ackup your data if Linux can see the filesystem.
8
Mount the drive by typing this command: mkdir /mnt/disk && mount -t auto /dev/sd
a1 /mnt/disk. If the drive is a IDE drive the command would be mount -t auto /de
v/hda1 /mnt/disk assuming you only have one partition on the drive if in doubt C
onsult a basic linux guide for specifics.
9

Mount another drive and backup data. Again, consult a basic Linux guide for spec
ifics. Linux has many different utilities specifically designed for doing data r
ecovery. If the partition table is too damaged Linux can easily fix this with a
utility called Testdisk. Testdisk will help recreate the partition table.
10
Boot into a Linux live disk. See above instructions.
11
Run the command: testdisk /log. This command is not on every live disk, it is on
System Rescue CD.
12
Follow find your drive and choose to recreate the partition table. Read the docu
mentation on the website for Testdisk; this can be found online here.
For those who have never used Linux the first IDE drive in your system will be s
een as /dev/hda if it is a sata or SCSI drive or is connected via USB it will be
seen as /dev/sda.
The first partition on the C drive would be /dev/hda1 the second partition on th
at drive would be seen as /dev/hda2 and so on. Whenever running either testdisk
or its companion program photorec always run it with the /log command unless the
system you're attempting to recover data from is very small. What this does is
give you the ability to run the command again if for some reason the program sto
ps running without having to start all over again.
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Method 4 of 7: Photorec
There is a second component to Testdisk that is called Photorec which can recove
r your data even if the partition table is not able to be recovered. It can take
a long time to run but it does a great job, even with severely damaged Hard Dri
ves.
1
Learn about Photorec. Photorec is file/data recovery software originally designe
d to recover lost pictures from digital camera memory or even Hard Disks, it ign
ores the filesystem and instead is looking for what is known as file headers, th
is is the very first part of every file and generally tells the OS what kind of
file it is without the system having to read the file extension. It has been ser
iously extended to search also for non audio/video headers. It can now search fo
r over 80 different types of files. Photorec is part of the Testdisk package.
2
To install the following package in a Debian based Linux Distro you would as the
root user run the following command.: apt-get install testdisk.
3
If you are not running as root just precede the command with sudo like you see b
elow.
sudo apt-get install testdisk
4
Know what to do. There are some basic rules when dealing with Photorec:
Photorec can also be used to recover deleted files as long as they were recently
deleted.
When running photorec, unless the device your running it against is very small (
less than 1 gig), and not severely damaged, it is always recommended to use the
\log command function so if for any reason photorec stops its processing it can
be restarted and it will continue from where it stopped as long as its is recogn
ized as the same drive again. IE, /dev/sda
5
If you do not know which drive it is, open up a console/shell and run the comman
d dmesg. Assuming the drive is connected via USB, just plug it in and after perh
aps a minute, run dmesg. Then read the messages you see. After the drive is plug
ged in, it will show up in the system and you will see this in the dmesg output.
6

If you do run photorec and or testdisk without the /log flag you will be forced
to start again from the beginning if for some reason the program closes or does
not complete. I have had seriously damaged drives take over 100 hours to complet
e but generally it takes perhaps 5 hours to do a recovery on a 40 gig drive. Als
o never write back to the same device even if all other partitions are good.
7
To run Photorec on an image file in Linux, do: sudo photorec /log imagefilename
-d /some/directory/to-store/recovered/items.
8
To recover files directly from a device, run photorec without any arguments and
you will be given a menu of available devices. sudo photorec /log.
9
This utility should only be used if you are unable to mount that partition as yo
ur filenames will be lost but it does a great job of recovering data even if the
hard drive is very damaged, as long as it will spin up you can pretty much expe
ct to get some stuff back and frequently you can get virtually everything back.
What this program will do is search the HD for readable files by searching for t
he magic headers and copy them to where ever you tell it to with the -d flag.
Another rule of thumb is if you are recovering 20 gigs of data in this fashion y
ou will need a minimum of at least 40 gigs of free space. The resulting files wi
ll get dropped into folders and since your partition table doesn't exist or is n
ot readable the file names would be lost and will instead be renamed with the in
ode number of where they were found on the drive. In other words, you will end u
p with files with names like f53247.doc or f21433.jpg that will be in folders na
med recup_dir.1, recup_dir.2 and so on. The folders get created dynamically once
they reach about 50 megs in size a new one is automatically created and the fou
nd files are copied into each folder as the program runs across the drive recove
ring data.
Many types of files actually have some data in the magic header or other locatio
ns that might enable you to recover some part of the original file name or at le
ast give them more meaningful names. For instance Digital Cameras write what is
known as exif data into the pics. You can use a Linux program called jhead to re
ad this data and rename all of the files with the date and time the actual pictu
res were taken, Mp3's also save the ID3 tags which if they are correctly set wil
l give you all the info you need when renaming your recovered files.
10
See the the Testdisk website for a detailed description of how to use Photorec a
nd Testdisk. There is also some hints on how to rename and sort the resulting re
covered files once the program is finished.
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Method 5 of 7: Whack It
1
If the drive is recognized as a USB device but doesn't appear as a drive letter
and seems to need initializing, and is clicking before going quiet, then possibl
y the head has got stuck.
2
Give it a hard hit on your hand on the narrow edge near the cable connector end.
It might free it.
3
Plug it in again. With any luck, the click will be gone and the drive will be co
rrectly recognized and given a drive letter.
Note that this can also cause data loss, as the head may scrape the platter.
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Method 6 of 7: Squeeze It
1
Hold the hard drive really tightly. Press in with your fingers, palms and thumbs

.
Do not bend any of the jumper pins before you try this method.
2
If it was loose, the case will now be temporarily held together. It will work wh
ile you squeeze it.
3
Have a friend back up your data to another drive while you squeeze it or use a v
ise to keep it tightly held in place. This will take 4 minutes for 1 GB, 2 hours
for 250 GB, or 2.5 hours for 320 GB, depending on your transfer rates.
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Method 7 of 7: Freeze It
1
If the drive has become overheated, the center shaft may have over expanded and
is stuck to it bearings. Freezing it allows the materials to shrink and gives th
e shaft more clearance to turn.
2
Place the drive in a resealable plastic bag, to keep moisture out.
3
Place the drive inside of the bag in the freezer. Leave for 2 hours.
4
Remove it from the freezer. Place it in service immediately.
5
If the drive operates properly, make a bootable backup, on a second external har
d drive.
Note that this method may cause severe data loss, as temperatures under 5C/14F c
an cause the magnetic platters to demagnetize.
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Tips
Heat is the enemy of all electronics.
When you are unsure what to do, contact a professional company, repair on hard d
rives without the correct knowledge often results in worse situations heightenin
g the costs for repair.
Programs like GRC's Spinrite does an excellent job at getting down to every last
bit and ensuring that everything is working on the most basic of levels, howeve
r, if it finds that a sector of a hard drive is corrupted, it will attempt a rec
overy of it. It has saved many hard drives from failing, and has helped recover
gigabytes of data. Spinrite is in its 6th version and has proven very successful
. Please note, while Spinrite and other software hard disk recovery programs wor
k well, they will not permanently fix a problem every time. Therefore, it is rec
ommended that software recovery only be used to backup the data.
Take note though that a hard drive containing surface damage can be irreversibly
damaged by trying to read the damaged area over and over thus damaging the head
assembly or worse.
The partition table is located on the first sector (often 512 byte) of a hard di
sk. It contains all the information about how the drive is organized. Without it
, a computer will simply think nothing is there.
If data comes in faster than backups, and is precious, consider RAID 1, RAID 5 o
r RAID 10 disk configurations. A RAID array will keep running when one physical
drive dies. A good one will even re-write a replacement drive that's "hot swappe

d" into it without stopping. External controllers will do this better than ones
integrated into motherboards.
Never use RAID 0 for anything but scratch data. It's fast, but has no redundancy
, so it's twice as likely to crash with two drives than a single drive, and take
your data with it. Recovery of these systems often is very difficult.
Warnings
You will void hard drive warranties. These instructions are for recovering data
that is far more valuable than the drives themselves.
If you are not good with delicate hardware tinkering, don't follow these instruc
tions. Find a professional or someone who is experienced with hardware tinkering
to try it for you. Don't hold it against the person if they fail to recover you
r data. Most retail outlet technicians are not trained for component-level repai
r of this type.
If the failing drive was sold with a computer or device, you may void the manufa
cturer's warranty if you follow these instructions. Make sure the data, or your
attempt to recover data, is worth voiding that warranty.
Do not attempt to open a drive without the correct environment. The internals of
hard drives are very sensitive. Dust and static electricity can damage your har
d drive beyond the repair of professionals often resulting in very high prices o
r even the complete loss of the data.
Static electricity grounding precautions should be observed.
Configuring drives in a RAID 1, 5, or 10 is not a substitute for a regular backu
p routine. RAID controllers will fail eventually, writing bad data to the drives
. RAID controller failure is difficult to detect until it's too late. A RAID con
troller also does not protect the data from logical issues and user generated pr
oblems.
This procedure is not for logically erased data (i.e. 'un-formatting'). This pro
cedure is for physically inoperable drives with intact data.
Finding spare parts for older drives is more difficult than newer drives, though
often repair is easier.
Don't believe you've "never had a problem" with RAID 0 array, or even "never had
a problem" from not backing up your data. Just because the drive in question wa
s working for a certain period of time before it failed does not mean it was con
figured properly.
After the a controller board swap, you will certainly have two failing hard driv
es, whether you recovered the data or not. Do not re-use these drives. Consider
other identical drives you purchased from the same batch 'suspect'.
When all else fails, contact a professional data recovery company.