# Hard Drive Repair Needed



## FrugalRefiner (Aug 2, 2014)

Yup, I messed up and didn't back up a data file drive in one of my desktop computers. A storm came through while the computer was running, the lights just barely flickered, and the computer restarted itself. The computer works, but the BIOS no longer detects the drive. I have tried all the standard stuff like resetting BIOS, moving the drive to the known good IDE chanel and cable, setting the drive jumper to master with no other drives connected. No luck. The drive just makes a "chck, chck, chck, chck, chck, chck, pause, chck, chck" sound, the repeats then sequence a couple of times. It is not detected in BIOS. 

I am resigned to spending some money to recover the files (my working copies of Hoke's book among them :shock: ). 

Do any of you do drive repair (not putting it in the freezer and hoping for the best, but real repair services)? If not, do any of you have recommendations for repair services you've used?

Like I said, I know it's going to cost me some serious money. I just don't want to send it to one of these places that advertises recovery fees from $299 to $799, only to find that (oh, what a coincidence) I just happen to have one of those cases that's $799.

Any recommendations will be appreciated.

I'm asking Santa for an external IDE/SATA to USB drive caddy and a big honkin' hard drive to stick in it so I can back up all the computers my wife and I have.

Dave


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## rickbb (Aug 2, 2014)

I have used Kroll Ontrack several times for work. They have been able to recover data from drives that would not show up in any system I put them in, Windows or Linux.

http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/data-recovery-services/

Anytime you hear that click, click, click it will have to be taken apart in a clean room and put in a different enclosure to get the data. Read that as not cheap.


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## macfixer01 (Aug 2, 2014)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Yup, I messed up and didn't back up a data file drive in one of my desktop computers. A storm came through while the computer was running, the lights just barely flickered, and the computer restarted itself. The computer works, but the BIOS no longer detects the drive. I have tried all the standard stuff like resetting BIOS, moving the drive to the known good IDE chanel and cable, setting the drive jumper to master with no other drives connected. No luck. The drive just makes a "chck, chck, chck, chck, chck, chck, pause, chck, chck" sound, the repeats then sequence a couple of times. It is not detected in BIOS.
> 
> I am resigned to spending some money to recover the files (my working copies of Hoke's book among them :shock: ).
> 
> ...





I'd try to locate an identical working drive (same brand and model number) and swap the board onto your drive. As a last resort there are services which do catastrophic recovery, but they're expensive and guarantee nothing. Luckily your drive hasn't been physically damaged or through a fire so your chances of getting the data back are good.


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## FrugalRefiner (Aug 2, 2014)

Thanks Mac. I was hoping you'd weigh in. According to what I've read, the board swap isn't likely to work with this drive. It's a Western Digital Caviar 200 gb. There are no obvious burned areas on the board. 

I just ordered an IDE/SATA to USB adapter. Some folks have reported success in reviving drives that aren't recognized by BIOS, so I'll hold onto a small hope for that. If it doesn't work, I'll still be able to use it for future back ups.

Thanks,
Dave


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## FrugalRefiner (Aug 2, 2014)

Thanks Rick. I didn't see your post until I replied to Mac. I've gotten the same impression about the click click. Are you able to share the cost you've incurred on the drives you've had repaired. I know they're all different, but a real world experience would be nice.

Dave


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## Shark (Aug 2, 2014)

Those high dollar companies that recover data for you do this quite often.(Edit Change the boards) Keep in mind the more you try to run it the more physical damage can be done to it. Surely someone on the forum could come up with an extra board. Some are fairly simple and others are more complicated. Think I will do another backup this evening just in case. There is several pieces of software that can help, and Kroll OnTrack does a good a job. 

Hope you can get things recovered.


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## resabed01 (Aug 2, 2014)

I've used a program called File Scavenger. It works great at reading data from dead drives and recovering deleted files. I fear it may not work in your case. The click, click, click indicates the drive won't make it past the initialization stage of startup.


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## FrugalRefiner (Aug 2, 2014)

Shark,

One of my concerns with swapping in a new board is the possibility of doing additional damage. I know that translates into even higher fees if I have to send it out. I'll try the USB adapter when it arrives, but after that, it's going to someone better equipped to revive it than myself.

I have hundreds of hours involved in Hoke's book alone. I would rather pay to have my files recovered than to try to save some money, totally destroy them, and have to start from scratch. I'm also not in a hurry (refining teaches patience 8) ).

Thanks for the quick responses and suggestions so far everyone. I have requests out to a couple of companies for quotes (datacent and krollontrack). I'm open to all other ideas. 

Thanks,
Dave


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## g_axelsson (Aug 2, 2014)

Board swap can work on newer disks too, but you need to swap a small flash chip from the old controller to the new one. It stores the information about how sectors really are laid down on the disk and other critical information about the individual disk.

I did a board swap for a friend two years ago, I bought a new board on eBay and the company that sold the board took the old board and moved the chip before they sent me the new board. It worked perfectly.

Göran


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## Palladium (Aug 2, 2014)

I had one go out and instead of using a service i bought the identical drive off ebay and swapped the platters out. Worked like a charm.


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## Pantherlikher (Aug 3, 2014)

Just common sense pondering a bit...

The clicking would seem it's starting or trying to find the starting point. If the control chip gets lost and doesn't know where the start point is, it'd move the arm 1 way but it wouldn't see movement. So it tries again and again.

Brain confusion causes chaos.

Swapping the board will do no physical damage to the platters so would be a good and cheap hail mary play.

The recovery companies would try this first after a drive scavenger software. Then move onto and platter swap into another drive.
Moving the disc(s) would be last ditch effort hoping for enough run time to recover information.

I have an old drive that died in an external drive carriage. Both the drive and carriage gave warning but I figured just a little longer. Until it refused to do anything. Now nothing will see it at all. Someday when I find the drive amungst many drives yet to test/ backup, I'll try the board swap.

Nothing really important but lost memories, pictures.
Good luck

B.S.


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## macfixer01 (Aug 3, 2014)

My thought was that the click click click may indicate the motor isn't starting due to stiction or a bad driver, or the read head armature isn't unlocking or moving for a similar reason. It's been some years since I was actively involved in the computer repair business and drives were simpler then. Mostly MFM, RLL, IDE, or SCSI interfaces and much lower capacities. I'm not familiar with a replaceable chip on the controller board that held the configuration since all drives of the same brand and model would have the same number of heads and cylinders. The data arrangement in terms of clusters or allocation blocks is normally handled by the computer and operating system. However I should defer to others with more current knowledge here. Still I think if you can get a good board from the same model it's well worth a try.


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## fonnie (Aug 3, 2014)

My brother once had a harddrive failure, 1TB drive in an external enclosure.

Nothing I tried helped, so, since he was willing to cough up the hard cash for 'emotional value', the drive was sent to a recovery company.
Mind you, I'm from Belgium.

Try to find a 'no cure, no pay' one, the have the most interest in trying to recover files.
Mind you, for them, getting one bit of data off the drive, is called 'recovered'.

Normally they charge according to the drive capacity, even is you only have less than a quart on the 1TB, they still calculate on 1TB.

If you are in a hurry, the tend to offer a fast recovery, within 24h, if needed, but this is more for the rich and famous, because cost goes up very fast, for shorter delay.
Of course, if it is the main business server hard drive, maybe it is the only option for staying in business

We opted for the 'non priority, we'll see' option.

my brother finally had to pay 650€ (870 USD), for recovering all his family pictures,

Apparently that's the price for 'emotional value'

Good luck.

Fonnie


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## FrugalRefiner (Aug 3, 2014)

Thanks for the continuing input. My drive (WD Caviar SE 200 GB) is the type described by Göran. It requires a chip from the old controller board to be swapped to a new board. There's a fellow in Canada who sells on FeePay who offers this service, but I'm very hesitant to send the original board off to Canada. If it should get lost somewhere in customs on the way there or back, I'll be in worse shape than when I started.

I'm not in a hurry, so I will be taking the slower, slightly less expensive route. Datacent offers the no recovery / no fee guarantee, but as Fonnie said, I'm sure they'll manage to recover _something_. I should be hearing something back from the others tomorrow.

It's good to know they base pricing on size. I guess, in this case, bigger is not better. It's only a 200 GB drive - small by today's standards. I'll hope it costs somewhere less than the $870 level, but I'd rather spend that if I have to than to spend the hundreds of hours it would take me to recreate some of the files. I'd much rather spend that time refining, and I can cover the cost in much less time.

The lesson here is clear. Back up your files folks. Since I don't use the desktop machine much, and the failed drive only held user files (no Operating System), I didn't anticipate a problem and I got lax in my backups. Don't make the same mistake I did. It's Sunday. Everyone take some time today to back up your important files.

Dave


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## fonnie (Aug 3, 2014)

It is good to understand the definition of a backup:

transferring files to another harddrive, and then deleting the original files, to create extra space on your data-disk, is not a real backup.

Backing up is creating extra copies, in case of.

My brother backed up to the external drive, but deleted the originals from his main drive. Hence.... no more photo's when that drive crashed.

just a thought, and a friendly warning.

best regards.

Fonnie


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## rickbb (Aug 3, 2014)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Thanks Rick. I didn't see your post until I replied to Mac. I've gotten the same impression about the click click. Are you able to share the cost you've incurred on the drives you've had repaired. I know they're all different, but a real world experience would be nice.
> 
> Dave



The charges ranged from nothing for not being able to recover anything, (due to the ex-employee doing a mil spec wipe after he was terminated before he shipped the laptop back), all the way up to $1,250 for about 40 gig of must have data on an accounting PC. The typical charges have been in the $500 to $800 range for the typical 20 gig or so from a failed drive doing the clicking thing you have.

The $1,250 charge included a USB external drive with the data on it, it needed to be a secure and certified copy. Usually they can put the data on a FTP site and let you download it, if you have a high speed connection and don't mind the time it takes.

Rick


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## Palladium (Aug 3, 2014)

I wouldn't use that company Lois Lerner used. :shock:


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