Firmware Corruption / Damage to the firmware zone
Electronic Failure
Mechanical Failure
Logical Corruption
Combinations of these four types of failure are also possible. Whether the data on the hard disk is recoverable or not depends on exactly what has happened to the disk and how bad the damage is. Please note that over time, all hard disks will develop bad sectors which can lead to data loss and drive inaccessibility.
1. Firmware Corruption / Damage to the firmware zone
Explantion: Hard disk firmware is the software code that controls, and is embedded in, the physical hard drive hardware. If the firmware of a hard disk becomes corrupted or unreadable the computer is often unable to correctly interact with the hard disk. Frequently the data on the disk is fully recoverable once the drive has been repaired and reprogrammed.
Firmware failures - How to diagnose: Common Symptoms
The hard disk will spin up when powered on, but be incorrectly recognised / not recognised at all by the computer
The hard disk will spin up & be recognised correctly by the computer but the system will then hang during the boot process
Actions to take
Recovering data from hard drives with firmware failure requires low level reprogramming / manipulation of the hard drive. It is not possible for a PC repair shop to do this. Data Clinic have our own specialist equipment that allows us to successfully recover data from hard drives with firmware faults.
What is the cause of firmware corruption? We believe that one cause of damage to the firmware zone on modern drives is the use of fluid bearing technology in the spindle motor assembly (PDF)
A Maxtor DiamondMax 22. Read about Maxtor hard disk problems and fault diagnosis
A Western Digital Green series hard disk. Read our Problems and fault diagnosis on Western Digital WD hard disks
All Fujitsu MPG series drives suffer from firmware faults. Read ourFujitsu MPG / MPF series hard disk problems page.
A Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard disk. Read aboutfirmware faults on these 7200.11 drives
2. Electronic Failure
Explanation: Electronic failure usually relates to problems on the controller board of the actual hard disk. The computer may suffer a power spike or electrical surge that knocks out the controller board on the hard disk making it undetectable to the BIOS.
Electrical failures - How to diagnose: Common Symptom
The hard disk will not spin up when the drive is powered on - it will appear dead & not be recognised by the computer
Actions to take
Data Clinic can recover data from all types of electrical hard drive failure.
Although electronic failures can happen to any type of hard disk, we find that Quantum Fireball drives are particularly susceptible to power spikes and quite often it's possible to see visible electrical burn damage around one of the chips on the controller board. Usually, the data on the hard disk has not suffered any damage and a 100% data recovery is possible.
The Seagate Barracuda (above) and the rubber sleeved 'U' series hard disks have unique failure symptoms. Fortunately, the data is often recoverable. Read our data recovery from Seagate section for further information
A Samsung hard disk drive. We see many of these drives with electrical failures. Read more about typical symptoms on our Data Recovery from Samsung hard disk page.
A Western Digital hard disk drive. Power spikes and likewise can cause damage to the components on the controller board. Read more about Western Digital hard disk failures
Popular drives that seem to develop controller board problems: Quantum Fireball series, Western Digital drives, Maxtor drives, Fujitsu MPG and MPF series. If you have a laptop hard disk - please also refer to our laptop hard disks problems page.
3. Mechanical Failure
Mechanical hard disk failures are those which develop on components internal to the hard disk itself. Often as soon as an internal component goes faulty the data on the hard disk will become inaccessible.
Mechanical failures - How to diagnose: Common Symptoms
When powered on, the hard drive will immediately begin to make a regular ticking or clicking sound
Actions to take
Recovering data from hard drives with mechanical failure requires the drive to be worked on in a clean room as the drive has to be taken apart and investigated in lab conditions. Data Clinic have a fully equiped Class 100 clean room which we use to recover drives with mechanical problems.
Note: We see many laptop hard drives with mechanical failure. Fortunately the data is often recoverable. For specific symptoms, please read our laptop hard disk failurespage
Do not be tempted to open a hard disk if you suspect a mechanical fault: there is nothing you will be able to do and you will contaminate the internal clean air environment. There is also a good chance that during this process you will destroy any chance that we have of successfully recovering the data.
External hard disks are often dropped or knocked. Read our section on dropped / knocked external hard disk drives
The IBM Travelstar (now made by Hitachi) is a typical laptop hard disk. All laptop drives can develop mechanical failure - click ourlaptop data recovery page for further details
A Seagate hard disk drive. Click here for further details aboutSeagate hard disk failures
A Hitachi Deskstar hard disk. A very common drive that it prone to developing mechanical faults
4. Logical Errors
Often the easiest and the most difficult problems to deal with, logical errors can range from simple things such as an invalid entry in a file allocation table to truly horrific problems such as the corruption and loss of the file system on a severely fragmented drive.
Logical errors are different to the electrical and mechanical problems above as there is usually nothing 'physically' wrong with the disk, just the information on it.
Microsoft Windows Based Problems: Four common types of logical failure are shown below - please click which one applies to you or call us on 0871 977 2525
The disk in drive <x> is not formatted
Recovering data lost after a Format or FDisk
Data recovery from Ghosted or imaged hard disk drives
Data recovery from hard disks involving Scandisk and Chkdsk
Recovering and restoring data from repartitioned hard disks drives
Logical errors can also be tackled with various software tools you can buy off the net, but be warned - if you are intending to run a fix utility on your disk you can very easily make recoverable data unrecoverable. This is especially true when running ScanDisk and Chkdsk on a damaged hard drive.
