Can i repair my hard drive

Several years ago, I experienced a hard drive failure. My laptop acted strangely. When the problems persisted after a reboot, I knew it was more than an overstretched RAM. I immediately started to back up recent files.

About half an hour later, the hard drive failed audibly and the laptop wouldn't boot anymore. I had backups, but not of everything. Just weeks earlier my backup drive had reached capacity. To back up important work files, I had decided to delete my personal photos. Ironically, I had already purchased a new external drive, but I had not taken the time to create a full backup.

Now my photos were lost and I was devastated. Over the next couple of weeks, I researched ways to recover the data and considered doing everything under the sunand did most of itto revive the old hard drive. This article is the result of that effort. When your external hard drive fails, it can do so for all the same reasons an internal drive can fail. Sometimes, however, it's not the drive that stops working, but a connection within the enclosure!

And in that case, the drive is easy to revive. Before you open up any hardware, be sure to discharge your body's static electricity, i. Once you re-connected the external drive to your computer, given the enclosure was the culprit, Windows should recognize it and assign a drive letter. If the drive didn't show up anywhere, you can try to manually find your drive to further narrow down the issue; the process is described further down. Sometimes, it's not the drive that failed, but the physical connection of cables that connect the drive with the computer's motherboard.

You can only wish that this is your problem! So before you hire someone, make sure the data and power cables are firmly connected on both ends. To prevent hazards to your health, it's essential to turn off the computer and unplug the power cord.

As mentioned above, you also need to discharge your body's static electricity, i. Then open up the case and make sure all connections are OK. Our guide on how to physically install an internal hard drive shows which connections to watch out for.

Once you have made sure the connections are OK, boot the computer again. If you have a desktop computer, you can leave the case open, but stay clear of its interior. As you are trying to get the hard drive to run, listen to the sound it is making. Is it completely dead? She has experience in Windows data recovery domain. She loves to troubleshoot Windows issue and write technical tips and tutorials. How can I apply this chkdsk to a system that primary drive c is bad, please?

It is a work station that has two slots for different hard drives. I had to put another pc drive in the slot containing the GB that has a bad partition. Now, in this case, chkdsk does not work as intended probably due to the drive belonging to another computer.

Please how do I repair this drive successfully? In this case, you can recover data from the severely corrupted drive as well. However, we do not have any software to repair the drive. Hi, am almost losing my files in an external hard drive. Have formatted one local disk and tried to follow this platform whereby have downloaded the software Stellar yet at the point of recovery it requires an activation key.

How can I go about this? Hi William, if your data is seeing in preview then you will need an activation key to recover data. You can get the activation key via the click on the cart option by clicking on the top left-hand side icon. It will redirect you to the buy page. There you can purchase it and recover the data efficiently. Hi, Got a message in dos.

Errors found. Chkdsk cannot continue in read-only mode. This is an external hard drive. I was downloading to it and the power went out. For the Mac platform there is a great application called Prosoft Data Rescue which comes highly recommended.

Any strange or inconsistent scan behavior is an indication that the drive itself is struggling, and stressing a failing hard drive with a deep scan is only going to make your problems worse. We have seen many examples of hard drives coming in to us for data recovery that suffered a fairly routine failure, but were pushed over the limit by endless DIY recovery attempts. On the Mac side there is DriveDX which will give you a full report on your hard drive health.

For the Windows users, the top pick is Hard Disk Sentinel which offers a great looking interface, giving you basic information at a glance, with more detailed reports and tests available if you drill down into the functionality. There is only one hard drive component failure that is repairable in a way that it will allow the hard drive to be used again reliably, and that is failure of the PCB printed circuit board.

PCB failures are either due to wear-and-tear or, more often, voltage spikes. The latter happens when someone plugs the wrong power adapter into an external hard drive think 19 volt laptop charger into 12 volt external hard drive or as a result of a power surge or lightening strike. Either way, the result is usually the same. The hard drive presents itself as completely dead and will not even spin up. Usually, the damage is limited to the PCB itself whilst the rest of the hard drive components are left undamaged.

In the good old days you could simply source a matching hard drive, swap the PCB over and, like magic, your hard drive would fire up again as if nothing happened. Things have changed though, and current hard drives are designed differently. Each PCB is programmed to work with the particular hard drive it was manufactured with, as it contains information unique to that particular drive.

Different manufacturers handle this slightly differently, but the end result is the same. At the end of the day, PCB replacement is possible and, if this was the only damaged component, you can carry on using your hard drive reliably once a new PCB has been programmed for it. Only if your hard drive is completely dead is it likely to be a PCB problem. If the drive does anything at all when you apply power to it, the PCB is There are two ways you can go, the DIY route or the professional route.

You only get one chance, so if you value your data rather find a data recovery specialist instead of asking your local IT guy to have a go. There are so many examples of bad advice on the internet which we suggest you steer well clear of. Some people suggest putting the hard drive in the freezer, others recommend you knock it on the side of a table. Scary, horror story stuff. If you decide that professional data recovery is more in line with your needs, we salute you. For example, we have a very long list of positive customer reviews which gives potential clients an idea of what to expect.

Typical hard drive failures include:. There you have it, a guide to help you determine if you have a hard drive problem and, if you do, how to handle it. Is my hard drive failing or dead?

How do I repair my broken hard drive? Broken hard drive? Now what…. Comments are closed. SouthBit Data Recovery. Nick was able to retrieve all of my data and copy it back to me fully intact. Where he excels, is that he keeps you informed of his progress every step of the way. He explains what the odds of retrieval are with appropriate cautionary advice. I am not qualified to judge his technical expertise, but validated by my experience, and the numerous 5 star recommendations that he receives from customers I suspect that he is at the very top of his game.

It is this combined with his professionalism, courtesy, respect and sensitivity that give me no hesitation in wholeheartedly recommending Southbit to all of my friends, colleagues; in fact anybody faced with a major hard drive crash. What is the main reason for your data loss? Please contact us or enter your details and we will contact you as soon as possible. In case of assistance please call: Back Next. Company not required :.

How did you hear about us? Partner ID:. Yes, please! No, please contact me first. Complimentary shipping is not available in your country. I accept the Terms and Conditions.