Hard Disk Failure
You should save data of hard disk before hard disk failureHard disk can fail in four ways that will lead to a potential loss of data:
Electronic Failure, Firmware Corruption (Damage to the firmware zone), Logical failure or Corruption, Mechanical Failure.
Combinations of these four types of hard disk failure are also possible. Whether the data on the hard disk is recoverable or not depends on exactly what has happened to the diskand 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.
Physical vs. Logical FailuresThe first step in recovering from a hard disk failure is to diagnose the nature of the failure. There are two basic types of hard disk failures, physical failures and logical failures. Physical hard disk failures are the type of failures in which something is physically wrong with the hard drive itself. Symptoms of such a failure may include a grinding or clicking sound. It’s also possible that the hard drive may not make any noise at all or that the computer doesn’t even acknowledge the hard drive’s existence.
A logical failure is the type of failure in which there’s nothing physically wrong with the drive itself. However, the information stored on the hard drive is in bad shape. This is the type of failure that you’d normally repair by using a tool such as Scan Disk.
Physical Failures
When you get ready to repair a physical hard drive failure, the first thing that you need to determine is whether or not your system acknowledges the drive’s existence. If the failed drive happens to be the second drive in a system and Windows is still functional, you can check to see if the system can communicate with the drive by simply going into My Computer and taking a look. Normally you won’t be that lucky though.
In a physical failure situation, the first thing that you’ll want to do is to turn the failed system off. Remember that if the drive is physically damaged, then there may not be much life left in the drive. You will want to preserve the drive as best you can for the recovery task at hand.
The next step in recovering the drive is to go to a different PC and create a boot disk that you can use to repair the failed system. To do so, boot the system to Windows, insert a blank, formatted, floppy disk, open a command prompt window, and enter the necessary commands
Issue:When Hard disk failure.
Hard disk failure.
Additional Information:Error may also be one of the below error messages.Cause:
Hard disk 0 failure
Hard disk 1 failure
Hard disk C failure
Hard disk D failure
This issue can be caused by any of the following possibilities:Solution:
- Hard drive not setup properly in CMOS
- Hard disk drive not detected
- Hard disk drive not setup
- Bad hard disk drive
Hard drive not setup properly in CMOS
Verify that the hard disk drive is setup in CMOS as auto or that it is properly manually configured.
Hard disk drive not detected
It is possible that the hard disk drive may not be detected either because of a cabling issue or jumper issue.
Open the computer and verify that the power and data cable is properly connected to the back of the computer. In addition, ensure that the data cable is properly connected to the motherboard or interface card.
If you have recently added any new IDE / EIDE devices and you have an IDE hard disk drive, ensure that the jumpers are properly set on the hard disk drive.
Hard disk drive not setup
See if the hard disk drive is detected by fdisk. If the hard disk drive is detected but does not have a partition, attempt to create a new partition using fdisk.
Bad hard disk drive
If you have followed the above steps and you continue to experience the same issue, unfortunately it is likely that the hard disk drive is bad or the controller is bad.
If available, you may want to connect another known good hard disk drive to the computer to determine if it can be detected. If it is able to be detected then replace your hard disk drive. If it is not detected, unfortunately you will need to replace the motherboard or controller as it is likely bad.
If no additional hard disk drive is available it is recommended that the hard disk drive be replaced or that the computer be serviced / repaired.
