Reasons for Hard Disk Failure

Hard Disk Failure

Broadly speaking a hard disk can fail in four ways that will lead to a potential loss of data:

1. Firmware Corruption / Damage to the firmware zone
2. Electronic Failure
3. Mechanical Failure
4. 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.

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.

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 failures page
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

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 2348062611277
 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.