Home / Tutorials / Physical HDD failures

Physical HDD failures

	Physical hard drive failures
	A hard drive can fail in many ways, caused by various reasons. Most common failure modes, listed in arbitrary order, are Logic board (controller) failures. Broken power/data connectors (requires fine soldering). Spindle/arm driver chip failure (requires replacement of either a logic board, or a chip; additional repairs may be needed depending on the true cause of the problem). Head block pre-amplification failure (platter box must be opened). Moving parts failures. Head crash. Spindle bearing seizure or spindle motor failure. Firmware corruption (requires special software and sometimes special connection arrangement).

	How to determine a hard drive failed physically
	The hard drive is most likely physically damaged, and may be beyond the software repair capabilities, if any of the following symptoms is evident There is a problem apparent on the exterior of the drive, like visible damage to the chips and/or connectors. The drive is not listed in Widows Disk Management, Windows Device Manager, and in the system BIOS. The drive remains silent (no spin-up sound, no movement/vibration felt) when powered up. The drive emits loud clicking noise when accessed. Typical pattern would be repetition of click-pause-click-pause-click, followed by the sound of the drive stopping and then spinning up again. Windows typically locks up or feels "sluggish" for the entire duration of the sequence.

	Possible corrective actions
	Little can be done to fix a hard drive at home, without using special equipment. However, it is advised to perform certain steps to ascertain the problem is really with the drive. Check connections. Disconnect and reconnect both power and data cables. Pay attention to any anomalies indicating possible loose connection. Check connections again. Loose connections account for many problems. If the drive is within the USB enclosure (i.e. IDE-to-USB converter involved), remove the drive from the enclosure, then attach to a regular IDE port. If available, try different power supply unit, or at least a different line on the same PSU. If available, try attaching the drive to the different port (preferably to the different controller).

	Data recovery in case of a physical failure
	If a device develops physical problem, exercise extreme caution. If any of the above symptoms exist, consider In case of a limited damage (one or two bad spots on the media) Software recovery with ZAR takes longer than usual but still completes. The recovery rate drop caused by limited physical damage is insignificant. In case of a massive damage, If the device is not accessible at all (circuitry failure), no software can even attempt the recovery. Physical intervention is required. Even if the device seems accessible, software recovery run will take excessive time to complete, making the attempt impractical. On top of that, the recovery run puts further stress on the device. This may be undesirable. In case of the massive damage, there is no point in attempting the do-it-yourself type data recovery at home. There is little you can do to repair a physically damaged device without the special equipment. In this case, you need a data recovery lab.

	Physical hard drive failure prediction
	Modern hard drives have the ability to monitor their own health and report the status to the operating system. This feature is called "S.M.A.R.T.". However, the monitoring results are only good if you actually look at these. To take an advnatage of the S.M.A.R.T. capability, you should run a hard drive diagnostic software every once in a while, or, better yet, continuously.