Archive for May, 2016

Lacie Hard Drive Beeping

Tuesday, May 31st, 2016

I have a Lacie single drive and it wont power on. When connected to the computer it makes a few beeping noises and then stops and doesn’t work. The light still turns on.

lacie hard drive requiring data recovery serviceThe beeping noises are unfortunately errors signals coming from the hard drive that tell us that your HDD has a serious problem. For one reason or another, the motor that rotates the hard drive is unable to spin the platters. This can be for two reasons. Either the motor is broken and no longer works, or there is something that is preventing the platter’s rotation – a common problem that causes this is known as stiction and is where the heads of the hard drive become ‘welded’ to the platter surface. Freeing the stiction is a job fraught with danger as it is very easy to damage both the heads and the platter surface of the hard drive. My recommendation would be to use a data recovery company, see the link towards the bottom of this page.

Hard Disk Not Working
I have two hard disks, both 2tb which have both stopped working. I would like to recover the files from them.
How much would this cost?
How long would it take? I will be in Manchester from tomorrow until Sunday. If it is longer then a mate may take delivery of it for me.I have a WD My Passport that has stopped working. It was clicking so was sent to another data recovery company, who opened it up but said they couldn’t do anything with it. (I don’t believe they did anything other than open it and look to be honest, but I cant prove that), but since it’s return, it hasn’t been clicking, but still doesn’t get discovered on my PC.
I would like to recover the data on it and have another 500GB drive I can provide you to put it on.

As you are in Manchester my suggestion would be to take your disk along to a local hard drive recovery company. Data Clinic are one such company that have a lab in Bury, Greater Manchester. It’s not good that another data recovery company has opened up your hard drive, it would be good for know what they’d actually done (if anything). Some companies that have a good reputation do take good care when working with hard drives. Other places are little more than glorified amateurs with no idea what they are doing.

Possible Electrical Fault on Hard Drive

Tuesday, May 17th, 2016

I received this question earlier today from a reader of this blog:

“Hard drive failure, unable to access data. When in the laptop, nothing would boot, and i believe bios also wouldn’t start. (i don’t know whether that was a laptop issue too or not, the laptops fine now with a new hard drive) The old hard drive will start and doesn’t make any unusual sounds.
If you could kindly advise on potential costs for the data recovery to include the potential need of a clean room.”

Hi thanks for your question. So you have two hard drives? The latest one doesn’t boot but the older one still works fine with no problems?

When using the old one it also inhibits some of the other computer functions such as the BIOS not starting? My guess is your hard drive would be a Seagate and it has some form of electrical problem. I’m saying this from experience, I seen many hard drives over the years that have developed electronic faults which in turn prevent the computer from switching on. The data should be ok and retrievable once the electronic fault on the hard drive is fixed.

Costs for repairing this type of fault are usually no more than £400. The job is also unlikely to require a clean room as there is no need to dismantle the hard drive and remove the lid.