Possible Electrical Fault on Hard Drive

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.