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My hard disk drive stopped working. I have bought an external SATA to USB adapter and I have connected it and the disk makes noise and starts to spin. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary.

The computer detects it and opens the folder with the explorer, but instantly it stops working and does not detect it again until I disconnect and connect it again.

What can the problem be? I’ve tried to put it in the fridge. Should I open it?

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3 Answers 3

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This is a common failure mode for hard drives. It's dead, and it cannot be repaired. The only question is whether you can recover any data from it. There are two options* - trying yourself with data recovery software, or sending it off to a data recovery company.

Recovering data yourself is an advanced topic and should be done with caution, as it's easy to permanently damage the drive and lose the data. If you're at all concerned about this, don't try it yourself, send it off to be professionally recovered.

My preferred software for data recovery is GNU ddrescue. The manual goes into great detail, but here's the short version:

  1. Boot up a linux system
  2. Connect another drive or file share larger than the failed hard drive, with room to spare
  3. Attach the failed hard drive
  4. Run ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/sdc hdimage mapfile where /dev/sdc is the failed hard drive you want to recover, hdimage is the location to store the recovered data, and mapfile is the recovery log.
  5. If/when the drive quits during the recovery, you can power down/disconnect the failed drive, wait, power it back up, and try again with the same command. It will use the recovery log to know which parts of the disk were already attempted and skip those, trying new sections of the disk.
  6. After you have gotten all the data you are able, you can then mount the partition on the hdimage file. First, list the partitions in the image: fdisk -lu hdimage
  7. Second, mount the desired partition, replacing xxxx with the offset listed in the previous output: mount -o loop,offset=xxxx hdimage /mnt

This method has been moderately successful for me. Of course, it all depends on how far gone your particular hard drive is. GNU ddrescue will tell you how much data it's recovered, and if it can get most of it, you have a reasonable chance of recovering your important files.

*There are actually more options for even more advanced users, but people who can do these are on par with professsional data recovery techs, and would not be asking this question.

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Only open it if you want to see the pretty shiny disks before you throw it in the bin.

Your best bet is a new drive and your backup.

Your second best bet is a data recovery company.

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  • that's sad :c isn't there any way to fix it or get all the data befor throwing it?
    – areverte
    Commented Dec 13, 2020 at 16:53
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    Data recovery company - that's what they do for a living. They can disassemble the drive in a clean room; something impossible to do in a domestic environment. One speck of dust & your drive is toast. It's not worth fixing, all you want is the data from it, then bin it.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 14, 2020 at 8:44
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Make it temporarily functional to access long enough to to restart, access and get data off the drive and onto a new hdd/ssd: You can open and reset the arm but suggest you watch a video on how to and how to in special order re-torque the cover screws after.

The temp fix is based on a stuck head problem only and it will be immediately noticeable after removing the cover as it will not be in it's parked position but hovering above the platter(s). Usually, the drive will give the indicator by clicking on boot. Where a facial mask and latex gloves shut the Heat or Fan or AC off an hour before. Never touch the platter.

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