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Physical HDD failures
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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).
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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.
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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).
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