My WD Passport hard drive seems to have died and I need to know if data recovery is possible. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. When I connect the drive, it (very quietly)beeps 5 times, then goes absolutely silent. The drive does not sound like it is spinning, nor does it vibrate and the computer does not recognize it. I've tried Windows 7 Pro and Fedora 15. In Windows 7, both Device Manager and Disk Management fail to even notice any hardware has been added. The computer is set to automount drive when they are added and I have tested that this works with other drives. I'm using the original USB cable that came with the drive. I have swap pcb but not effected. Anyone know any cool tricks to make this thing work again one last time?



Thanks,

Sounds like the heads on the hard drive my have been stuck to the disk. The only way to fix this, or get your data back is to use your backup copy, or take it to a data recovery center. DON'T tamper with the disk, you might cause severe damage.

Shane

As above, the only option is to take your drive in to a reputable data recovery company if you value your data. There is no DIY cure for this.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

I have the same problem. Replace the PCB and it still does not work. Trying to do a head swap.

May not be necessary to do so and the technique can cause additional or permanent damage causing data to be unrecoverable due to lack of experience. Be careful if the data is important.

A solid evaluation is necessary to determine what is going on exactly.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Sounds like stiction.
If you DON'T value your data you can open the hdd and see.

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data recovery Poland

I think the best DIY option here is to go out and buy a new replacement drive and consider the data lost. This process will result in the same amount of data recovered as trying to change the heads yourself, but it will save you a lot of time and money wasted on trying.

If the data has any value at all, send it to a pro before it is too late.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

ShaneWard, Nick_CT, Pounce, labtech, laptokowiec, lcoughey

Thank you for your answers.

I've open and i saw The hard drive have been stuck to the disk. the head have broken. where is i found tutorial about Head Swap? i want to experiment to solve my problem.

Are there any remnants of the head stack still stuck on the disks? This is important to investigate as when will power the drive again, components can collide causing permanent irrevocable damage.

There is no step-by-step tutorial for performing a head swap simply because there are way too many details to address and way too many different architectural designs where one method works for all. In general, the concern is understanding the internal parts of the drive, the order of parts removal, and of course understanding thereby preventing damage while manuevering those components.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Why not use a stiction detector? With it you can determine if the platters rotate freely or not. You don't need to open the disk housing.

And, God forbid!!! You don't have to take the little sticker off to see inside either.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

no, i can't see remnants of the Head stuck on the disks.
what should i do after swap the head?

could you give a examples of stiction detector?

stiction detector


all you need is a meter to read the resistance on the hard drive motor
easy way.
to see if the motor is stuck

Technique for detecting stiction error in hard disk drive


http://www.google.com/patents/US6072652

yes, i have read that tutorial, very useful

thank you Mr. craig6928