Hello All

My hard drive is acting funny. The computer won't recognize it and it appears the actuator arms are staying in the parking area. They hit the spindle and try to leave, but the safety seems to prevent that. It does that for a few tries and then seems to go into a standby mode.

The heads were recently replaced.

Any ideas on what it could be?

It's a head problem to 99%, not a DIY

Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
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And you were STILL using the drive ?!?

It had been sitting and I figured it was time to pull some data off there.

Then, hhmmm, problem arose....

this thread must be a joke.

It is not a joke.

I had a working drive, it acted up and I had someone fix it. I never bothered to pull the data off it until recently and now it's not working. Shame on me for not checking it earlier.

I'm guessing it's a head issue and wasn't fixed properly, but wasn't sure....

The heads were replaced, from what you said earlier. That requires skill, tools, an appropriate clean environment & the correct donor heads etc. It's unusual for a DR company to do a head replacement, and then not to also read all the data off the disk at that time - so I doubt the work was done by a DR company.


We don't know whether you could have retrieved the data immediately after the heads were replaced, as you didn't try that


Unfortunately yes. There are several possible options for the next steps, depending on the value of the data on the drive, your confidence in that previous repairer, available budget, any timescale constraints etc.

So it sounds like a head issue then? Wouldn't be something else?

You've already had a remote diagnosis reply to that. If you're looking for more certainty, you'll need to send the drive to an appropriately experienced DR company. If you choose to do that, then IMHO it will be important for you to give them details of what has been done with the drive so far.

Bearing in mind that you say the heads have been replaced, and we don't know for sure what the original fault really was, nor whether the drive worked after the heads were replaced, then that replacement could have introduced further problems e.g. faulty donor heads, incompatible donor heads etc.

Have no other choice than agree. Would be the 1st time I hear about someone who asks a DR company / specialist ONLY to change heads and NOT copy data as the end user would provide by himself

Agreed - that's why I said I doubt the head replacement was done by a DR company. And, of course, if it wasn't a DR company who replaced the heads, then the chances of new additional problems being introduced is higher.

Did you actually pay for the repairement service?

Why did you repair it? Asking because the situation is confusing. Thinking here that you would want something "repaired" because you would want to recover the data. But you did not act on it when you had the opportunity. So, why did you just not buy a new drive? 100% sure it would be cheaper to buy a new drive than repairing an old used one.

So, what is going on here?

In my working circle we call this type of situation "lala la lala la..."

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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

This thread is really funny

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Not just funny its weird .