I was given a drive to recover data from. An IC25N060ATMR04-0

The customer had said the drive was making a loud clicking noise and then was spinng down.
By the time it was given to me it didn't even spin up. I could here it trying but it appeared to be stuck.

Not only that the security seal was broken. Maybe it had been opened before? The word was the customer had been fiddling around with it before it came to me.

I gave it a light tap with a screwdriver handle and it started to spin and clunk.
A very light amount of pressure on the cover caused a quiet squealing noise.
I removed the cover and there were no obvious signs of damage so I then replaced the cover (without screws) and powered it up.
It clicked/clunked a bit then went quiet, was detected by the bios and I can now recover the data.

So what caused this to happen?

I suspect the spindle was partialy siezed.

Is this just one lucky episode or can it happen more frequently?

Hi,
You probably got a headsticktion there...Happens from time to time.

Regards/ Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

Yes you are probably right. Thanks.

So I could see the files and folders but the filing system had many trojans and viruses. This made it hard to open anything.
I started to copy files and immediately had CRC errors.
Tried to reverse clone and it hit bad sectors at 25%.
Now it dosn't get detected by the bios, os, or any tools.

I think its had it now. Heads are probably shot.
Not worth investing any more time or money as the customer dosn't want to pay much.

Yep, the heads have been damaged when they hit the spot where they stuck.

Only thing you can do, is replace the heads and continue the imaging from the back of the drive, in reverse.

Sean

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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