External Hard Drive Recovery

A broken port on an External Hard drive is a common issue we see often. This can happen due to normal wear and tear of the drive or due to some sort physical damage (drive being dropped while connected).

Please do NOT attempt to repair this issue on your own. Most newer model drives have a USB 3.0 or Type C connector soldered onto the main board of the drive. These drives also have encryption built into the board.

Attempting to repair the board incorrectly could make data recovery extremely difficult if not impossible.

Although not very common, we so see Data Recovery cases come in with Liquid Damage. External hard drives have electronic boards that run the power to the drive. IF your drive is liquid damaged, please safely power it down as soon as possible to prevent more damage to the drive.

As long as liquid didn’t get into the sealed cover of the drive (where the platters are stored), we should be able to recover the data from the drive after repairing the electronic components. Please do not attempt this repair as it could cause irreversible damage to the drive.

If your external hard drive lights up, spins up normally (you should be able to hear it from you put the drive to your ear), but is not recognized by the computer, the data should still be recoverable and covered under our Tier 1 usb data recovery fee.

Its best to power down the drive as soon as possible to prevent more damage to the drive. Keep in mind the best way to eject the drive safely when its not recognized is to safely shut down your computer, then remove the cable.

95% of these cases are recoverable.

If your External Hard Drive is making clicking sounds, your drive has mechanical issues. The drive most probably had some sort of physical damage (drop, bump, vibration or ejected improperly).

Its extremely important that you power down your drive as soon as possible to ensure you have the best chances of recovery.

If the drive is powered down at the first sign of any problems, 90% of the time the data will be recoverable without any major data loss. Its the constant powering on and off that makes that recovery very difficult if not impossible.

External hard drives making beeping sounds is by far the most common issue we deal with. This issue is called “Stiction.”

When the drive is working fine, the platters spin up at a speed of 5400 to 7400 RPM’s; when the platters reach top speeds, the read/write heads (similar to needle in a record player) hover over the platters, nanometer above it, reading and writing data.

The beeping sound happens when the heads crash on the platters, not allowing the platters to spin up, thus creating that beeping sound.

If you see files and folders disappearing from your external hard drive, it could be due to a damaged file system.

The file system of a drive is similar to an index of a book. Just how the index of a book tells us where data is stored within the book, the file system does the same in hard drives.

If the file system is damaged or corrupt, it could cause files and folders to go missing.

With our external hard drive recovery process, we image/clone the entire drive, then scan it to find lost data.

Logical issues with external hard drives is any issue that is not mechanical or electronic. Examples of Logical issues are:

• Bad Sectors
• Missing Files/Folders
• Deleted File Recovery
• Drive Responding Slow

A mechanical issue with external hard drives is any issue that is caused by physical damage or normal wear and tear. Examples:

• Clicking
• Beeping
• Whirring Sounds
• Stuck Motor

An electronic issue with external hard drives is usually caused due to a power surge or due to using the wrong adapter: Examples are:

• No Power at all
• Drive spins up, then immediately spins down (without clicking)

The first step of the external hard drive recovery process is diagnosing the issue with the drive.

It’s important that we are provided detailed information about the issue with the drive and what was done to it after it failed.

The more information we have, the higher the chances of safely recovering the data.

The next step of the recovery process is making repairs to the drives firmware or if necessary Clean Room repairs.

We have a full Clean Room on site, so repairs are done in our State of the Art lab with the best tools available in the industry.

Once the drive is stable enough, we can move on to the next step of the process.

Imaging is the process of copying the data on a sector level from the damaged drive to another drive.

Our equipment allows us to “safely” image around areas of media damage and bad sectors, while enabling and disabling weak heads.

Once we have imaged most if not all of the drive, we can move on to the final step.

By this point, we have repaired the drive enough to be able to get a near perfect image of the drive.

After verifying the file system, we start saving the recovered data. During this process our system separates the good data from damaged files.

Once the saving is complete, we will email you a recovery report with the results.