How to recover data from a hard drive (stuck heads: buzzing, clicking, etc)

Does your hard drive make a buzzing noise when you turn it on? Or does it make clicking noises or not spin up? Well, in this video I will show you how to fix this fairly common problem which is caused by the drive's heads getting stuck on the platters.

Want to be extra safe? You can build a clean air enclosure. Here's a video all about that:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPEa0Wc9iUc

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Closed Caption:

hello and welcome to this hard drive
data recovery video now the drive we are
going to try and recover the data from
is this laptop hard drive
now when you're repairing a hard drive
the first thing to do is have a listen
to how it sounds because that can tell a
lot about what's actually wrong with it
so let's plug this into an external
drive enclosure and see what kind of
sound it makes
so as you can hear that does not sound
very promising for our little hard drive
now
to me it sounds like it's having trouble
spinning up
this is what a hard drive should sound
like and this clearly did not sound like
that
so what that says to me is that perhaps
the motor has gone but I think the more
likely reason for it not spinning up is
that the hard drive heads have gotten
stuck on the hard drive platter which is
preventing it from starting to spin
so the first thing you can try is hit it
sideways onto a table surface you can
try it
whilst is trying to spin up because it
can actually help to get the heads loose
but this can obviously cause damage
so I stress only do it if you can't
afford data recovery
so that's the first thing you can try
and if that doesn't work what you can
try doing is what this video is actually
going to be about which is opening the
drive and moving the heads of the
platters manually so to open a drive
you need a set of torx screwdriver bits
and a screwdriver
obviously so the first thing to do is
just select a screwdriver bits that
actually fits your screws in most laptop
drives this is t 6
so that's the
screwdriver bit i'm going to use and
then we can begin
just to remove this top cover ok so
before we start opening this drive up I
must stress that if you're planning and
doing this at home that you are doing it
under your own risk
because I'm not a hard drive technician
or anything
I'm just sharing my experiences with
opening up drives and restoring the data
problem
ok so with that out of the way let's
begin opening this up now you've
probably had that opening a drive in
anything but a clean room causes the
drive to be destroyed basically here and
there is kind of truth in this but i'm
not sure how much which is true because
i think some of it is just sort of like
scare stories spread by data recovery
centers so that they get more for
business but it is true that you do want
to keep just landing inside here to a
minimum
because I suppose it can interfere with
the heads reading the data but I don't
think it causes anything to be destroyed
it just interferes really
and so when you are opening up your
drive just make sure that you try and
keep it as clean as possible
and before you put the lid back on just
blow on it just to make sure that any
just that has landed on it has been
blown off
but if there are some leftover bits of
dust these are likely to fly off the
platter
when it's the when the hard drive is
turned on by both centrifugal force and
by the draft this caused when it's on
and there is a little filter which are .
out later which does catch stray
particle so it's not too much of an
issue but if you are really concerned
about straight particles landing on the
platter compromising data
what you can do is make a
clean air enclosure which is basically
just a box a fan and a filter and you
can open the drive in there I might make
a video later at some point on how to
make one of these clean air enclosures
and but it just just depend on the
demand because it's a bit of a niche
thing to sort of want really
anyway so once you've gotten all the
screws and done
there is usually one last screw under
the sticker and you can usually find it
by scratching the surface with your
fingernail until you find an indentation
and then once you find it you can stick
your screwdriver through the sticker and
undo it that way
so let's take a look and if our theory
was correct
the hard drive head should be on the
platter which it is so as you can see
the hard drive head is in the middle of
the platter and it should actually be
parked just here at which it clearly is
not so what we can try and do is
manually push this into the park
position
so to do this i'm going to use a little
hook which is actually just a dental
thing and what we need to do is just
turn the hard drive platters
whilst we are pulling on the head just
to reduce the stress so always turn it
counterclockwise as that will ensure
that you don't pull the heads underneath
the actual head unit
so I've just step i'm just going to use
a screwdriver
because there is a screw in the center
spindle
so we can just turn this
and pull in the head
and there we go as you could hear that
sounded like they were really really
stuck so I have no idea whether this
drive is actually going to work after
being so stuck
just check the drive for any big
particles and it seems ok so we'll just
put the lid back on and by the way this
is the little filter was talking about
and this catches any particles that
might have landed on the hard drive
platter
so we'll just put the lid back on and
see whether it works
so now that the hard drive is back
together
let's get the hard drive caddy and look
at it and just see if it starts spinning
and whether it is detected by the
operating system and is worth noting
that i do have disk management open so
that we can see whether the drive is
detected by the computer because
sometimes it might have an incompatible
drive letter and then wouldn't be
mounted so we just got disk management
open so that we can see all drives that
are connected to the system
so let's turn it on and hopefully it'll
spin up
oh my goodness there is there's the dr
turning 32 gigabytes detected and
successfully working so we'll just add a
drive left to it and hopefully all the
data will be accessible so i just added
the drive letter to one of the
partitions as you saw and here are the
files all on that drive
so hopefully i'll be able to get all
these off but it does look like they are
accessible see if we can go into a
desktop and everything so i'll just
start these transferring
so now that we've got all the data off
what I'm going to do is just run a error
scan of the entire surface of the drive
just so that we can see how much of it
actually is damaged and how much is
still usable
so we'll just start off right so as you
can see this gun is detecting a few
damaged inaccessible sectors
now I think that these have been caused
by the head actually making contact with
the platters rather than particles that
were let into the drive because it
really was quite stuck so i'm actually
quite surprised it's not worse than this
but it's just worth noting that the data
percent of damage two blocks is only two
percent which means that even if it was
100% full you
ninety-eight percent of the data would
be able to be recovered which is this is
a decent number so i hope that if you
have had the same issue with your hard
drive it
this video has been somewhat useful in
helping you to fix it
now a good look if you do attempt it and
remember that it is at your own risk
so I hope you enjoyed this video
and if you are interested in DIY things
you can perhaps check out my channel and
maybe subscribe if you think it's
interesting enough
I'm at and thank you for watching oh by
the way in my next video i think i might
try transplanting some hard drive
classes just to see whether it works so
stay tuned for that
okay yeah goodbye
yeah
yeah
yeah