Hard Disk Repair | DataRecoveryUnion.com

Seagate has a proven track record of consistently delivering reliable products in volume, and the new Barracuda 7200.11 family is no exception. Designed with up to four platters and the only second-generation perpendicular recording technology in the industry, the Barracuda 7200.11 drive offers the ideal balance of world-class technology and value, providing customers with an optimal overall solution. The capacity, reliability and performance of this drive, along with its 5-year limited warranty, ensure the longevity of digital content for years to come.

Key Features and Benefits

Delivers the industry’s highest capacity—up to 1.5 TB of storage (also 1 TB and 750, 640, 500, 320 and 160 GB)
Ships with the industry’s most reliable and proven perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology
Delivers high performance
- Up to 120 MB/s sustained data rate
- 32-MB and 16-MB cache buffer (8 MB on 160 GB)
Environmentally friendly
- Consumes up to 43 percent less power during idle than previous products, enabling customers to build low-power systems
- Meets strict RoHS environmental requirements
Leverages best combination of technology (areal density, PMR) and proven components for volume availability
Ships with an industry-best 5-year limited warranty

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Drive—the Eco-Friendly Choice
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive delivers up to 43 percent power savings over the previous desktop generation without sacrificing drive and system performance levels, giving customers the ability to manufacture eco-friendly PC systems and external storage systems that meet energy-savings requirements.

Seagate hard drives have long been produced with the environment in mind, and not just with low power consumption. Like all other Seagate drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 product family complies with the Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) Directive—a regulation that limits the use of hazardous materials in electronic goods. Seagate also takes great pride in implementing numerous voluntary material restrictions for the good of the environment.

Seagate is committed to minimizing the impact of our products and operations on the environment, and producing energy-efficient, RoHS-compliant hard drives is just one element of that commitment. Our facilities are operated to be energy efficient and minimize our carbon footprint. For example, Seagate has implemented production efficiency measures, such as replacing or renovating less-efficient equipment, resulting in a 20 percent increase in production efficiency on a per-hard-drive basis. In just six months this delivered a savings of 158.93 million kWh, or enough energy to power nearly 15,000 U.S. homes for one year. Seagate also has deployed aggressive waste minimization and recycling programs in facilities worldwide.

Seagate employees are fully engaged in this environmental commitment and participate in many ways, from innovating eco-friendly hard drives, planting trees at company facilities and identifying eco-friendly manufacturing improvements to car-pooling and telecommuting.

With Seagate and the Barracuda 7200.11 drive, our customers can have the best of both worlds—top hard drive performance and the satisfaction of knowing they are using a high-capacity drive with a very small eco-footprint.

Hard Disk Repair

Pandora Recovery 2.01

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago024 mins

Pandora Recovery is a powerful free tool that provides its users an effective way to attempt recovery of permanently deleted files. And that does not mean restoration of a file from Recycle Bin. Pandora Recovery actually recovers files permanently removed from Recycle Bin, files originally deleted using Shift + Delete keys bypassing Recycle Bin and files deleted from DOS prompt.

Pandora Recovery is not a backup tool – it can recover files that have been deleted months before Pandora Recovery was installed. And while the likelihood of successful recovery is negatively affected by the time passed since the deletion of files Pandora Recovery users were able to recover files eleven years after deletion and more than five years after re-formatting a hard drive!

Features:
1. Browse, Search, Preview and Recover deleted files
Pandora Recovery allows you to find and recover recoverable deleted files from NTFS and FAT-formatted volumes. Pandora Recovery will scan your hard drive and build an index of existing and deleted files and directories (folders) on any logical drive of your computer with supported file format. Once the scanning is complete you have full control over which files to recover and what destination to recover them to. You can BROWSE the hierarchy of existing and deleted files, or you can use SEARCH functionality to find a deleted file if you remember at least one of the following:
– full or partial file name,
– file size,
– file creation date, or
– file last accessed date

On top of that, Pandora Recovery allows you to preview deleted files of certain type (images and text files) without performing recovery. This feature becomes really important if you are forced to recover deleted files to the same drive. Currently you can preview files having several image file types (BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, ICO,TIF, TGA, PCX, WBMP, WMF, JP2, J2K, JBG, JPC, PGX, PNM, RAS, CUR) and several text file types (TXT, LOG, INI, BAT, RTF, XML, CSS). Quick Viewer allows you preview file contents as text if it cannot find appropriate viewer for it. To use quick viewer you can select deleted file and or click the Quick Viewer icon or right click on deleted file and select ‘Quick View’. Quick View will then display a preview of deleted file.

Finally, Pandora Recovery allows you to recover deleted files, without any limitations on application’s end. Note that successful recovery might not be possible – if the original location has been reused by operating system to store different content the integrity of the original content has not been preserved and the recovered data will most likely be corrupted.

2. Surface (cluster) scan
Surface Scan – Embedded Image Preview
Click Image to Enlarge
As of version 1.1.20 Pandora Recovery implements surface (cluster) scan of targeted media, which allows:
– recovery of files whose MFT record has been reused by OS,
– Recovery of files from reformatted media,
– Recovery of files from discs with damaged or missing file allocation table.

Disk surface scan enumerates all unused clusters on the disk drive and searches for disk areas probably occupied by the data of removed files. Using this method of search, we do not use information contained in the file allocation table. So, it can work even on reformatted disk drives (except in) the case when low-level formatting was performed).

Almost each type of files has its unique features, for example the beginning of a JPEG file always contains JFIF magic word. Using this information we can determine what areas of the disk may contain deleted files data. Knowing the structure of a file (which is common within one file type) we can determine the length of the file and then recover file data.

File name and file attributes information are stored separately of the file data in file allocation table (FAT in FAT32 file system, MFT in NTFS), so we cannot determine the name of the file, its attributes, file path and recover data of file alternative data streams.

This method works only with non-fragmented files. Data of non- fragmented file(s) are stored in contiguous neighbor clusters, while data of a fragmented file may be stored in different places of the disk.

Remarks: In NTFS small files (less than 1KB in size) reside only in the Master File Table (MFT), so we cannot find such files using the Surface Scan Method.

3. Recover Archived, Hidden, Encrypted, Compressed files
Pandora Recovery can recover not only ‘regular’ files, but also archived, hidden, system, sparse, encrypted and compressed files.

Windows 2000 introduced Encrypting File System (EFS), which supports file encryption. EFS service runs on top of NTFS and encrypts or decrypts files or folders transparently for users and applications. Pandora Recovery does not decipher contents of encrypted files. Instead of that it copies the content of an encrypted file in raw mode just like data back-up applications do.

Encrypted and compressed files will be color-coded once drive indexing has been completed. Names of the encrypted files will be displayed in GREEN, while compressed files will be BLUE.

4. Recover Alternate Data Streams (ADS)
In NTFS all files have at least on file stream also called the unnamed $DATA stream. The unnamed stream contains the actual data of the file. Alternative streams usually contain file-related metadata. For example, MP3 music file may contain unnamed stream, where data are stored, and one or several additional streams where composition genre, album name and author’s name are stored.

While file might be usable without the original content of its Alternate Data Streams this useful information should be recovered. Alternative streams often contain file metadata, while file attributes contain information about how files are displayed in Windows Explorer.

5. Recover Images, Documents, Movies, or any other type of files
Pandora Recovery handles files regardless of their type, size or any other attribute. As long as the space on the logical drive has not been reused by operating system Pandora Recovery can successfully recover content of any deleted file.

If you want to search for unspecified deleted images or movies the best strategy is to search for common file extensions:
– *.avi, *.mpg, *.mov for video
– *.bmp, *.jpg, *.png, *.gif for images

6. Recovery success estimate
When a file has been deleted, the disk space occupied by the file can be reused by file system. The file system can reallocate this space for data of newly created files. Once operating system does that the deleted file becomes partially or completely overwritten. There are more chances that an overwritten file is corrupted and can not be recovered successfully. Overwritten files can still be recovered, but they likely will not be usable.

If clusters once used by a file have been reused by another already deleted files Pandora Recovery will display 0% as ‘overwritten’ value, which means the clusters are not currently in use. Still, the recovered data is likely to be corrupted.

Pandora Recovery gives you an estimate of recovery success by displaying the percent of clusters reused by operating system. To view the estimate move the mouse pointer over a file for a second or two until popup tip is displayed. The tip will say “Overwritten: 50%” or “Overwritten: 0%” . The higher the percent, the lower the chance of successful recovery.

Names of files with partially or completely overwritten clusters are displayed in RED.

7. Review File properties and Drive properties
Pandora Recovery displays properties of files: file type, deletion status, percent of clusters reused (‘overwritten’ attribute), path and size of the file, date created and date modified and common attributes (compressed, archived, hidden, system, encrypted…). To display file properties you should right-click on a file and select ‘Properties’ from context menu.

Pandora Recovery also displays properties of available logical drives: Drive letter, volume label, type, file system, total and available size. To display drive properties you should right-click on a logical drive and select ‘Properties’ from context menu.

8. Recover to Local Hard Drive, Network Drive, or Flash Drive
Pandora Recovery can use local hard drive, remote network drive or flash drive as a recovery destination folder. Pandora Recovery even allows you to recover deleted files on the same drive that the deleted files resided on originally.

IMPORTANT! To increase the success rate of file recovery it is strongly recommended that you recover your deleted file to a secondary hard drive, a network drive, USB Flash drive, or other external media. While recovery to the same drive that the deleted files reside on is physically possible it may lead to partial or complete loss of your deleted content. Non-deleted files will never be put at risk in either circumstance.

If your lost data resides on your C: it is recommended you perform your file recovery by physically removing the C: drive from your computer and attaching it as a slave on another computer and then performing the file recovery using that other computer.

9. Recognizes FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 and NTFS/EFS
NTFS (New Technology File System) is the default file system in all modern operating systems from Microsoft, such as Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. NTFS 5.0 is improved version of NTFS introduced with Windows 2000.

NTFS replaced Microsoft’s previous FAT file system, used in MS-DOS and early versions of Windows. NTFS has several improvements over FAT such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization plus additional extensions such as security access control lists and file system journaling. The exact specification is a trade secret, although (since NTFS v3.00) it can be licensed commercially from Microsoft through their Intellectual Property Licensing program.

NTFS5 (where 5 comes from internal enumeration of Windows 2000, the operating system which first implemented NTFS v.3.00) includes several new features over its predecessors: disk usage quotas, sparse file support, reparse points, distributed link tracking and file-level encryption, also known as the Encrypting File System (EFS).

FAT16 based on the usual 512 byte sector size and used with MS-DOS and Windows 3.xx, has a maximum partition size of 2 Gigabytes. FAT16 does not natively support alternate data streams or file permissions and it is not a journaling file system.

FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95. It is the standard file system used in Windows 95/98/Me. The theoretical Maximum partition size for the FAT32 file system is 8 Terabytes. However, in Windows 95 and 98 the size is limited to 127.53GB because to the disk 16-bit disk utilities included with the operating systems. Windows 2000 and later operating systems should be able to support the theoretical maximum size of FAT32, but Microsoft has placed an artificial limit which only allows formatting up to 32GB volumes on Windows 2000 and XP. The Maximum file size that can exist on a FAT32 formatted partition is 4GB. This has become a major factor in rendering the FAT32 file system obsolete for use on a personal computer hard drive. Media files can easily exceed this maximum size. FAT32 does not natively support alternate data streams or file permissions and it is not a journaling file system.

10. Compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows 2000
Pandora Recovery requires Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server or Windows Vista for installation. Pandora Recovery currently only recovers deleted data from NTFS formatted drives. There are no plans at this time to create a version compatible with the Mac, Linux, or any other non-Microsoft Operating System.

11. Wizards, hints and context-sensitive help
An easy way to get started in recovery your deleted files is by using the Wizard. By default the Wizard will open automatically when you start Pandora Recovery. You can also access the Wizard by clicking on the wizard icon in the program toolbar.

How does it work?
When you delete a file on FAT32 or NTFS file system, its content is not erased from disk but only reference to file data in File Allocation Table or Master File Table is marked as deleted. It means that you might be able to recover deleted files, or make it visible for file system again.

Search Deleted Files – Click Image to EnlargePandora Recovery allows you to find and recover recoverable deleted files from NTFS and FAT-formatted volumes, regardless of their type – you can recover pictures, songs, movies or documents. Pandora Recovery will scan your hard drive and build an index of existing and deleted files and directories (folders) on any logical drive of your computer with supported file format. Once the scanning is complete you have full control over which files to recover and what destination to recover them to. You can BROWSE the hierarchy of existing and deleted files, or you can use SEARCH functionality to find a deleted file if you remember at least one of the following:
– full or partial file name,
– file size,
– file creation date, or
– file last accessed date

Pandora Recovery FREE DOWNLOAD

Download from Download.com – recommended

Download from local server (if the above location is not available)

http://www.pandorarecovery.com/

To install Pandora Recovery please do the following:
1. Download the Pandora Recovery installer from one of the download servers listed above.
2. Run the installer on the computer you wish to use to recover the deleted data with. After clicking the link above, simply click RUN or OPEN when the dialog window pops up.
3 . Proceed with the installation.
4 . Once installation is complete run the software and follow the wizard to start recovering deleted data.

IMPORTANT! To increase the success of file recovery it is strongly recommended that you recover your deleted file(s) to a secondary hard drive, a network drive, USB flash drive, or other external media. While recovery to the same drive that the deleted file(s) reside on is physically possible it may lead to partial or permanent loss of your deleted content. Non-deleted file(s) will never be put at risk in either circumstance.

Hard Disk Repair

What if the Flash Device Is Damaged?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago03 mins

Data Recovery is always an option for these types of devices. The quality of the recovery depends on how much usable data there is. In the British television program mentioned earlier, after the flash drive was shot out of the cannon and damaged, the producers sent the damaged flash device it to professional data recovery company After working with the device and its pieces, the engineers were able to recover the data on the device and found the data the producers were expecting.

Never assume that the data is gone when physical damage has occurred. The experienced data recovery engineers are capable of repairing complex electronics on USB flash drives.

What about deleted or reformatted USB flash drives? Similar to hard disks, when a USB flash drive is reformatted or data is deleted, the file system addresses to the data are erased—not the data itself. Even if some files are re-saved back to the device, there may be a chance that the information is recoverable. In simple deleted recovery situations, do-it-yourself solutions by using the professional software would be able to find the data and bring it back. In more complex situations where data has been restored back to the device, a trained data recovery engineer would be able to tell the difference between the newly written data and the original data. After an evaluation, the user would know exactly which files sustained damaged and which ones did not.

As long as the flash media is not physically damaged, a quick recovery choice for USB flash drives is that chooses the Remote Data Recovery service from professional data recovery company. The remote engineers can work on your flash drive while it’s still plugged into your computer and has access to the internet or to a modem.

Hard Disk Repair

Hard Drive Technology

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago03 mins

Hard disk storage manufacturers have been always working to improve the technology. Storage space, data transfer rates, and internal error checking have been the guiding principles of hard drive technology. Data Recovery companies work hard to maintain their capabilities to be compatible with these emerging technologies so that they can provide the best hard drive recovery for their client’s data. What are some of the advancements in hard disk storage devices? What are some common data loss scenarios with hard disk storage? This document will help answer these questions and more. Let’s begin with looking at the inner workings of the hard disk itself.

Hard Drives — Technology in Action

Types of common failures include:

As we know, hard drives are a combination of sophisticated electronic and mechanical systems that incorporate a number of specialized motors and electro-mechanical components to read and write data.

Hard drive technology has substantially advanced in the past 10 years. In fact, hard drives are designed to manage themselves in addition to reading and writing data. Hard drives today use a number of algorithms to verify data on the drive and also maintains a ‘Defect Management’ list internally that constantly monitors their own health and performance. If a sector is beginning to fail, the hard drive’s electronics will remove that sector from use. In addition to this, S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) circuitry has been incorporated on many hard drives and is used to monitor all of the internal systems.

Despite these safeguards, hard drives can fail. There can be a number of reasons for hard drive failure, for instance physical damage can result when the hard drive or case is jarred while operating or even when powered off. Power spikes or fluctuations can damage the electronics or corrupt the data on the drive. Internal mechanical parts can seize up due to high temperatures if the drive does not have enough airflow to keep the unit cool.

Hard Disk Repair

Platter Scratch Repairing

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Hard Disk Drive Crash
Take the case of computer systems. We become so used to working on the computer on a regular basis that we are rarely ready to face the consequences if things go wrong. This is truer of a computer hard disk drive crash than of anything else. Hard drive malfunction can be divided into two types: one is the so called Firmware Level malfunction that can be repaired using relating software or factory commands; the other one left is the Physical Level malfunction caused by physical hard drive components damage. As to the latter Physical Level crash, the typical case in data recovery practices is that the head crash and serious platter scratches caused by direct contact between the head and the platter surface; such drives manifest themselves as undetected, staying BUSY, besides an ominous scratching sound may start to emanate from the disk. This is a serious problem. It is indicative of nothing less than a crash of the hard disk drive.

Functioning of a Hard Disk Drive
In order to understand the problem of a hard disk drive crash, it is important to first understand the mechanism of a hard drive. Only after knowing how the disk drive functions can one understand the nature of the problem.

Components
Read-Write Head: The read-write heads of the hard disk drives are those mechanisms that, as the name suggests read or write the data from the magnetic fields of the platters.

Hard Disk Platter: A hard disk platter is a circular disk within the hard disk drive. It is circular in shape and the magnetic media of the disk drive is stored on it. Generally multiple platters are mounted on a single spindle of the hard disk drive.

Lubricant Layer: This is the topmost layer of the platters and is made of a substance similar to Teflon. Carbon: There is a layer of sputtered carbon just below the lubricant layer. Magnetic Layer: This is below the layer of carbon.

Functioning
The magnetic layer of the hard disk drive stores all the data. The two layers of carbon and the lubricant like material saves this magnetic layer from coming into accidental contact with the read-write head of the disk, we can say they exist as the protection layer of the magnetic layer (of course, another important function of them is to maintain the stability of the flying read-write head)

Hard Disk Repair

File Systems

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago010 mins

Different operating systems use different file systems. Some are designed specifically to work with more than one, for compatibility reasons; others work only with their own file system. This section takes brief look at the most common operating systems in use on the PC and the file systems that they use. This enables you to know what parts of the rest of the discussion on file systems is most relevant to your situation.

The most common name of the file system, “FAT”, is problematic, even though it is still often used. The first FAT file system used 12-bit file allocation tables; this was later expanded to 16 bits, and became the most common file system implementation for hard disks from the late 1980s to the late 1990s. To distinguish these versions of FAT from the 32-bit successor called FAT32, the older FAT variants are now sometimes called FAT12 or FAT16. However, you will still hear just “FAT” used a lot; if so, you need to find out what specifically is being referred to, if it matters in that particular context. For more elaboration on the differences between FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.

Throughout my discussion of file systems, I have referred to the FAT family of file systems. This includes several different FAT-related file systems, as described here. The file allocation table or FAT stores information about the clusters on the disk in a table. There are three different varieties of this file allocation table, which vary based on the maximize size of the table. The system utility that you use to partition the disk will normally choose the correct type of FAT for the volume you are using, but sometimes you will be given a choice of which you want to use.

Since each cluster has one entry in the FAT, and these entries are used to hold the cluster number of the next cluster used by the file, the size of the FAT is the limiting factor on how many clusters any disk volume can contain. The following are the three different FAT versions now in use:

FAT12: The oldest type of FAT uses a 12-bit binary number to hold the cluster number. A volume formatted using FAT12 can hold a maximum of 4,086 clusters, which is 2^12 minus a few values (to allow for reserved values to be used in the FAT). FAT12 is therefore most suitable for very small volumes, and is used on floppy disks and hard disk partitions smaller than about 16 MB (the latter being rare today.)

FAT16: The FAT used for most older systems, and for small partitions on modern systems, uses a 16-bit binary number to hold cluster numbers. When you see someone refer to a “FAT” volume generically, they are usually referring to FAT16, because it is the de facto standard for hard disks, even with FAT32 now more popular than FAT16. A volume using FAT16 can hold a maximum of 65,526 clusters, which is 2^16 less a few values (again for reserved values in the FAT). FAT16 is used for hard disk volumes ranging in size from 16 MB to 2,048 MB. VFAT is a variant of FAT16.

FAT32: The newest FAT type, FAT32 is supported by newer versions of Windows, including Windows 95’s OEM SR2 release, as well as Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2000. FAT32 uses a 28-bit binary cluster number–not 32, because 4 of the 32 bits are “reserved”. 28 bits is still enough to permit ridiculously huge volumes–FAT32 can theoretically handle volumes with over 268 million clusters, and will support (theoretically) drives up to 2 TB in size. However to do this the size of the FAT grows very large; see here for details on FAT32’s limitations.

Here’s a summary table showing how the three types of FAT compare:

Virtual FAT (VFAT)
Microsoft incorporated several enhancements into the disk management capabilities of Windows 95. Access to the file system can be done using high-speed, protected-mode, 32-bit drivers, or for compatibility, the older DOS 16-bit routines. Support was added for long file names and also for better control over such matters as disk locking, so utilities could access the disk in “exclusive mode” without fear of other programs using it in the meantime.

Despite the new name and new capabilities, VFAT as a file system is basically the same as FAT is. Most of the new capabilities relate to how the file system is used, and not the actual structures on the disk. VFAT handles standard FAT16 partitions, and under Windows 95 OSR2 or later, FAT32 partitions as well. The only significant change in terms of actual structures is the addition of long file names. Even here, VFAT supports these using what is basically a hack, as opposed to anything really revolutionary.

With the exception of the long file names, Windows 95, using VFAT, shares the same logical disk structures as DOS or Windows 3.x using FAT.

NTFS
The NTFS file system used by Windows NT is completely different from, and incompatible with, the FAT file system that is used by DOS and the other Windows varieties. NTFS can only be used by Windows NT–other operating systems do not have the ability to use a disk formatted with NTFS.
NTFS is in virtually every way, far superior to FAT. It is a robust, full-featured system that includes file-by-file compression, full permissions control and attribute settings, transaction-based operation, and many more features. It also does not have the problems with cluster sizes and hard disk size limitations that FAT does, and has other performance-enhancing features such as RAID support.

The only way that NTFS is not superior to FAT is in compatibility with older software. NTFS is not nearly as widely-used as FAT, for this reason. For now I am not including a full examination of NTFS on the site, but I may add this at a later time if it seems warranted.

Hard Disk Repair

Hard Drive Firmwares

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago15 mins

Definition of firmware:
Since modern hard disks have internal microprocessors, they also have internal “software” that runs them. These routines are what run the control logic and make the drive work. Of course this isn’t really software in the conventional sense, because these instructions are embedded into read-only memory. This code is analogous to the system BIOS: low-level, hardware-based control routines, embedded in ROM. It is usually called firmware, with the word “firm” intending to connote something in between “hard” and “soft”. The functions that run the logic board’s circuitry could be implemented strictly with hardware devices, as was done with early drives. However, this would be expensive and inflexible for today’s sophisticated controllers, since it would make it difficult to update or adapt the logic to match changes in hard disks or the devices they interface with.

Much the way the system BIOS benefits from being in a changeable ROM chip that can be modified relatively easily, the hard disk’s firmware does as well. In fact, in many drives the firmware can be updated under software control, very much the same way that a flash BIOS works. Unlike the system BIOS, this is only very rarely done, when a particular sort of problem exists with the firmware logic that can be fixed without requiring a physical hardware change. You can check the drive manufacturer’s web site for more details.

In short, without the firmware code, no communication will be possible between the PC system and the hard disk.

Where the firmware stores?
Modern disks normally have their firmware codes located on data platters and also the PCB board. If the firmware area is corrupted, the drive will appear to have failed even all the electrical and mechanical components are still fully functional.

You may know the importance of firmware on the HDD function. And know the firmware is like the micro codes between the elements of HDD. And what will it happen if there are some firmware corruptions?

Let’s see the symptoms of firmware corruption before the solutions given:

1. Drive powers up, but is not recognized /defected by the computer
2. Drive powers up, but is recognized wrongly, sometimes with nonsensical characters, manufacture alias (Such as N40p for Maxtor 6Y and etc ;);
3. Drive freezes during booting up;
4. Drive detect in wrong Capacity, such as 80 GB detected as 1Mb;
5. S.M.A.R.T error;
6. Drive is locked by human error; such as Hitachi hard drive by a drop; it is a self protection method of HDD design;
7. Drive clicking ;( it can be caused by firmware too, the heads try to read the SA on platters and can not positing 😉

The firmware is very confidential to common users and the HDD manufacturers will never publish to the public.

Hard Disk Repair

Data Interface Connector or Card

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago04 mins

Modern hard disk drives use one of two interfaces: IDE (ATA) – Integrated Drive Electronics (also called ST506 drives) and its variants (EIDE – Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics, or the SCSI (Small Computer System Interface). You can tell immediately by looking at the back of the hard disk which interface is being used.

1. IDE hard disks use a 40-pin connector, and SCSI hard disks normally use either a 50-pin or a 68-pin or 80-Pin connector.

2. Note: Older MFM (MODIFIED FREQUENCY MODULATION), RLL (RUN LENGTH KIMITED) and ESDI (ENHANCED SYSTEM DEVICE INTERFACE) hard disks used two data connectors, one 34 pins and the other 20 pins.

3. The cable usually has a red stripe to indicate wire #1 and the hard disk uses markers to indicate the matching pin #1.

Led Connector: Originally, hard disks shipped with a faceplate (or bezel) on the front. The hard disk was mounted into an external hard drive bay (in place of a floppy disk drive) and an LED was visible on the front of the drive to indicate when the disk was in use. It was quickly realized that having the disks mounted internally to the case made more sense, but the LED was still desirable. So an LED was mounted to the case and a wire run to a two-pin connector on the hard disk itself. On newer systems that run with integrated IDE controllers on the motherboard, the LED is connected to a special connector on the motherboard itself.

Drive Bay: The entire hard disk is mounted into a physical enclosure designed to protect it and also keep its internal environment sealed from the outside air. This is necessary because of the requirement of keeping the internal environment free of dust and other contamination that could get between the read/write heads and the platters over which they float, and possibly lead to head crashes.

DRIVE BAYS are where internal hard drives are mounted inside the PC. They come in internal and external versions, based on whether they allow access from the exterior of the case, and also in two standard sizes: 5.25″ and 3.5″.

Now, we have rough understanding of the HDD components now and how these parts work in architecture. But you may find the importance of the microprogram inside the HDD. No matter how precise the HDD design, they are a stack of meaningless mechanical parts.

Hard Disk Repair

Hard Drive Power Connector

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago01 mins

Hard disk drives use a standard, 4-pin male connector plug that takes one of the power connectors coming from the power supply. This keyed, 4-wire plastic connector provides +5 and +12 voltage to the hard disk.

Hard Disk Repair

PCBA, control circuitry (Printed Circuit Board Assembly)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago4 years ago06 mins

All modern hard disks are made with an intelligent circuit board integrated into the hard disk unit. Early hard disks were virtually all of the control logic for controlling the hard disk itself was placed into the controller plugged into the PC; there were little smarts on the drive itself, which had to be told specifically how to perform every action.

As newer drives were introduced with more features and faster speed, this approach became quite impractical, and once electronics miniaturization progressed far enough, it made sense to move most of the control functions to the drive itself.

The most common interface for PC hard disks is called IDE, which in fact stands for Integrated Drive Electronics. This name is something of a misnomer today. When it was introduced, IDE was distinguished from the other interfaces of the day by having the integrated electronics on the drive, instead of on the controller card plugged into the system bus like older interfaces. However, the term really refers to where the control logic is and not the interface itself, and since all hard disks today use integrated electronics the name doesn’t mean anything any more, despite the fact that everyone continues to use it. The other popular PC hard disk interface today, SCSI, also uses drives that have integrated controllers. The more correct name for the IDE interface is AT Attachment or ATA.

The logic board of a Cheetah 10,000 RPM 36 GB hard disk drive.The main interface and power connectors are on the right-hand side;auxiliary connectors on the bottom and left side. The bottom of the spindlemotor protrudes through a round hole made for it in the circuit board.

What’s the relationship between PCBA and Control Circuitry? Let me give an example. The electric current is like Blood and the Control Circuitry is like the blood vessel distributing on the HDD, and the PCBA is like the brain to process and give orders to particular parts.

The drive’s internal logic board contains a microprocessor (inside main chip) and internal memory (RAM chip), and other structures and circuits that control what happens inside the drive.

In many ways, this is like a small embedded PC within the hard disk itself. The control circuitry of the drive performs the following functions (among others):

1. Controlling the spindle motor, including making sure the spindle runs at the correct speed.
2. Controlling the actuator’s movement to various tracks.
3. Managing all read/write operations.
4. Implementing power management features.
5. Handling geometry translation.
6. Managing the internal cache and optimization features such as pre-fetch.
7. Coordinating and integrating the other functions, such as the flow of information over the hard disk interface, optimizing multiple requests, converting data to and from the form the read/write heads require it, etc.
8. Implementing all advanced performance and reliability features.

You may think that the Control Circuitry is not so important. The reason is that the quality or optimization level of the control circuitry doesn’t manifest itself as a single, simple specification. You can’t easily compare the circuitry of five different drive families. Most hard disk manufacturers provide very little information about the “guts” of the logic board, and even if they did, most people wouldn’t know what to do with the information.

However, the control circuitry of the drive is underrated and misunderstood, even by those interested in hard disk performance issues.

In fact, differences in control circuitry account for part of the differences in some specifications. This is probably most true of seek performance, Beyond this, you can’t really tell much about what’s inside the circuitry. However, if you use two different drives that have very similar specifications and run on the same interface on the same PC, but one just “feels faster” than the other, differences in their internal circuitry may be part of the answer.