Skip to main content

Hard disk diagnosis

Hard Disk Error Diagnosis.

When a drive has been sent to us for recovery because of a physical failure, it is absolutely vital that a correct diagnosis of the problem is made. Some companies will try one thing and if that fails try another until they either get to the problem or give up as a lost cause. We do not recommend this type of ad hoc analysis as in some cases it can make a problem worse. For example, a write-head fault can easily be mis-diagnosed as a firmware problem and attempts to 'repair' firmware can result in it becoming completely unreadable making the problem worse, because now not only do heads need changing but the drive also needs firmware repairs being made.

There are set stages in the diagnosis stage and these follow a pattern. Once a problem is found it is not always considered the only problem so diagnosis will continue. In some cases this may involve ordering spare parts to complete a diagnosis, but in most cases we will not charge for these.

Depending on the reported fault by the customer the tools used to daignose involve.

  • Electronics testing equipment
  • Internal visual examination in a cleanroon
  • Microscopial head examination
  • Disk drive analyser/Oscilloscope analysis
  • Bus protocol analysis
  • Firmware analysis

 Our website covers this in more detail Hard disk fault analysis

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment on this data recovery blog

Popular posts from this blog

Laptop Data Recovery

A large number of computers sold are laptop computers. They are light and portable. Modern laptops contain very large hard disks at the time of writing this article 500Gb are often seen here for data recovery. One of the most common problems we see are drives where the heads have crashed. The main cause is actually part of the design of the computer - remember the bit where I said 'they are light and portable'? It is easy to put the computer on your lap, then when you need to get up, lift the computer up and put it to one side. This movement can cause a head crash especially if the heads are reading or writing at the time. Most manuals that we have seen recommend putting the computer on a firm surface like a desk or a table and in fact NOT putting it on your lap - strange that they are called 'laptops' when it is not recommended to use them as such. Some manufacturers have developed hardware that detects when the computer is being moved and pulls the heads to a saf...
Post a Comment
Read more

Data recovery from Toshiba Hybrid Drives.

Data Recovery from Toshiba Hybrid Drives. After months of research we have finally cracked the Toshiba Hybrid SSD problems. Searching through reams of code resulted with a list of commands that enables us to manipulate the firmware on the SSD-side of these drives. Codes to modify the hard disk side are well known throughout the DR trade, but problems with Hybrid drives usually result with unrecoverable drives. For MJM Data Recovery that is no longer the case, we are are able to recover data from these drives that usually show as three types of failure. The drive does not spin. The drive spins but hangs the computer The drive spins and give ID but data can not be accessed. The problem is determined by the symptoms, but we can reset SMART for the SSD-side of the drive, reset SSD-side cache and when necessary completely reset the NAND. We recover for end users, IT companies and other Data Recovery companies. For more information please see this Data Recovery - Toshiba Hyb...
Post a Comment
Read more