hello and welcome to this harddrive 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 it's trying to spin up
because it can actually help to get the
heads loose but this can obviously cause
damage so I stress and 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 off the platters
manually so to open a drive you need a
set of Torx screwdriver bits and a screw
driver obviously so the first thing to
do is just select a screw driver bit
that actually fits your screws in most
laptop drives this is t6 so that's the
drew screw driver bit I'm going to use
and
we can begin just to remove this top
cover okay 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 harddrive
technician or anything I'm just sharing
my experiences with opening up drives
and restoring the data from them okay so
with that out of the way let's begin
opening this up now you've probably
heard that opening a drive in anything
but a cleanroom causes the drive to be
destroyed basically and there is kind of
truth in this but I'm not sure how much
of it 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 sort of 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 your pure 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 dust 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 I'll point out later
which does catch stray particles so it's
not too much of an issue but if you are
really concerned about stray particles
landing on the platter compromising data
what you can do is make a clean air and
closure 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
does 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 undone
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 do 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
which it clearly is not so what we can
try and do is manually push this into
the parked 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 I'm just going to use the
screwdriver because there is a screw in
the center spindle so we can just turn
this and pull on the head
[Music]
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 okay so
we'll just put the lid back on and by
the way this is the little filter I 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 it's 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've 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 let's
go spin up oh my goodness there it is
there's the drive two hundred thirty two
gigabytes detected and successfully
working so we'll just add a drive letter
to it and hopefully all the data will be
accessible so I've 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 it off right so as
you can see the scan 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 damaged blocks is only two
percent which means that even if it was
100 percent full 98 percent of the data
would be able to be recovered which is
it's a decent number so I hope that if
you have had the same issue with your
hard drive that 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 Matt and thank you for
watching oh by the way in my next video
I think I might try transplanting some
hard drive platters just to see whether
it works so stay tuned for that
okay yeah goodbye
[Music]