What to do with this defective hard drive, recognized by BIOS but not by OS?

Question

I’m trying to recover a 2.5-inch Toshiba HDD drive from a laptop, which suddenly stopped working.

When powered on, the disk was totally silent and thus not spinning anymore.

Since it is out of warranty—and a total loss was acceptable—I have decided to carefully open it up. The arm was stuck in the middle of the disk.

Using a star-shaped screwdriver, I slowly rotated the spindle counter-clockwise—without touching the surface—and moved the arm to the right, in park zone.

Now—when powered on—the disk is spinning again.

• When I put it back in the laptop, the OS (Windows 8) tries to boot up, but after a while, it hangs up (OS stops loading). Before hanging up, the disk emits several clicks, then stop spinning.

• When put in a desktop computer (as external drive), the drive is recognized by BIOS (it shows the UEFI partition) but it does not appears in Windows (in Disk management) or in Ubuntu OS (fdisk or mount does not show the disk). When the OS boots up (either Windows or Ubuntu) at some point, it seems it tries to access the disk, because the disk emits several clicks for a few minutes, then the OS gives up, ignore the disk and continue loading.

Is there something else I can try to diagnostic the disk or access the data on it—such as make an image—or should I consider it as totally dead?

Answer 1

Your HDD is gone. You should never open the cover of a hard drive, as a speck of dust will destroy the hard drive. If 1 speck can cause this, imagine the hundreds of thousands of specks in your room.

Very clearly explained on this web page:

The title of this article says everything you need to know. You should never, ever open the cover of your hard drive. It might sound ridiculous, but even the tiniest speck of dust can mean the end of your data and drive forever.

A hard drive is extremely sensitive. Your data is stored inside it magnetically on a circular disk, which is then accessed by a head that floats very closely above the disk and decodes the data. The circular disk, more often known as the platter, is made from aluminium or glass and is glazed with a thin layer on the top where the data is stored.

The disks rotate from anywhere to 4,200 to 15,000 revolutions per minute which is one of the reasons that makes the hard drive so sensitive. Even if the tiniest bit of dust was to enter the hard drive then it can very likely cause problems. What seems insignificant to us is like a tornado for the hard drive. If the platter was to become damaged then it is goodbye to your data and your drive.

If one speck of dust is going to cause so much damage, then you can imagine what would happen if you opened up your hard drive in your room that is full of hundreds of thousands of airborne particles. Even if they’re not visible, as soon as the hard drive begins to spin again then it is havoc unleashed.