If you experience a hard drive crash, then a hard drive data recovery may be required. In most cases, a physical disk failure or logical disk error has occurred. This means the hard drive may spin up and rotate, but the hard drive partitions won’t be accessible. It can also mean the hard drive is dead. If this is the case, a physical data recovery is required as there may be damaged hard drive heads, or hard drive electrical components.

This means the hard drive arm is not able to “seek” read the hard drive platter where the data is stored. Instead the armature slides back and forth across the platter and continues to scrap against the platters creating “data dust”. This hard drive data recovery typically requires a physical hard drive repair of the read/write heads and possibly the electronic PCB circuitry.

If you have a clicking hard disk failure we strongly recommend not restarting your computer as this hard drive failure problem will not resolve until the failed hard drive is fixed.

When a Disk Boot Failure occurs you may see the following errors:

A Disk Boot Failure can result from a failed hard drive, faulty mother board, a damaged ribbon or cable. These are classified as a physical hard drive failure and can be easily tested. A virus attack on the operating system can also produce similar Disk Boot Failures. In this case, a logical hard drive error caused the Disk Boot Failure.

A quick test to determine if the hard drive has physically failed or the PC system has failed is as follows:

Replace the “crashed” hard drive with a comparable new hard drive. If you can load an operating system onto the new hard drive, then the mother board and cables are good. This means your “crashed hard drive” is either infected with a virus or your crashed hard drive has failed.

Do Not load a system onto your hard drive that requires a data recovery service.

The hard drive won’t start or spin if the hard drive motor seized. This means the logic board may be damaged or the read/write heads are stuck on the platters. There are other reasons why hard drives won’t start or spin up, however, these are the predominant factors that result in a hard drive failure. This is a classic case where a hard drive data recovery is needed.

A grinding hard drive occurs when the hard drive arm is not able to “seek” or read the hard drive platter. The hard drive platter is where the data is stored on the hard drive. When the armature slides back and forth and the heads touch the platters you get the grinding hard drive noise. This hard drive data recovery requires a physical hard drive repair of the read/write heads and the electronic circuitry.

It is vital that your hard drive be turned off immediately to prevent irreversible damage to the data stored on the platters. If you have a failed hard disk that is grinding, turn your system off immediately!

Your best data recovery advice is… call RMD for help.

DO NOT restart your crashed computer or failed hard drive.

“Hard Drive Not Recognized” often yields the following error messages.

The hard disk in drive A,E,F…is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?

When you see any Hard Drive Not Recognized errors, NEVER format anything! These errors are typically caused by corrupted hard drive system files that are found on your storage media. Therefore, the current software cannot read the corrupted data structure residing on the storage media.

We have come across individuals that did format the media and then unsuccessfully attempted a data recovery on the corrupted drive or corrupted storage media. This hard drive data recovery process can NOT work and is NOT recommended.

Testing "Hard Drive Not Recognized."

To test if your hard drive failed, try changing the cable/ ribbon on your computer and connect it to a new hard drive on your motherboard. If the computer sees the new hard drive in the BIOS, then your computer BIOS is working properly.

If you try to reconnect your original failed hard drive to the same connector and the BIOS does not see your hard drive, then you can stop right there and shut your computer down. Updating your motherboard BIOS will Not Fix the “Hard Drive not Recognized" BIOS error.

"BIOS Not Finding Hard Drive" is often a result of a failed hard drive circuit board and or damaged system files on the hard drive platters. If you’re thinking of swapping the hard drive circuit board with a different hard disk, read our testimonial page and think again.

For hard drive data recovery assistance to unformat a hard drive or storage media. Never compromise your original failed media needing a Hard Drive Data Recovery."