Hard Drive Repair

The "winchester" or hard disk today is a vast repository of various useful information that is valuable to every user. However, sometimes a hard drive fails and must be taken to a specialist for repair. To help you avoid being deceived by unscrupulous technicians, we'll look at some of the most common faults so that hard drive repair will no longer seem completely mysterious and difficult for you.

— Damage to the surface of the drive's magnetic platters. This problem is called bad blocks. This fault is easy to identify yourself — the drive simply begins to hang and slow down during operation and cannot write data to the affected areas.

— Sticking of the magnetic (read/write) heads. This fault is typical for laptop drives that have experienced a drop or strong mechanical impact. In this case the heads stop locking into the special parking ramp.

— Burned electronic board (PCB). This fault is the easiest to identify. The drive simply will not start and makes absolutely no sound. The board can burn out for various reasons: a low-quality power supply, incorrect connection, or a sudden voltage spike in the household electrical network.

— Failure of the head assembly. This fault can be identified fairly easily. The drive constantly clicks as the heads cannot find the required data. Repairing drives with this fault is quite labor-intensive and requires special equipment.

— Bearing seizure. This fault is typical for drives manufactured by Toshiba and Seagate Barracuda. The failure manifests itself in that the drive platters do not spin up and only emit a faint hum.

— Failure of the BMG commutator. This is one of the most difficult faults to repair, since the BMG commutator can fail for two reasons at once: either the commutator's chip has burned out or the entire external electronics board has been damaged.

We hope you now have a better idea of what can fail in a hard drive and how. One final valuable tip: if valuable information is stored on your drive, do not hand it over to unqualified technicians. Often, after the work of such "specialists," data recovery becomes simply impossible. Therefore, do not take the risk and try to save money — it's better to give the drive to professionals right away.