I am planning on spending some time writing about all the questions I get from users regarding hard drive failures, desktop computers not starting up, laptop data recovery because of having a blue screen or external drive data recovery because of beeping noises. I will try and cram as many of these phrases and elaborate on them.

The first topic, or say phrase I get asked is “On power up laptop fails to recognise the hard disk and fails to boot up, clunking sound can be heard”. This can happen due to the laptop being accidentally dropped, faulty power cable being inserted, power surges, coffee spillage and hey I have even heard people forgetting their laptops on top of the car and then reversing over them. All of these accounts basically affect the hard disk drive; this contains all those important emails, word documents and images. We can recover data from most of these situations.

When you hear the clicking noise from a laptop hard drive the read heads that float over the platters have failed. This sound can be loud or very faint, but either way when this noise is heard, the best action is to switch the laptop off as the drive has failed. Being left to run can cause serious data loss.

The clicking noise can also be a firmware issue with the hard drive, and not always a mechanical problem. By no means does it make the recovery any easier though, the firmware I am referring to is not a simple update you can download from the manufacturer, but firmware that occupies the Servo or Service track on the hard disk platters. P-list or G-list areas contain modules and these become corrupt over time or due to electrical surges.

If you have any questions or even just want to have a chat about your storage needs and faults, please don’t hesitate to ask us.