DIY How to: a successful data recovery from clicking hard drive. Recover your files Yourself
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- In this video I explain how to recover data from a clicking hard drive. There are several types of clicks of death. This click is recoverable.
First and foremost (thank you ) for sharing youre skill set with me/us/the world. For the past two weeks I have been reading or watching every thing I can abought this kind of problem with hard drives. You are the first info video that drove the topic all the way home "at least 4 me.". I have struggled with learning disabilities for 40+ years, and I was able to get it on the first-round with youre demistration. Thanks again!!
That was inspiring thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this video, I was able to fix my HD & recovered my important files, Mabuhay Ka!
I just want to say thank you for this post. This worked for me on a very old hard drive which wouldn't power up. Thankfully replacing the PCB from an identical working HDD worked on the first attempt and saved me a lot of time and expense (sending it off to a data recovery company)
Keep up the good work.
You have given me hope. I pray that I can recover my files. I didn't back up and now I've lost a life time of pictures.
Circie Quisling, did you have success?
not yet. I found a computer tech that said he could try a recovery. I have no excuse as to why I haven't done it yet.
That harddrive was giving out some nice tunes.
A tip: you can watch movies on flixzone. Me and my gf have been using them for watching loads of movies these days.
@Yahir Adan definitely, been watching on Flixzone for months myself :D
@@yahiradan9028 That's a terrible website and gives computers malware. Stop spamming.
I have a dead WD200 with 10 years of all my professional work on it. Given what you just taught me, I'm going to see if I can order an identical drive off ebay and swap the controller cards. It may be a long shot, but its better than not trying at all. Thanks for the tutorial.
Sean Riddolls, did you have success?
Then return it 💰 with faulty controller board... this same technique works with used underwear 💩 and toothbrushes also. Poor sucker that buys it next 😂
About chip transplantation, you can sometimes transplant the small 8-pin chip (the SPI flash ROM) from the broken board to the donor, then recover using the donor board. This of course only works on HDDs with the firmware in a flash ROM, as opposed to on the platter.
I concur! But actually, that chip contains alignment parameters that are only for that particular hard drive and you absolutely have to try to transplant it without damaging it or the board.
The 'hynix' branded chip is actually a hard drive buffer chip (RAM chip), and not an I/O controller.
Thanks for showing that this actually worked. From experience in the 90's and early 2000, I actually tried this method without success. I did my research to figure out why? People posted that the actual hard drive was calibrated with that board and it would be a slim chance this would work because of it. If you had the same exact revision and lot number, for example, people claimed it could possibly work with much higher success. In your case, was all the boards the same revision etc? I gave up later on trying any of this because of what I learned early on. Thanks for sharing and this might enable me to try this again. However, I have a lot more SSD drives today. ;) I posted before I saw the ending, you actually mentioned transferring the chip. However, that type of solder joints being so small, looks like a nightmare to get right.
HI, On another site the technician stated it was vital to change the bios chip from the original board to the replacement board as it contained all the information relative to that specific hard drive.
Great info, thank you so much my friend...i need only see if i can get a few doner drives and hopefully i have that same happy ending as you did here... otherwise, i've learned a very very hard lesson, losing my lifetimes worth of musical composition files... thanks again...fingers crossed...
😱 Scared the hell out of me with that LOUD drill
Thanks for the demo. It’s great to know there is still hope for my old drive. Will be looking for a stock controller on the internet.
Thank U so much! to providing more beneficial Knowledge about a Hard Drive, Just because I have the same problem in my WD Hard drive which producing a sharp clicking sound. . .
Thank you..this actually works for a WB my book. It was a WD Green drive. I also recommend connecting a "working" hard drive, with similar model with similiar PCB. Once the PC recognizes that "working" hard drive QUICKLY disconnect then connect the non-working HDD. Caution tho..you should always wear rubber gloves.
Darren Arni, hi there! So, with this technique, would not be necessary to switch boards? Where did you see this info? Why a faulty hard drive would simply work just because an almost identical one was just connected before it?
A wealth of knowledge! thank you, sir.
2:03 suddenly game of thrones
+Andres Salcedo That was the best post a saw all week.. Well done good sir
hilarious observation!!!
xD
ROFL!
damn you...
awesome!! on a drive that said you need to format and wouldn`t detect i didn`t have a spare just disconnected the board cleaned the contacts and replaced the same board the drive works fine thank you
Each hard drive has unique "adaptives", stored in one of the board chip. This info tuned by manufacturer and using by controller to get data from magnetic surfaсe. This is the reason why you can't get info by board replacing. You have to be lucky with the new board.
Excellent video you made. Professional. I am convinced that an important hard drive of mine has a controller problem. It is also a WD IDE older style. I am going to use your knowledge that you displayed in the video and replace the controller board. Thanks so much for making a great video! Best Always!
Each hard drive has been programmed with firmware that makes the board recognise to its own disc. So if you change the board with another board it will doesn't work, even though the brand/type/model of the hard drive are the same. Unless you copy the firmware that contains the recognizing code into another board.
*Should the 2 drives be of the same size? The same model? Like does the DCM and PCB Sticker need to match? Just trying to understand...*
I saw another video in which to exchange the equal boards it is necessary to use the donor hard disk first in the same PC after change to the new or damage hard disk and shutdown this PC, make hard disk changes and turn on the PC again whit the hard disk
ready connected this help system to recognize the hard disk board when you start the disk with the change made.
Luis A Bigio, hi there! Could you please clarify more this? You mean the donor hard drive should be used BEFORE in the same PC, right? By the way, where you saw this information?
Why did you focus on the circuit board when you heard the clicking instead of looking at the head arm position?
Starting to watch this video, already like it. Good detail. Description
Firstly not a major loss if fails data wise but would you do this first or the releasing needle trick repair?
Why you dont you use Disk Management after putting the donorboard on? If driveletter on disc is wrong, you don't see anything in explorer!? So always check with Disk Management if hd is alive.
whaa ho!!! you did so talently 👍
Great video. I found and ordered the exact same WD External Passport for Mac, and I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival so I can test this method. Fingers crossed that it does the trick! I've come across other videos where they mention transferring the BIOS chip from the old board to the donor board, claiming it won't work otherwise. Do you think for the WD external drives it could work just swapping the boards without transferring the BIOS chips? Thank you.
Dont harddrive controller boards have a chip on them that stores data about the platters on them?
I once did this with two drives and it ended up messing both harddrives
In PCB board you explain about each chip function, and what about 8 pin chip function?
Donor PCB seller said that need to replace donor PCB with old 8 pin chip to work hard disk.
Abraham I have a quick question. My macbook pro shuts down during reboot stage. Please help me figure out what to do or direct me to the right place.
I love your videos!
i took out the tvs diod which were burnt from two hard drives and they worked, what do you think ? by the way you are proffessional sir and i give you lot of respect, thx
That second problem with the disk not showing up might be fixed by deleting and creating a simple volume on Windows disk management, but you'll loose all your data but have a technically new drive
How close how close to the original controller board part number were the other controller board part numbers that you tried., including the one that worked? I am about to try this with a WD400BB but I am having trouble finding an exact match to the controller board part number.
does the circuit board have to come from the same brand hard drive
Apparently some Seagate drives you cannot use donor board unless you transplant the original firmware chip according to forums this true?
for the 7200.10/11 yes
Do you use a soldering iron to replace those chips? Or do you have a better device? I was a radio repair man and am glad to be retired.
The firmware chip (SOIC8) should of been swapped from the old to the new board. Then it will work 100% if the original board is faulty. Also you pointed to the wrong chips.. the firmware chip is the Small Outline Integrated Circuit (SOIC) 8pin
except that this would remove the ability of using the donor boards as tools, rather than repair parts, The labor involved in transplanting the chip would be greater than the cost equivalent of doing it this way and a new drive. Further, it wouldn't guarantee a repair as there may be other unknown issues on the board that caused the failure to begin with. Remember the KISS principle. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.
Hi great video. Can you tell me where you got the piece of kit that you plug the hard drive into to test it please?
Thanks, I have a similar HD on my old P4 with files I want to recover but had the same clicking problem, time to hunt for some old drives.
Does the replacement PC board have to come from a formatted hard drive?
Which device are you hooking the drive to, looks like it changes the drive from an IDE to a USB cable...that connects to the computer...
Thanks for the info and demo! I got a WD 3T Green failed, no clicking sounds or other noise, just refused to be mounted. Seems PCB issue. Can I use a WD 3T Blue's controller board (PCB) to replace it? As you mentioned its platter control info might be different from earlier version, or can NOT be replaceable at all? Thanks!! I got important data on the disk.
What if you only have a computer and one of those external hard drives and you don't have the testing part? What can you do to test your external hard drive by connecting it to your computer?
Seagate 2tb barracuda and a Seagate 500mb, 11 click shutdown prob seems common. Is that the heads stuck or not finding the system sector or mount sector to mount? Almost tried the circuit board swap before wayching this vid, guessing it would freak and blow up? (Using good 500mb to unclick 2tb drive)
Thanks a lot Sir, you've shared your valuable knowledge for us. I will always wait other valuable tutorials
If this works for you i can say that it´s a good time for you to also play on the lottery.. ALL drives need to be calibrated for the set of the disks that are mounted in that particular drive. IF you get this to work, then the drives may have been calibrated at the same time.. I have tried so many times with drives from same batches and/or serial numbers that are just right next to the other drive's serial. It's alot easier to just get the drive working, but you rarely can get any data from it since the heads doesn't know where to read for the data.
Why didn't you clean the board contact surfaces before replacing the board to see if it was just a bad contact?
Just to add one more piece of info, when the supposed problematic board was attached to the other HDD it worked well, so it wasn't a board problem i think, and the heads when swaped also worked well, what else is missing?
wow very helpful.thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge.God Bless.
never use an electrical screwdriver to tighten the screws on the new board. you could damage it. always use a classic screwdriver, that way you use enough pressure and don't overdo things which can crack your good new board
With the logic board #2, did you try to assign a drive letter in the Disk Management?
Hello. Swapping the PCB board, the requirement must be same Capacity, Firmware, Model, Site right?
heads most definitely DO get stuck on platters on desktops, the term stiction is older than laptops are.
wow its awesome sir i try that the ways of replacing circuit board and its work properly ..
If I were you I jumped directly to donor 3 because the back cover of the motor shaft are the same. they are both in bronze color. The donor 1 and 2 are the same too looks like chrome or nickel. How do you missed that they are probably not even same hw revision ...
Seeing as you have so many donor drives to choose from, would it not be sensible to look at the revision and serial numbers on the labels and try the closest match _first_ ?
This rarely works anymore as more and more drives are built with hardware encryption onboard, meaning 1 board has the set of keys and if it dies, that's that :/ You can place a new board and hope the drive spins up and you can format it but the data is gone...
***** Not sure, some advertise it some don't so it's not easy to figure out without testing all models one by one :P
But it's been several years at least so they're widespread in stores now, if you buy an external harddrive I'd say there's a bigger chance of it doing hardware encryption than it not doing that or doing it with an open implementation which does allow swapping boards.
2005 might be, you can try searching for the specific modelname and type numbers of that disk (both the internal modelnumbers and those of the external housing) to try and see if anyone has had success (or not).
I'd guess that a 2005 drive will be rather slow and low capacity so probably not worth doing it to keep using that drive (a new drive would probably be cheaper and definitely easier and more reliable) so only do it when there's data on that drive you need back but haven't got a backup for I'd say.
Some Guy you can get a new board and transplant the old board memory chip with the information for it to work. I did it a couple of times with some WD blue. you just need a hot air rework station
very Nice thank you for shearing information
I have a Seagate portable external drive that has a similar problem.
When I plug the usb, the software installs, it shows in Devices and Printers
but the light dosent go on and the drive dosen't appear in My Computer.
It makes this sound.
clyp.it/0dqb0a3h
I tried another power connector from another similar seagate drive (slightly newer),
and the same thing happens exept this time the light goes on.
It makes the same sound . Could you tell from the sound if it is a problem with the head being stuck or a controller problem?
My seagate external 2tb hardrive fell off my tv, sitting on a table, on to the table. It had faint beeping sounds and computer wouldnt recognize the drive. I took the hard drive apart and found my heads were stuck and before seeing your vids i tried things on my own. I pulled the heads back by hand and then tried starting the hard drive without putting it back together it was completely open. The heads go back and forth making a scratching noise and im scared this could damage the data. Still havnt put it back together. What can i do or how do i recover data bc i cannot lose this data...
big chip is a microcontroller, hynix is a RAM chip. All HDD have got a firmware, which "says" to the conrtoller how many heads inside, and a board store where's a "factory" bad sectors.
Nice way of explaining things..
Are you a pro in DR? You have repair shop? Just curious.
Abraham: Great video. My question is, do the two hard drives have to be of the exact same capacity? 40 GB & 40 GB or can one be a 60 GB drive?
+Erich Strack Not only same capacity, but Identical board with all, but a serial number.
+Abraham Levit Crud. Ok. Thanks.
+Abraham Levit When you say "all but a serial number", what is included in the "all"?
+Erich Strack Serial numbers are unique per PCB, You need to get the boards model and version numbers identical.
+ElfNet Gaming almost impossible right? :(
Need help !!
It has been 7 years since I have been using my 500 Gb hard drive and now my HDD is too to slow to boot and even while opening any application or doing any work. Copy and paste goes in kbs.
I formatted the PC couple of times but while formatting the HDD it took almost 18 to 24 hours to format and installation new Windows 7, but the problem persist. I even tried for taking backup through LAN but the reading and writing speed is too slow (in kbs).
Please HELP asap.
I have an issue where my WD My Book Essential has burnt out as well. It is a 3TB Green Drive from 2013. There was a constant blinking light every .5 second. It would boot up when connected then would go into blinking mode, not able to mount or readable by both my macbook pro and desktop mac. The drive actually does mount but at a snails pace and only reads the drive name. Doesn't allow files to show in directory.
I checked and it seems that the PCB board is burnt at the point of where it connects directly to the hard drive. The USB board is intact, no damage.
I have tried two donor boards of the same code, and now the drive does not click but is not recognized or mounts. The light is solid for about 5 minutes then slow constant blink every 2 seconds like it is in sleep mode.
I am wondering if it can't read the encrypted data with the new pcb board or if I should continue to try and swap pcb boards.
Just a note...I am using the new pcb board with the old USB board.
Any Suggestions?
Thanks
Lee
+Willy Lee Did you ever find a solution for this? I have the exact same hard drive with the exact same issues you described.
I have 1 terabyte that stopped working, still comes up as mu book.. but won't go beyond that... light flickering, no clicking but do feel it vibrate sort of
fantastic video 👍🏻👍🏻
What if the two drives I want to recover from are expensive Toshiba 3TB drives. Do I need to get another 3TB of the same kind with the hope that the circuit board will work? Can't I use a lower capacity? Probably not worth it. :(
yes, you need to get the exact match to have a better chance of recovery.
and again, yes, probably not worth it unless you have some important files on the failed drive.
Hello, can you tell me please if the same model disk, swap the boards will work and rescue my data? I don't care if i spend money in the new one all i need is confirmation if works, is 1 tb western digital blue series wd10ezex, thanks
I cant find exactly the same model of my Seagate HDD, did you have success with a circuit board from a donor from the same brand but different model? maybe different year, or different storage capacity
So where do you get extra controllers? also should they be the same compatibility 2Tb with 2Tb, 250gig with 250gig.
But its doable :D haha nice one, wonderful tutorial brother... the only problem I have is that I don't have donors :( lost 4 of my drives coz of this.
Greetings, i got a bad hard drive (WD 1TB black) and a healthy one (WD 160gigs blue), of which the blue one is around 7-8 years old and the black 2-3 years. So, i would rather make use of the bigger one and i was wondering if i could use parts from the blue disk. As for the black drive, it sounds as if something is not spining properly inside (you can hear the sound of i guess the motor trying to push but as if it cant make it), atleast soundwise (i do not have any experience in repairing hard drives so i have no clue). The Drive can be turne on, but when i do, the system prompts me right after the BIOS shows. It says that the health status of the drive is bad and i should do a bakcup and replace it. When i push F1 i can still go into the system (windows 8.1), but it lags quite a lot and sending data from this disk apears to be partly working, it goes as far as 50 megabytes, but also stops sometimes for a while and wont send any data and later start again on its own. Any idea on what i should or can do?
if it sounds like it can't push maybe dust in there
No dust, everything is clean. Actually everything seems to be in place and there is no visual damage or dirt from the inside or outside, so im pretty sure its the motor giving up.
WHAT IS THE BRAND NAME OF YOU HARD DRIVE CADDY, OR COULD YOU PUT UP A LINK TOO IT.
The most impressive thing in this video is the widescreen CRT
Hello, I thought your video was very interesting. You showed what you did clearly. I have a drive that has stopped working. I think I will try to take a peek inside. mine did not make any noise but a few months ago i got a warning that it was going to fail. I did back it up with a seagate external a few times but did not have turned on when the disk failed. I tried all kinds of things to get it going. I used my recovery disks that I was prompted to make when I first bought my computer but It went through two disks and part way through the 3rd I got an error message and was promoted to tun off the computer. I just bought another hard drive and I am using my recover disk to see what I get. According to what I see It is working and doing a factory default software recovery. What sucks is this toshiba satellite L655 is only about 3 years old and my battery is bad plus a dead drive. My old Dell dimension with xp still works after about 12 years. Anyway can you show how you made that tool to run the drive out side the computer? Thanks... Bud....
So if I accidentally used a 19v power adapter on a 12v external hard drive, then it's just the diode I need to replace?
I heard that the donor drive must have the same model and firmrware, as well as same site code and same first 3 letters/digits of serial. Is this accurate, or does it not always work like that?
Abraham can i ask advice. I have a Phillips external 500gb drive with Hitachi 500gb inside. My pc doesnt recognise it no more like yours didnt. Could i send to you for repair as i have lots of pics etc to keep in the drive. I will need a cloned drive to change pcb board yes?
Eminem
Abraham - thank you for the hard drive repair videos. I have an external hard drive that I banged while it was running and afterward, it would not be recognized and made a quiet double click sound. i removed the cover and did the bad thing of running the drive w/o cover to see what was happening - the arm that passes over the platters (double platters) would run into the middle and tap against the center hub making the little clicking sounds. there were no grooves or scratches on the top of the visible platter so i am wondering if i buy the same drive new or used - is there a chance i could replace the arm and its mechanism and be able to access my files? if so, any advice how to get the read/write arms to fit onto the platters would be appreciated and any other tips you might have.
Do you think the controllers on #1 and #2 were also bad?
Hi I have a hardisk with the Rom (Bios burned - in the sense that PCB's rom is missing).
Reason I had buying a card to do the swapping but the repairman lost the original card)
Do you think it is possible to recover my Seagate Hardisk?
In short, the HD has never been opened and card that has does not have the original BIOS
I feel the engine turns but it doesn't see any data windows with new pcb donnor
Thx Franco Italy
What device did you put together that you tested this hard drive with
The firmware on that drive might be corrupted. WDC drive's usually click like that when the firmware dies. I've only been able to resurrect a drive like this twice. Newer drives do have specific firmware for the drive even though the model is the same. Every drive is different.
Christopher Ryan, so you mean even if we buy a same model of a old hard drive (like from 2010/2011), nowadays new units will have specific firmware? I'm planning to buy some two or there same models of a 2TB Barracuda Seagate (ST2000DM001) just to try this, but simply don't know if today units will have this firmware exclusive feature.
You can't do pcb swaps unless you take the firmware chip and solder to the new board. EVERY drive is different. Trust me I've tried it
onepcbsolution.com will do this for 50 plus shipping. They will take the firmware chip off of your old pcb and transfer it to a new pcb and send it to you
Hi, i have a WD 3200 external hard driver that just died on me one day. Never been dropped, or abused in any way. Has the clicking sound. Only turned on 3 time since for a shrt period. Can you help me recover the data? Thanks Stephen
Hello, I have a 2,5" external WD Passport which is not recognized by my computer (Mac OSX). When I connect it, I hear kind of a fan sound, but no seeking. After a while, a click sound appears and the fan sound stops and the whole process restarts from the beginning. So it could be the controller? And I could just try to buy another identical HD and switch the controllers? Can I also buy this model with a smaller storage size (because it is cheaper) or should it be the same size? Thanks!
Have you given it a try? I'm curious if it worked. I actually found and ordered the exact same WD Passport for Mac, and I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival so I can test this method. Fingers crossed that it does the trick! I've come across other videos where they mention transferring the BIOS chip from the old board to the donor board, claiming it won't work otherwise. Do you think there's truth to that?
@@TheMichael21fromnyc I didn‘t. Luckily my Synology NAS mounted the HDD successfully and I was able to copy all data to the NAS. But at very very low data rate. The HDD or its controller was definitely not functioning properly. It took a few days. But it worked for me :)
Would be interesting if you get success with your method.
Don't use power tools on a hard drive. What is not mentioned is that the two controller cards have to match, and if you have to ask about this, just don't do it. Send it off and get your data back. The wrong controller can scramble your data. Personally I would recommend DriveSavers. You may only get one shot at your data, what is it worth?
As a side note: if your unbelievably lucky and this works for you. REPLACE THE DRIVE after you get your data off of it. Died once it is extremely likely that it will happen again.
Hi.
My needle/head goes back and forth and it looks like the disc doesn't spin at full speed. I can't read the harddrive on my PC. Any ideas? Regards Andrew.
if the drive grives a DUN DUN thingy but doesnt appear in windows it could be that it has a allready occupied drive letter assigned to it (like C:) allways look in disk management
Very helpful instructional video. Thank you!
Ty for sharing. Any one have any thout s about it the freezer method would work ? If the frezer thing dosnt work for me im going to try an see if I can find a few to atempt this.
You might want to press F5 or go directly into disk Manager. :)
idk but those vibrations by the drill jumping the screws are not wise if you ask me. especially with these old hdd's. good vid tho...
at 2:04, you can hear the hard drive start doing those hits for a christmas song.
what apps do you use in attempt to read the files from the failed drive? how can I contact you? I spilled coffee on my laptop - need to recover files. Thanks!
Hi and thanks for the video!
I'm trying to put an external hdd inside my pc. The windows 7 sees it but can't see the data. It says i should format it which clearly i don't want to because i don't want to loose the information that's stored on it. What should i do?
Thanks!
P.S. I have used the external hdd for about 2 years now and from the beginning it was disconnecting at the very light touch of the data cable. Now, the files from it are getting loaded very hard sometimes but sometimes it works well. Since now i have used an laptop but now, having a desktop, i want to solve this somehow.
I'm really hoping for an answer from you cause i say you know things. Thanks in advance.
I has same kind of sata drive and 500 gb all normall 3 months with problems like freze of startup logo at windwos system repair alays plopup at weak cannot unrar any rar archive cruppt it fast as download and can t help or say me what im sup to do ? i opened it at clean room now isunt work :/
It has to be the same brand and model drive?