Hard Drive repair

Hard Drive repair: Fixing a hard drive failure is a simple - remove the failed drive and install the new drive.

Most components in your system are expensive, the hard drive is no exception.

But if you think about the "bang for your buck" the newer hard drives are a super bargain. Consider this, one byte (that is 8 bits) is equal to one character of typed text. Now you have a hard drive that has the capacity of xxx gig, that is xxx billions of single characters, how many books would it take to have say 300 gig of characters? A book case of encyclopedias? Two? Three? So a new 300 gig hard drive costs say $130, you get a meg for about $0.005, that is less than a half cent per 250,000 characters!

Note: Unless you have a fully equipped electronics shop repairing the electronics of a hard disk is out of your reach. The reason I say this is low level component repair isn't the same as it was twenty years ago when I was doing it.

The main reason is the size of the components: "micro chip" components are extremely small. They do not have any markings, to change out a failed IC (integrated circuit) you need to know who made it and the part number. The only way to get this information is from the original equipment manufacture, and it is extremely doubtful they will give or even sale you the schematic for their proprietary product. Your only choice is to remove then replace the failed drive.

Before we get to the actual replacement/upgrade we need to know what type of drive you have.
 
Is it a SATA (ATA Serial Drive) or IDE Drive?

Each have different connectors for both the drive controller cable and the power connection.

Hard Drive repair Instructions:

Replace or upgrade?

Replacement of a hard drive is a fairly simple procedure, Safety First!

During Hard Drive repair Observe ESD - ESD will kill it before you get a chance to power it up! Use that static strap!

Open the case, look at the old drive (check the CD section for steps) note the cable positions. Disconnect the cables, remove the drive.

IDE only

Look at the back of the drive, check the drive select jumper, is this the only drive on the cable?

• Yes: Then it should be set for cable select.
• No: Is the jumper set for Master or Slave

Note: SATA drive selection is  set by embedded software.

All Drives

Reverse removal procedure.

Replace case cover, prepare to power up. (Check you computer documentation on how to get to the BIOS setup)

Power up, do you see the post?

Go to BIOS setup, your new drive should be listed. BIOS listings differ from manufacture to manufacture, if it is not displayed on the fist page, look for storage.

The 5 Steps to high quality and cheap DIY Computer Repairs Get It Today...

Once the OS is up and running you have to do two more things before your new drive is ready:

1. Partition the drive
2. Format the drive

Check the How to... page to complete these two tasks.

Data Recovery Companies:

Ontrack Data Recovery Software
Data Recovery Do-it-yourself Software

P.S.

A note on "data recovery" software and services: The longer the data has been missing the lower the chance of recovery and the higher the cost if using a recovery service.

Therefore backup is a must, and backup often! See the "How To..." section if you need information on how to do a backup! "It is your data and if you don't safe guard it the data will not be yours for long!"