Does your computer, laptop, or iPod make clicking, scraping, pinging, or other strange sounds? Is it also behaving sluggishly or otherwise funny? Chances are (if it’s not something stuck in the fan), your hard drive is dead or dying, and hopefully, you have a backup of your important data. Spinning-disk hard drives, as opposed to solid-state (flash) hard drives, use a spinning platter to store data and an arm to read them, much like a phonograph or gramophone. If you don’t know what that is, even better. One major difference however, is in hard drives, the “needle,” or “head”, does not contact the platter.. that is, until you hear the weird noises (bad news). It normally floats on a cushion of air above the platter, and uses magnetics to read/write onto it.

Common sources of data loss: physical damage
Ever drop or jar your laptop as it’s accessing a file? This can force the head(s) into the spinning platter, causing all sorts of damage to your drive. If you’re lucky, it only contacts the platter for a bit, causing minimal damage. Otherwise, the heads can actually rip the magnetic substrate off of the platters, taking your data with it. It’s also possible to rip head(s) off of their mechanical arms, disabling the hard drive, requiring a head stack replacement or platter transfer to recover data. This procedure is difficult and can cost thousands of dollars.

Electric failure
There is a printed circuit board (PCB) that controls the movement of the head arm and the spin of the platter(s) in your drive. If that becomes destroyed by electric shock, burn, or arc, it is usually possible to replace the PCB and remove the data. Electric shock generally does not destroy the data on the drive, just the circuitry controlling it. The work should be done with electrostatic discharge in mind, but is relatively simple. The most common pitfall here is replacing the PCB with one that is similar. The PCB must be exact, down to the revision level of the software on it. Otherwise, the head will not be able to find the files on your platter(s).

Logical damage
Logical damage may occur if your hard drive loses electrical power during a writing operation. This could happen in a viral attack, power outage, system crash, or other interruption. In this case, file system structures are partially written to the drive. This can cause strange behavior such as folders within folders or folders containing negatively sized files. Sometimes logical errors may cause clicking sounds.

Human error
This is one of the most common sources of data loss. Deleting, misplacing, and overwriting files are very common ways to lose your term paper, accounting for about one third of lost data. It is sometimes possible to recover data that have been overwritten, although there is much debate about extracting data that have been overwritten more than once. If you delete a file on accident, even from the recycling bin, stop using your computer and hand the drive over to someone who knows what they’re doing. This, of course means that, even if you delete something from the recycling bin, it’s not actually gone.

Data recovery vs data extraction
There is common confusion about the difference between data recovery and extraction. Data extraction is generally required when the electronics surrounding the hard drive fail. For example, your laptop’s motherboard is fried, nothing is wrong with your drive, and you want to get your photos off of the drive. The process involves removing the hard drive from the laptop and accessing it via another computer.

Data recovery is required when the hard drive itself has a malfunction, such as one of the ones described above. There are many types of data recovery. Here are some of the more common types:

1. PCB replacement: this is the replacement of the PCB on the hard drive that is used to correct PCB failure.
2. Imaging: this technique generally reads the drive bit by bit so that attempts may be made to rebuild files on another hard drive. This technique is labor and computing intensive so it tends to be expensive.
3. Carving: this is a very labor intensive recovery technique for hard drives that have lost their allocation information. This is basically the legend that tells the hard drive where files begin and end.
4. Head stack replacement: a head stack replacement may be necessary if the head array is damaged, usually due to physical trauma. This requires trained technicians in a cleanroom environment and tends to be expensive. The hard drive is opened, and the faulty mechanical arm is replaced by one from a healthy drive.
5. Platter transplant: This is another other option if a hard drive head stack is damaged. The platters are extracted from the faulty drive and put into a healthy drive case. This must also be done by a trained technician in a cleanroom environment.
6. Freezing: In some cases, unstable hard drives (those that are only accessible for short periods of time by operating systems) can be made stable for longer by dipping them in ice, or running them from inside your freezer. While this is not recommended, it may be a last resort for recovering data that is not worth thousands of dollars.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Have your iPod or cell go through the wash? Spill coffee on your keyboard at the cafe? Liquid damage is one of the most common causes of laptop, iPod, and cellphone death and destruction that we see. We all know that water and electricity don’t mix – but not all is lost.

If you act quickly and don’t panic, there are steps that you can take to boost your chances of saving your water or other liquid damaged electronics. Hopefully, by the time you read this, you’ve already done step 1:

Power off the device/pull out the battery, power cord, or other power source IMMEDIATELY

At this point you can get a lot of different advice. We’ve heard anything from dunking the device in alcohol to blowdrying to baking it in the oven. If you’re gonna dunk it in alcohol, make sure it’s as close to pure as possible (don’t use that 70% rubbing alcohol stuff).

You should really take it apart as soon as possible to dry the insides, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can usually get by with some other methods. The only problem with this is that, while you might dry the insides eventually, they may corrode and short the circuits, especially if you drop it in anything except pure water (snow that’s been salted, a lake, a bowl of soup, etc).

You might be tempted to take a blowdryer to the device, or worse, bake it. This might cause the device to become very hot since you can’t really control the heat very well. It also causes condensation which really just repositions the water in your device. You might see the inside of your screen fog up. It’s not ideal.

This is the part where we test your patience. You need to dry the device as much as possible, which means time, especially if you don’t want to take it aprat. If you have a dehumidifier, place it by the intake. If you have a bowl of rice, pop your device into it (DRY rice.. it absorbs water).

Whatever you decide to do, give it at least 48 hours to dry properly before plugging in the battery or power source. If you don’t wait, you could fry your device.

If it’s something other than water that soaked your device, cleaning it might get trickier. Pull the battery first. Then, you’ll have to clean it with demineralized water or pure alcohol. You really need to take the device apart in this case.

Unfortunately, most warranties do not cover water damage, unless otherwise specified. Some devices have an indicator that changes color when wet, so if you try to get a warranty replacement for a device that has a water damage, your claim will be denied. Those who have insurance or a warranty — which should be everyone should still be able to file a claim.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.