Recovery from 2.5" Laptop Drives

As with 3.5" Desktop drives DataWreck offers recovery from all manufacturers including:

In terms of structure these drives are very similar to the larger 3.5" drives. DataWreck groups the types of damage these devices can sustain into three categories.

Logical Damage

This type of damage only effects the data on the drive, not the mechanical or electrical components. There are many levels of severity ranging from small amounts of corruption to total loss of the file system.

Data recovery from logical errors can sometimes be the most time consuming especially when the file system has been compromised. A typical example would be after formatting a drive and re-installing the operating system. It becomes apparent to the user that important data was not backed up.

Typical Causes: Virus Attack, File Deletion, Bad/Corrupt Sectors, Minor Media Degradation, Loss of File System and Structure, Reformatting, Human Error.

Symptoms: Slow access times, Blue screen of death, "drive not formatted", Missing partitions, computer freezing during use, Missing Files/Folders.

Electrical/Firmware Damage

This category of issues focus on the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) containing the drives firmware. Hard drive firmware controls the physical components of the drive and like them requires specialist tools and training in order to repair. There are different degrees of damage that can happen to the circuit board. Some of these are hard to spot while others are clearly noticeable.

Typical Causes: Power surges/spikes, Wrong power supply used on drive, Exposure to excess heat. Corruption of firmware, Incorrect PCB Fitted.

Symptoms: Drive not spinning, Burning smell/noticeable marks on PCB, Clicking(Firmware), Drive recognised by factory name, Drive not seen in BIOS.

Physical Damage

This form of damage commonly occurs when a drive has received an impact or has suffered extreme environmental damage such as fires or flooding.

A head crash occurs when the heads of the hard disk drive touch the platter surface. The usual speed of modern hard drives is 7200rpm meaning the edge of the platters are travelling at over 70mph. Contact with the heads at these speeds can cause considerable damage. It is important not to continue to use drives that have suffered from this problem as any particles that have been scrapped from the platters may cause further damage to the data. Any damage to the read/write heads will prevent the drive from reading any data until replaced by specialists.

A physical shock can also cause the spindle motor to jam, an almost musical beeping noise is a good indication this problem has occurred.

Another cause of clicking noises is failure of the Pre-amplifier chip which is used to boost the signal sent by the read/write heads. Until the fault is corrected or the entire head assembly is replaced in a clean facility your data cannot be recovered.

If your drive is displaying any of these symptoms without the correct tools and training there is nothing you can do to fix the problem. Any attempts to correct these problems or recover data using software will compound the problem and reduce the chance of recovery.

Above: A Toshiba MK3025GAS that has suffered a Head Crash - Notice the ring of damage to the platter.

Typical Causes: Major Media Degradation, Head Crashes/Pre-Amplifier Failure, Motor Failure, Environmental factors such as excess heat or vibration, Dropped Hard Drive,

Symptoms: Audible clicking/ticking noise, Beeping noises. Not Seen in BIOS, ANY unusual noises.

Please note: Until your drive arrives and has been analysed it is impossible to make an exact diagnosis.