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superparati

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 11, 2016
169
36
London
Hello,

I'm trying to fix an 2.5" eHD.
The drive does not mount, not recognised by macOS and a weird sound from the actuator arm.

By curiosity, I've decided to open the drive. Sometime it is just the arm which is blocked. The sound is different, and indeed after plug-in the opened hard drive back to the computer the actuator arm just more back and forth to its position.

I've quickly recorded the phenomenon. if you have or had any previous experience similar to this one and found the fix please let me know. Otherwise I'll probabily send the disk to a professional and recover the data. As well if you have any recover company to suggest near London/Paris please let me know :)


Thanks
 

James_C

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2002
2,815
1,819
Bristol, UK
You should never open a hard disk drive.

A hard drive is extremely sensitive. Once a drive is opened outside a clean room environment you have exposed the drive to the risk that contamination. Dust particles, human hairs can cause major issues. Particles can become lodged between the read /write heads and the surface of the platter. The fly height is less than that of a fingerprint, piece or dust or human hair.

A specialist data recovery company will now need to decontaminate the drive, and you may have already caused further damage.
 
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superparati

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 11, 2016
169
36
London
I understand your point of view and knew the possible consequence. The disk on does the same noise as before.
 

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,800
1,803
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
As others have said, opening the drive and using the drive in its current condition could cause even more damag.

I recommend that the drive be reassembled without further use until it's been examined by a data recovery expert.

Depending on the amount of data and difficulty, recovery costs may be very high.
 
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