We have looked in great detail solid state drives- flash drives, memory cards and SSDs. This type of drive came into widespread use recently, only 5-6 years ago, and many users, fortunately, who have not yet encountered their failures, have a rather vague idea of weak points and precautions. This, by the way, was shown by the responses to the articles.

But the most common, irreplaceable and well-deserved storage devices are, of course, hard drives (aka HDD, aka hard drives). For more than twenty years now - approximately since 1988, when mass production of HDDs began, not a single PC can do without this component. Alas, the most unreliable of all. The only thing worse than a hard drive in this regard is floppy disks, but, fortunately, they are almost out of use. There are hardly any advanced user, not affected by HDD failures or failures. Therefore, repair and data recovery from this type of media is an established and respected activity.

I started working on hard drives back in 2002. At that time, Fujitsu drives of the notorious MPG series were failing en masse: due to an unsuccessful, overly active flux that corroded the processor on the board, almost all of them failed. Collapse occurred after 6-9 months of work. The repairmen who were the first to master the technology of “frying” boards and editing service area modules (typical prices are $15-25 per disk) were then on a high horse. Patients were brought to them in batches, and over the summer they could earn money for a car, and in a year – for an apartment (these are not stories, I know such people personally).

The same Fujitsu MPG3204AH drive, released in 2001. After repairs, it has worked to this day. Capacity 20 GB, designed by today's standards is very primitive. Now it’s even strange to remember that people suffered with it (the editors apologize for the quality of this and some other illustrations in this material and express the hope that this is compensated by their informativeness)

I followed in their footsteps: I mastered the repair technology, bought the PC-3000 complex, which also runs on the ISA bus and under DOS, gave several advertisements in the press and on the Internet, notified my friends - and things went well. "Fujiki" turned out to be quite good educational base, and they also provided income. The main contingent is students, scientists, doctors, musicians and journalists.

Regularly, once every 2-3 weeks, concerned men called with the same question: “ Alloy wheels are you fixing it? I answered: “ I fix it, but only up to 5 inches.” All HDDs have a case - a “can” of aluminum casting, and at that time there were still Quantum BigFoot drives with a five-inch form factor. The bewilderment of the interlocutor (what kind of disks are these, for toy cars, or what?) quickly dissipated...

Discs of that generation have long since disappeared from the scene. New times - new songs. The capacity has increased a hundred times (from 10-20 GB to 2-3 TB), new design solutions, interfaces and areas of HDD application have given repairmen a lot of experience and, as usual, posed many problems. I will give my notes about some of them.

From left to right: wheels manufactured in 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2010. The electronic board was constantly reduced in size, and the number of parts on it decreased. All this is in the name of economy: with fierce competition there is no other way to survive. Alas, by the end of 2011 the number of HDD manufacturers seems to be reduced to a minimum

And this, for contrast, is the board modern disk With SCSI interface. In such products they do not skimp on electronics: the profit from the server segment is already quite good, you can claim a five-year guarantee

⇡ Repairman and SATA cables

Let's start not with the drives themselves, but with what is connected to them. Regularly, about once a month, I come across defective cables on drives with a Serial ATA interface. This leads to data transfer errors, computer freezes and inability to boot. After replacing the cables with new branded ones, everything disappears. Several years ago, when I was collecting material on handling hard drives, this was not observed, and I noted the reliability of the SATA cable, contrasting it with a parallel “comb”.

Alas, since then the quality of the cables that are included in boxes with motherboards (which are what PC builders usually use) has dropped noticeably: someone once again decided to save money. Don’t feed the Chinese rice - let them simplify the technology somewhere and reduce the cost of products by half. They strive to reduce the cost of those components that you cannot immediately check - the composition of the solder or flux, the cross-section of the wires, the coating of the contacts. It’s obvious that they screwed up the last one: in the cable the contacts are buried and are practically invisible, it costs nothing to install brass slats, avoiding the gold plating required by the standard. After six months, brass, of course, oxidizes (the connection is not gas-tight) and the contact is broken. During transmission, data is corrupted with all the ensuing consequences.

It is more difficult to save money on the disk itself: the contact comb is visible there and all computer scientists know what a gold-plated contact looks like (smooth, slightly matte shine). And the control at factories is serious. So they piled on the trains, fortunately few people pay attention to their “branding”. Externally, all the trains are difficult to distinguish, the accessory is massive and cheap, the thought of marriage does not occur to anyone.

Now you have to remember this: electronics is the science of contacts. A competent computer technician should always have a new branded cable (or preferably several, of different lengths) in stock. In case of incomprehensible “glitches” of the drive that appear out of nowhere, the first thing you need to do is change the cable.

“Shoals” are possible not only with contacts, but also with wires. Colleagues shared an observation: after removing the insulation from a non-working SATA cable, they discovered that the grounding conductor had oxidized and moved away from the twisted pair shield (there are two of them in the cable, each with its own shield). This sharply reduced noise immunity and led to transmission errors. After cleaning and resoldering everything was fixed. Although, of course, if possible, it is better to simply replace the cable.

There is another problem - no longer a “Chinese” one, but related to a change in standards. SATA cables of early releases (2003-2006) were held on the contact plugs by friction alone. The developers considered that this was not reliable enough (the threat of accidental disconnections remained), which is why the second version of the cables (starting in 2007) received spring latches at both ends. It would seem great - another reason for failures has been eliminated. But it's not that simple.

This is what the old (left) and new versions of SATA cables look like

On many drives of the previous generation, including those actively used (2008 onwards), the SATA connector does not have a protrusion for a latch, which is why cables new version they sit on it weakly and do not lock - the latch does not work. The tip can slip due to anything - even from the vibration of the disk basket, or from the elasticity of a coiled cable. It is clear that this sharply reduces the reliability of the connection and is therefore unacceptable. Only the “old” cable will do here. without latches with its tight fit (I don’t consider the option of fixing the connection with hot glue - in the jargon “snot” - although it is quite popular among assemblers). By the way, repairmen in their stands use cables of the first version, as they are the most universal (and sometimes there is no time to tinker with latches).

The old version of the cable (on the right) has an internal protrusion on the connector, which is responsible for a tight fit. In the new version, this protrusion has been removed, and fixation is carried out by a latch that clings to the protrusion on the disk itself

I remember a case where a client computer crashed due to similar problems. The included yellow cable from the motherboard (with latches, of course) was weakly pressed against the drive plate, which is why soft bads began to grow on it (the sector is recorded with the wrong checksum and when reading it gives a UNC error, although the data itself is correct). As luck would have it, the defects occurred in the registry, and Windows stopped loading with a BSOD - blue screen of death.

I deployed a “field hospital”, read out all the soft bads with a long read and wrote them back. Everything worked, the disk is like new. The yellow cable, of course, had to be replaced with another one - red and without latches. Hard drives are nowhere without tight contact in the interface lines. Electronics engineers call such a contact “dry” and value it very much: there are no transient processes and, therefore, the signal practically does not degrade.

When assembling or repairing a computer, I advise you to check all the cables - they should fit onto the connector plugs quite tightly, with noticeable force. I do the joining 2-3 times from each end to wipe off random dirt and oxide film from the lamellas (who knows, it’s gold plating, titanium nitride or even bare brass - the Chinese love such jokes). Hence the need to have reliable cables in stock different versions and lengths (20-30-50-80-100 cm).

The best train will always be minimum length. It is not for nothing that branded workstations (HP, Dell) are usually assembled on custom, very short SATA cables, sometimes as long as 15 cm. By the way, according to the standard, the internal SATA connector must withstand only 50 docking and undocking cycles, so its switching life is relatively small (the external eSATA connector is another matter, its durability is as much as 10 thousand cycles).

“Thick” and “thin” trains. There are even more subtle ones: there is no such thing that the Chinese could not make worse

In addition to length, SATA flat cables also differ in thickness . It ranges from 5 to 10 mm, which is associated with the cross-section of the conductors (from 30AWG to 26AWG - the caliber marking is usually present on the cable), as well as with the density of the shielding braid (lowering it is a favorite trick of the Chinese, who save copper in all ways). Of course, you should always use the thickest cable - this increases the signal level and reduces interference. On a thin long cable, another disk may not be recognized or will work intermittently - this is due to the low load capacity of the interface chips.

Marking of SATA cables. Pay attention to the numbers in front of AWG: the smaller they are, the better - the conductors are thicker

SATA cables included with motherboards often have an angled connector at one end. Connected to the disk, it reduces the likelihood of accidental disconnection, saves space in system unit and improves the installation. However, the corner connector does not like tampering: if you accidentally pull it, you can break the contact strip on the disk, and this is a non-warranty case and a difficult repair.

Consequences of careless handling of the SATA cable. The bar is destroyed, the contact slats are literally hanging in the air. Repairing the connector is impractical

You can identify a low-quality cable using SMART. Unreliable contact generates transmission errors, causing attribute #199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count to increase. It is also worth paying attention to attributes #5, #197, #198 - their growth often indicates degradation of the disk itself ( See below for more information on SMART attributes.— approx. editors).

⇡ Repairman and PATA cables

Scope of application parallel interface It is constantly narrowing, but it is still far from dying out. For example, PATA 2.5″ hard drives are still produced - after all, you can’t install a SATA controller in an old laptop. And there are still plenty of PATA DVD drives. So you often have to work with 80-wire loops. Here is a case from recent practice.

A regular customer called - the system won’t boot, he writes something about “invalid disk”, urgently needs help. According to my inventory, this computer contains an old PATA drive from Hitachi, DLAT series. They are quite simple and can be repaired even on the road. Moreover, it’s time to renew the contract...

I've arrived. I look - the disk is recognized in the BIOS, but with distortions in the model name. Naturally, the download doesn’t work either. This is typical for the loss of a bit in a word transmitted via PATA. The culprit is usually a damaged cable or a broken (bent, dented) pin in the contact comb on the disk. The latter happens during careless assembly, when the block is inserted into the connector at an angle or completely upside down (our fellow assemblers don’t care about anything, even the mismatch between the key and the slot in the frame).

No one has climbed into the system unit for two years, so the pins are excluded. This means there is a problem with the cable: one of the conductors has broken or the fit of the connectors on the cable has become loose (there are banal knife contacts that cut through the insulation; if you pull the cable “well”, they can come off). I replaced the cable with a new one (you should always have it with you) - everything worked. No repairs required, everyone is happy. But how could the PATA cable spontaneously deteriorate? All the computers in the office are from the same company, assembled in the same way. The train is folded into an envelope and tightly secured with a nylon tie. So, this screed has become stiff over time (and maybe from the heat), and its rigidity has increased. In an effort to restore its natural round shape, the tie pushed through the outermost wiring of the cable. Elementary, Watson.

Well-built PATA cable. It is optimally suited for a compact system unit, where the hard drive and connector are on motherboard separated by just a couple of centimeters

Conclusion: There are no small details in assembling a computer if you want long, trouble-free operation. In particular, PATA cables are best secured with soft wrapping wire in plastic insulation. I don’t see any alternatives to it: I’ve already said about the tie (besides, it’s not removable, you’ll have to snack if anything happens, and this is also a risk of damaging the train - there have been cases), the elastic bands dry quickly and fall apart, the tape comes off. IN branded computers(for example, HP) use special flat clamps with a latch, but I have not seen them on sale.

According to the standard, the PATA cable must have a length of 18 inches, or 46 cm (all other options, from 15 to 90 cm, are amateur performances of the manufacturers and do not guarantee quality). For most system units, this length is excessive, and the excess should be collected into an accordion, bending the cable at an angle of 90° or 180°. Make sure that it does not touch the fans and does not interfere with general air circulation. This is an important aspect of cooling the system unit: every motherboard has heating components without individual cooling, such as memory modules and some controllers, and “shielding” with a cable does not benefit them.

Already at the end of PATA’s “career”, cables appeared that were well protected from kinks and did not complicate ventilation inside the case. True, they cost almost an order of magnitude more.

Well, one last thing about the cable that is going out of use: avoid sharp bends, do not allow dents, or tension near the connectors. The conductors in the PATA cable are very thin and easily break if handled carelessly. Often the defect is not externally noticeable (elastic insulation hides the gap), and the behavior of the disc can be very diverse. This was demonstrated by the incident described above. In such cases, the first thing to do is replace the cable. You should always have a spare new cable on hand, since it costs a few rubles.

⇡ Five smart things to do with a SATA drive

Has your favorite hard drive suddenly started behaving strangely, slowing down or freezing? At the same time, there were no shocks, no overheating, the food was of high quality, and SMART readings normal? Let's see what a competent and careful user can do before running to the warranty office or to a repairman?

1. Replace the SATA cable with a new one, preferably branded and thick. The conductors must be AWG26 caliber - this is usually written on the braid; the width of such a cable is 8-10 mm. AWG30 cables with a width of 5-6 mm will NOT work. If you have a choice in length, take the shortest one (as a rule, 20-30 cm is enough, although 50 cm are more often on sale). Connect the cable to another port on the motherboard or external SATA controller. After this, parameter SMART #199 (C7) UltraDMA CRC Error Count should not increase!

2. Clean the SATA connector on the drive itself (7 flat contacts, of which two pairs of signal contacts and three ground contacts are longer) from dirt and oxides. Use isopropyl anhydrous alcohol and a microfiber cloth. Do the same with the adjacent power connector (15 pins).

3. Unscrew the electronics board from the disk (a Torx T9 or T6 torx screwdriver may be required in new models), find the silver-plated contact pads on the back of the board. There are two of them: 14-20 contacts for data, 3-4 contacts for the spindle motor. All areas should be light; if they are darkened (red, brown, dark gray), use a soft eraser to wipe off the oxides until they shine, and wipe with a cloth containing alcohol. Carefully screw the board to the disk. The screw tightening torque is small, up to 30 N*cm (hold the screwdriver with three fingers). Otherwise, the edges of the slot will become wrinkled, which the warranty department may later notice - “signs of repair by unauthorized persons,” and hello.

This problem occurs even with new, just purchased disks. Oxidation of contacts on the board is facilitated by changes in temperature and humidity during long-term transportation, mainly by sea. Storage in poorly heated economy-class warehouses and polluted air in our cities also have an impact (sulfur exhaust from bad gasoline and coal smoke are especially harmful).

Oxidized pads (bottom right) on the board Seagate drive 7200.10, which had been in the warehouse for more than a year. If the disk had not become a head donor, the board would clearly need cleaning

From time to time I sell extra discs at Molotok and other flea markets, and pre-sale preparation, in addition to thorough tests, includes the procedure described above. In one of 15-20 cases, there are particularly picky buyers: having seen by the screws that the board has been removed, they believe that they were given “second-fresh sturgeon” and demand a refund. Well, the customer is always right.

Disk board after the “pioneer” repairman. Enthusiasm plus the lack of a normal tool, and the result is twisted screws

4. If freezes persist or the computer reboots, check the north and south bridges on the motherboard. Perhaps something is overheating, then you need to improve the cooling (change the thermal paste under the radiator, increase the airflow, etc.). Of course, you should also check the power supply for voltage stability under load. Change the power supply branch suitable for the problem drive, choosing the connector closest to the power supply. Disable all other consumers from this branch. Increase the disk start delay in the BIOS to 3-4 seconds - this will smooth out the surge in load on the power supply and help equalize the voltage, especially along the 12 V line.

5. If the problem persists (in particular, entries like “a controller error was detected” appear in the OS event log), then the next steps are to update the SATA controller drivers and flash the BIOS to latest version. On nForce chipsets, disabling the NCQ command queue can help; to do this, uncheck Enable Command Queuing in the properties of the SATA controller on the channel to which the problem drive is connected.

Over the past 20 years, the hard drive has been recognized as one of the most reliable computer components, but when it breaks, the consequences can be tragic. Below is the block diagram troubleshooting hard drive .

Troubleshooting hard drives

Is everything hard drives installed in the system unit should be displayed in BIOS settings? Majority BIOS versions inform the user about connected hard drives still at the loading stage. Every motherboard BIOS should be able to identify the hard drive by make, model, and specifications. Standard keys for accessing CMOS Setup after power on are DEL, ESC, F1 or F2 (in almost all laptops).

Can you hear the hard drive speeding up? If you can't hear anything at all when you turn on the power, you should start with . If you can't hear the drive spinning, you should make sure the power cables are well seated, this is more the case on older ATA hard drives than new ones. If the hard drive is hard to hear, you can try removing the HDD from the case and holding it in your hand while turning it on. If the disk is spinning, you will feel it vibrate. But be extremely careful, there is a chance of dropping it, especially scary if the hard drive falls during operation. To test a hard drive, it is convenient to use special USB-IDE and USB-SATA adapters.

old ATA drive, also known as IDE or PATA (for Parallel ATA)
new SATA (Serial ATA) drive.

SATA breaks much less often, the data cable rarely causes problems, and is easier to install power, although some SATA hard drives Support both old and new power connectors. For IDE or ATA drives visual feature there is a cable that can support two disks, for this they are included in the kit jumpers. Using jumpers on the disk, you can set Master host installation disk and Slave, or make a choice according to the connection via loops (CS).

The first SATA hard drives operated at speeds of 1.5 Gbit/s, this period was known as SATA 1. You might think that this wasn't a big leap over the old IDE drives, but the IDE interface speed was measured in MB/s (note that it's a byte, not a bit). SATA 2 generation supports 3.0 Gbps, and the latest release, SATA 3, supports 6.0 Gbps. note that high speed achieved by transferring data from cache memory to disk, the rotation speed is inferior to “electronics”. If you are connecting a SATA 2 or SATA 3 hard drive into an old motherboard and it is not working properly, check for compatibility, explore the configuration using jumpers to make it work better low speeds, equal to SATA 1.

SATA hard drives are much nicer to work with than legacy IDE drives. For example, due to a special data cable, which eliminates all the confusion with setting jumpers, and is also more reliable than the old ones, which broke with frequent use. If your SATA drive spins up but the CMOS installer doesn't detect it, then it's possible that you have that rare bad data cable and it's not making the connection to the motherboard correctly. This usually applies to sat cables without latches. If you know that the SATA cable is ok because it works on another system board, try connecting to a different SATA port. If this is the only SATA hard drive in the system, and your motherboard supports SATA RAID and standalone SATA ports, use a separate port.

You have connected two IDEs hard drives on a wide cable with three connectors: one for the motherboard in the IDE port and one for each drive? If the cable goes directly, you need to set the jumpers on the boot disk to the “Master” position, and on the second disk to the “Slave” position. If it's an 80-wire cable with three connectors, or an old 40-wire cable connected between two hard drive connectors, it will support "Cable Select", then you can set a jumper on both drives - CS, the position is often the default.

Some computers are still built with older IDE drives, in Cable Select (CS) mode, where the 28-pin cable sets the drive as Master or Slave. The new 80-pin Ultra DMA cables began shipping with new motherboards about fifteen years ago, and began using color-coded connectors. Blue goes to the motherboard, gray goes to the Slave (in the middle of the cable) and black goes to the Master IDE drive at the end of the cable. He will always be boot disk on the primary controller.

If, after setting the Master/Slave modes, the BIOS does not see the hard drives, check the power supply of the Molex 4×1 hard drive. It can take a lot of force to pull out the old power connector, the main thing here is not to use foreign objects to push, if your fingers start to hurt, you are doing something wrong.

The connector on the IDE cable is keyed so that it can only be inserted into the motherboard and into the hard drive port in the correct position. All cables must have keys, because they also identify pin No. 1 using the presence of a colored wire on the cable or using the numbers on the connectors. Pin #1 on ports is indicated by a number or an arrow, and is located on IDE drives almost always at the end, closer to the power connector. If the hard drive is not displayed in CMOS Setup to register the presence of the disk, even with a new cable, there are 2 options: either the controller on the motherboard is faulty or the hard drive is broken. The next step is to test the disk on another system or with via USB-IDE adapter. If the hard drive is working, then the controller on the motherboard is broken, and the only option is to use a secondary controller (if you have not already done so) or buy an additional IDE drive interface adapter with the PCI bus. These PCI cards are not expensive compared to HDDs.

Process troubleshooting and diagnostics is the same for all IDE drives that are not recognized in the CMOS settings, regardless of whether they are PATA, SATA, hard drives, CDs, DVDs or other media. If the motherboard BIOS recognizes the drives and reports them in the splash screen or CMOS Setup, and the problem is with CDs or DVDs, go to the diagram for CD and DVD diagnostics and repair.

If your hard drive spins up and then stops, start by replacing the power cable. If it's not SATA drive, make sure that the hard drive is hanging on the primary IDE controller and that it is the only drive on the cable, even if this means disconnecting your DVD disc for troubleshooting. Try unplugging your data cable and see if it stops. If you hear a clicking sound inside the drive and nothing but power is connected, test it with a USB adapter before throwing it away.

One destruction mechanism old HDDs– a magnetic coil that controls the read and write heads. If you don't want to spend a ton of money on data recovery, but you have data that you never backed up that you want to recover, try pressing the drive cover with a screwdriver, near the end of the cable and the beginning of the circular section where the platters rotate. This may simply free up a stuck head. Before attempting this, make sure you have a backup or keep it safe. USB hand flash drive, since you may be able to restore the hard drive only once, and perhaps not for long...

Is the BIOS registering an incorrect data transfer mode for IDE drives, such as UDMA/100, ATA/66? And if you added new hard drive into an old motherboard, it may be that the drive simply isn't able to slow down data transfers enough to handle the old controller. At some point, backwards compatibility does you a disservice. But I wouldn't recommend reflash BIOS on an old motherboard just to try to get a hard drive that works in desired mode. Overwriting BIOS chips the process is dangerous and there is always a chance that something will go wrong, such as a sudden power outage leaving you with nothing and no way to start over.

Check the CMOS boot sequence, put the CD or DVD first. If disk space free, you can try to create new section and again. If you are not seeing partition information or the disk is not showing up in FDISK and you are ready to say goodbye to the recorded information, you can try running FDISK /MBR from command line. FDISK.MBR will try to rewrite it because may be damaged.

Basic hard drive malfunction disks and their removal

All hard drive malfunctions can be divided into software and hardware. The hardware requires repairing the disk in order to extract data from it. Most often, hard drives fail due to falls, shocks and other mechanical damage. In this case, either the heads themselves are often damaged, or the surface of the disks is scratched, or both. In this case, it is necessary to replace the head block from exactly the same donor. There are times when one of the heads fails and the disk is partially accessible. In this case, it is possible to read data from one or more heads without replacing the BMG. The preamplifier-switcher is damaged by voltage surges or damage to the control board. The control board may fail due to unstable power supply of the hard drive or bad computer power supplies. The control board is repaired or more often replaced from a donor with flashing of the disk (replacement of the service board).

Unfortunately, replacing the board itself is useless and can even “kill the heads” of the BMG due to a mismatch of physical information and official information about heads and sectors in the firmware. Considering that a unique firmware is sewn into the controller, thanks to which Computer BIOS recognizes all the parameters of the hard drive, then in the event of power instability or sudden reboots, the firmware may fail, and the hard drive, while remaining electrically functional, will no longer be detected in the BIOS or will be detected incorrectly. The service area (“service area”) is restored only in technological mode on special stands. Particularly difficult are cases of damage to the translator - sector addressing tables and disk defects. Spindle wedge is not so common, but is typical for some Seagate HDDs and Toshiba laptops. In this case, the engine is repaired, after which the data is copied from the disk. Engine jamming can also be eliminated by transferring the pancakes to a working drive.

There are cases of BMG heads sticking to the surface of the disks. In this case, the containment zone is opened and the heads are taken to the parking area. After this, a copy is made to a working hard drive on the Data Extractor complex. Often, when sticking, the surface of the disks is scratched, so do not try to turn on the disk after it fails, because. in this case, 100% recovery is not guaranteed hdd data. Software malfunctions are most often associated with damage to disk sectors (the appearance of bad sectors), which, in turn, leads to a violation file system. User data is no longer available. The percentage of successful recovery is individual in each case and depends on the number of damaged blocks.

Main malfunctions and their solutions:

The disk does not spin (the indicator does not light up)

If the hard drive does not spin up and the hard drive indicator does not light up when you turn on the system, check the following:

2. Replace the hard drive.

The disk spins, but the computer does not boot

If the drive is spinning and its lights are on, but the computer does not boot from the drive, check the following:

1. Make sure the cable and power cable are properly connected to the drive.

2. Run the BIOS Configuration Utility

1) Make sure the drive and controller are turned on.

2) Also, make sure that the drive has the correct settings (it is recommended to use the automatic recognition feature).

4. SCSI drives:

The disk turns on, but is not recognized by the system

If the drive is not recognized by the system, there may be several symptoms, including the following error messages:
1. No Fixed Disk Present
2.Error reading fixed disk
3. Non-System disk or disk error, Replace and strike any key when ready
4.No ROM Basic
5. Disk Boot Error, Replace and Strike Key to Retry
6.DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
: Couldn't find NTLDR, Please insert another disk

Check the following points:

1. If you are trying to boot from the hard drive, make sure there is no floppy disk in drive A.

2. If you are trying to boot from a floppy disk, try booting from the hard drive first and then accessing the floppy disk. Then try to make sure that this disk contains the necessary boot files and that these files are not damaged.

3. If you are trying to boot from a floppy disk, try booting from a different boot disk first.

4. Make sure the cable and power cable are properly connected to the drive.

5. When booting from a hard drive, make sure the required primary partition is active.

6. Login to the program BIOS Setup and make sure that for of this disk selected correct settings, and that the hard drive and floppy drive controllers are enabled. (it is recommended to use the Auto Detect option).

7. Check the boot sequence in BIOS program setup.

8. If two IDE drives are connected to the same cable, try swapping the master and slave drives.

9. If it is an IDE drive, check the jumper settings of all IDE devices, especially the Master/Slave jumpers.

10. SCSI drives:

1) Check the jumper settings of all SCSI devices.

2) Make sure the primary hard drive has SCSI ID 0

3) Perform a power-on test (POST) to determine if the SCSI BIOS boots and if any SCSI devices are detected. If not, check the host adapter settings, including interrupt (IRQ), DMA, and input/output (I/O) settings.

11. When using the Mobile Rack for IDE hard drives, make sure the bay door is tightly closed.

12. Make sure all required drivers are installed correctly.

13. Replace the controller board, cable and hard drive one by one.

Hard drive repair (or HDD- Hard Disk Drive) – a procedure for bringing the HDD to a working state in which it is possible to read the necessary data from it, including service information, a file table, user data, multimedia information, etc., even if the BIOS does not see the hard drive. In this article, you will learn how to repair your hard drive, if possible, and what to do if the hdd is not detected in the BIOS or an error appears when you try to boot the operating system.

What to do if your hard drive clicks suspiciously

Clicks during HDD operation- another characteristic symptom when the hard drive does not start and, accordingly, is not detected by the system. The cause is usually worn out or broken hard drive heads. Like any other mechanical failure of the HDD, with my own hands can't be fixed.

However, if you hear clicks on a working hard drive (that is, it reads and writes files normally), then you urgently need to take certain measures and play it safe. Be sure to follow backup valuable information to another hard drive, flash drive or cloud hosting, fortunately in our time this is not an expensive procedure at all. After all, at one point it may happen that the hard drive will not start or will no longer be detected - and if you made a backup, then the loss of information will not cause a shock.

Repairing a hard drive with a faulty ROM and damaged service information (BIOS does not detect the drive)

What to do if the BIOS does not see the hard drive? The HDD on which such errors occurred has characteristic symptoms: it is not detected in the BIOS, and can also produce strange noise (clicking, tapping). In some cases, the hard drive is available in the BIOS, but is not able to boot the operating system.

Accordingly, to restore ROM and service data on the HDD you will need correct work the above-mentioned hard drive components. This type of repair is carried out by specialists using special equipment. It is impossible to produce it with your own hands. At the same time, the physical structure of the hard drive surface is read correctly, so the data remains physically intact.

Are recovery methods different? external hard disk from the internal one?

Answer. Definitely not. The hardware of the devices is identical, the only difference is in the form factor for storing information - that is, roughly speaking, in the box in which the disk's hardware is packaged. An external drive is more susceptible to physical damage and other risk factors. But they are more mobile and offer the user a convenient connection via eSata or another interface for connecting to a PC. Thus, this guide on how to restore a hard drive will be useful to both owners of “traditional” drives and external ones.

Hard drive I was in a laptop where the system stopped loading. Why am I going to format it - but! It was not there, as an “External” disk (I stuffed it into the case from an external “Transend” 500 GB) it is only visible as local disk"G" and "F" without any information. All attempts to call properties lead to Windows 8.1 freezing on the laptop - it is not visible in Disk Management, HDD Low Level Format too. Tell me, if the hard drive doesn’t work, how can I bring it back to life with my own hands?

Answer. Try to partition the hard drive again (Partiton Magic to help), it is advisable to perform a low-level HDD formatting, see information on the topic. By the way, in addition to HDD Low Level Format, there are many alternative utilities for formatting. It would be a good idea to check the working condition of the disk; to do this, check the SMART indicators and scan the disk using HDD Regenerator or Victoria HDD.

What to do if your hard drive clicks? That is, it works, but sometimes it makes characteristic sounds - that is, clicks. At some points it freezes and operating system freezes and then dies along with the disk.

Answer. In rare cases, the problem is associated with broken power contacts and sata/ide connectors connected to the motherboard. Therefore, first of all, we advise you to turn off the PC and check the connection to hard drive. Second, be sure to do it backup copy data on the disk, since clicking is an unhealthy symptom indicating that the HDD has problems and a crash can be expected at any moment. Third, to diagnose the disk condition, use specialized programs– HDD Regenerator, Victoria HDD Doctor, etc.

If the hard drive clicks and is not detected, the situation is more dire (good luck). In this case, the mechanics are already worn out, and you cannot restore the HDD; only replacing the hard drive with a new one will help.

How to increase the speed of your hard drive? I have OS Windows Vista.

Answer. Users of Windows Vista and higher are angry about the slow performance disk subsystem. In practice, copying files is noticeably slower than in XP. Why is my hard drive slow? One of the reasons lies on the surface and can be easily eliminated. The fact is that by default in Windows the maximum performance of the hard drive is disabled. Therefore, we urgently take measures:

Open Device Manager (Win + Pause Break, “Device Manager” link).
In the list of devices, find the disk device and in context menu select “Properties”.
Select the “Policies” tab and activate the “Enable enhanced performance” option.
To speed up your hard drive, restart your computer.

I reinstalled the system and I have it on a PCE SSD, but suddenly another 4TB hard drive stopped being detected? Then I went into computer management, then into disk management, it shows a capacity of 3.7 TB and 3.7 TB is free, that is, the disk turns out to be 100 percent empty and there is 2TV of information! Please tell me what can be done?

Answer. Perhaps the problem is related to a file system table failure; in such a situation, you can recommend the TestDisk utility to recover a partition that is not detected by the system, but contains important information.

I have an HP 620 laptop. Everything was fine, but I started to close the windows and the computer froze. I thought it would go away, 15 minutes passed - nothing, there was no reaction to anything. Even a software shutdown could not reset.

I turned it off physically with the button, turned it on again and the message appeared on the black screen of the laptop: non-system disk or disk error replace and strike any key when ready. After this, the system does not see the hard drive. But when the laptop is turned on, it spins, that is, everything is ok with power.

About 2 years ago I updated the BIOS from the official website. Maybe this is why the hard drive won't open? But before that I worked hard, always good. What could it be? Help please, this is the hard drive I have - Toshiba HDD2E67 320GB.

Answer. If the problem was related to the BIOS, the OS would not boot. Or, at least, a factory reset could solve something.

Try to start looking for the reason on the surface: the hard drive does not work because it has failed. This could happen for a variety of reasons (such as physical damage or wear and tear - which is less likely). If it is possible to check a similar hard drive on the same laptop, do so.

Any computer owner sooner or later faces such a problem - the hard drive is broken. In order to minimize the risk of data loss, you should make it a rule to duplicate all important information on another medium. You also need to know that before a breakdown, certain malfunctions appear in the PC, which are harbingers of the death of the storage device.

Signs of a hard drive failure

It is possible to determine that it is the hard drive that has failed if the computer is not operating correctly by looking at certain signs. How to understand that the hard drive is broken:

Appearance blue screen During operation or boot, the PC signals that the media is broken. The system cannot read the bad sectors and Windows stops working or reboots. This results in the loss of unsaved information.
If strange noises appear during PC operation, reminiscent of a clattering sound, then the head unit on the hard drive may have broken. In this case, you can try turning off the device and starting it again. The reason for incorrect reading of information can also be the accumulation of dust on the read-write elements.
If, when you turn on the PC, the hard drive does not make any sounds, this may indicate damage to the batteries. Such malfunctions occur due to voltage surges, but modern devices are equipped with protection against power surges. But if this happens, then everything can be easily eliminated by replacing the fuse. Also, the reason why the hard drive does not make any sounds may be stuck heads.
The appearance of such an inscription on the screen as “disk or device not found” indicates that the hard drive has failed. You can find out exactly what faults are present using special diagnostic programs.
Modern storage devices are more resistant to overheating than older models. But this still happens, and excessive heating of the electronic boards is a sign that the drive is broken. Determining the presence of such a malfunction is very simple. It is enough to know that the maximum permissible temperature regime for hard drive operation it is 50. and touching a working device with your hand will not cause discomfort. If the temperature is higher than normal, you will feel it.
You can determine that the hard drive is broken by the time it takes to access files. If there is a malfunction, then such a standard procedure as emptying the recycle bin can take several hours.
A signal that the hard drive is broken is provided by such signs as damage and disappearance of files, and program malfunctions.

How to tell if your hard drive is broken

Modern hard drives have built-in programs to monitor its condition. To find out about possible problems and malfunctions, you need to decrypt the data collected by the system. For this there are special programs. Some are designed to provide real-time diagnostics and send status data to email.

If the hard drive is broken, then first of all you need to take care of saving the data. Even the likelihood that the hard drive will work for some time makes storage important information it's very risky.

Harbingers of failure

Before the hard drive finally fails, there are signs indicating this:

Slowdown of the computer is reflected in the system startup. PC performance is decreasing and this is a reason to check the hard drive.
If your computer constantly restarts, one of the reasons may be a problem with the hard drive.

If any malfunctions in the operation of the computer are detected, the most the best option will turn it off. If the hard drive is broken, then long-term use PC will lead to irreversible consequences. The storage area will become inaccessible and data will be completely lost. You can find and fix the problem yourself, but it is better to seek help from specialized computer equipment repair services.

Data recovery

If your hard drive breaks, then almost everyone asks the question of how to recover data. Today, you can return lost files yourself, without the help of specialists. There are recovery programs for this, but they do not provide a complete guarantee. If all the nuances are followed, it is possible to return most of the stored information.

The principle of operation of the programs is to scan the surface of the storage device. In this case, some files are only partially restored, their name and location are lost.

Popular data recovery programs:

R-Studio is one of the most famous programs to recover deleted information. With certain settings, disk scanning is reduced and it is possible to set the recovery area of the hard drive. The program is available in Russian, which makes working with it very easy.
Minitool Power Data performs a deep scan, making it possible to recover files that others similar programs ignored. The advantage of this utility is the ability to revive the entire disk.
Rekuva is an easy to use program with a wide range of features. Allows you to restore information by setting the search area.

Hard drive problems on a laptop

If the hard drive on a laptop breaks down, it stops working and there is a possibility of losing all saved data. The signs of failure are the same as on a PC. But mechanical damage is not always the cause of hard drive failure:

There are virus programs, which can encrypt stored information.
Malware, damaging operating system boot loaders.

How to minimize the risk of hard drive failure

The storage device will work much longer if you follow simple rules:

The hard drive is poorly protected from power surges, so a high-quality power supply will be the key to its stable operation.
To prevent the hard drive from breaking, it must be protected from falling and shaking. Mechanical impact can damage moving parts and render the device inoperable. Even a small blow is enough for this.
Maintaining a certain temperature that is comfortable for the operation of computer components, including the hard drive. To do this, you need to have air flow through the PC case using fans.
Cleaning computer components from dust using a can of compressed air. This will prevent the chips from overheating.
It is not recommended to turn the PC on and off within a short period of time, as this will greatly affect the hard drive. If you need to take a break from your computer for several hours, it is better to put it in standby mode.
To increase the performance of the hard drive, you should defragment it. This will speed up your computer.
The drive on a laptop often suffers from temperature changes. Do not take the device outside at low temperatures.
Laptops are more susceptible to dust clogging than computers. Therefore, to avoid overheating of the hard drive, you need to monitor the condition of the device.
Make sure that the ide contact does not break when connecting the hard drive. One of the signs of a breakdown will be slow loading of files or complete inoperability of the computer. IN special services When repairing computer equipment, such a breakdown can be repaired.

Have a great day!