Repair of portable hard drives with hands. Repair hard disk with your own hands at home

Repair of a hard disk - a procedure that in some cases allows you to return the drive to the drive. Due to the specifics of this device, serious damage to correct is usually impossible, but light problems can be eliminated without contacting a specialist.

You can return the HDD to the working state even in cases if it is not visible in the BIOS. However, it does not often work out to repair the drive due to the complexity of its design. In some cases, the repairs may need to give the amount, several times higher than the value of the Winchesis itself, and it makes sense to do only to restore extremely important data stored on it.

It should be distinguished by the repair of the Winchester from its recovery. In the first case, we are talking about restoring the device's performance, and in the second - about returning lost data. If you need to return the files deleted or lost as a result of formatting files, check out the other of our article:

You can also replace the hard drive with your own hands, and if possible, copy files from an old HDD to a new one. This will suit those users who do not want to contact the specialists and prefers just to get rid of the failed drive.

Problem 1: Damaged hard disk sectors

Bied sectors can be divided into software and physical. The first is easily restored by various utilities, and as a result, HDD works stable and without failures.

Treatment of physically damaged sectors does not provide for the use of programs. At the same time, the drive itself may begin to publish unusual sounds: Clicks, creak, rustling, etc. Among other manifestations of problems - the rolling of the system, even when performing simple tasks, the disappearance of files or folders, or the appearance of empty unnecessary space.

It is impossible to correct such a problem of a hard disk of a computer or laptop manually. Therefore, the user remains either to replace the Winchester to the new and, if possible, transfer important data to it, or use the services of masters restoring data from a physically damaged surface in special conditions.

Understand that there are problems with sectors, using programs:

If the device still works, but already unstable, you need to think about the acquisition of a new drive as soon as possible. At the same time, the use of a PC with damaged HDD is strongly recommended to minimize.

After connecting the second hard drive, you can clone the entire HDD or only the operating system.

Problem 2: Windows does not see the disk

Physically, a serviceable drive may not be determined by the operating system even when connecting to another computer, but be visible to the BIOS.

Situations under which Windows does not see the device, several:

  1. There is no disc letter. It may happen that the volume will remain without the letter (C, D, E, etc.), which will cease to be visible to the system. It usually helps simple formatting.

    After that, if you need to return the remote data, use special programs.

  2. The disk received a RAW format. Formatting will help solve this situation, however it is not the only way to return the NTFS or FAT file system. Read more about this in another article:
  3. Windows does not see the new hard drive. Just purchased and connected to the system unit HDD may not be determined by the system, and it is absolutely normal. To start using the device, you need to initialize it.

Problem 3: BIOS does not see the disk

In more serious cases, the hard drive may not be visible not only in the operating system, but also in the BIOS. Typically, bios displays all connected devices, even those that are not defined in Windows. Thus, it can be understood that they are physically working, but there are software conflicts.

When the device is not defined in BIOS, in most cases this is a consequence of one of two reasons:


Problem 4: Hard disk is knocking under the lid

If you heard a knock inside the hard drive, then the controller was damaged. Sometimes the Winchester may not be determined in the BIOS.

To eliminate this problem, it will be necessary to change the controller entirely, but it is practically impossible to do it yourself. Specialized companies conduct such repairs, but it will cost a round sum. Therefore, it is noteworthy to handle the masters only when the information stored on the disk is very important.

Problem 5: HDD makes strange sounds

In the normal state, the drive should not make any sounds except noise while reading or writing. If you hear uncharacteristic tubes, cods, clicks, knocks, or even scratch, it is very important to stop using damaged HDD as soon as possible.

Depending on the severity of damage, the drive may not be determined in the BIOS, dramatically stop or on the contrary, it is unsuccessfully trying to start promotion.

Diagnose the problem in this case is very difficult. Specialist will require disassembling the device to determine the fault source. In the future, based on the results of the inspection, it will be necessary to replace the damaged element. It can be head, cylinder, plate or other elements.

Winchesters, unlike - this is far from the most expensive devices and, when going out, they usually buy new ones. But why do it, if you can repair the hard disk and saved tools to invest in the purchase of another component, for example, the same solid-state drive, video card or processor.

Let's understand, in what cases the HDD is subject to repair and what exactly can be done with it in order to return the performance of your computer or laptop. The methods discussed below are universal and are suitable for hards of various manufacturers "Seagate, WD, Toshiba, Samsung" and others.

Hard disk is not visible in bios

A fairly common problem is when BIOS refuses to recognize an old drive. And on, that is, several reasons:


As a rule, after troubleshooting data in 90% of cases, HDD begins to be displayed in BIOS, which opens up the possibility of further work on it.

If the carrier is under warranty, it is not recommended to climb it yourself, otherwise you can disrupt the warranty conditions. An appropriate solution will be back to the store.

Damaged (BED) sector

Badics - inaccessible to read or write sector, when trying to access which, the drive begins to slow down or extract errors at all. Especially if any information was previously recorded in these sectors.

They are two species:

  1. Soft Badi (logical) - Program errors resulting from a device failure. For example, after cutting off the light, the voltage drop in the network or statics. They are quite healing.
  2. Physical - arise as a result of the natural wear of the "electronic friend" or mechanical damage. For example, after shaking, drops or shocks. In these cases, the restoration of the hard disk is carried out exclusively by professionals with special equipment and in special pure conditions.

In advance to predict with what types of inaccessible sectors you are faced. It is necessary to prevent software for repairing hard drives. The most effective of which are "", "" or "HDAT". They are easy to use, but unfortunately do not apply to Russian.


Also these utilities are able to identify "outlined" badges and eliminate them.

Additionally, I can recommend getting a verge of a universal boot disk with the required set of utilities for repair not only HDD, but also the entire computer. The most popular collections are "RBCD", "Adminpe10", "Ultimate Boot CD" and "BootHDD".

Windows does not see HDD

The operating system may not see the hard disk, and it does not matter old it or a new one. There are several reasons for:

All listed items are carried out software repair, which can be performed with your own hands without interfering of specialists.

Uncharacteristic stuffs

If you periodically hear emanating from the hard drive, then the controller was most likely damaged. To resolve the problem, you will have to change the board or the controller itself. Unfortunately, repairing a hard disk of such complexity will not be able to fulfill, it is better to trust this work to specialists of the service center.


However, it should be known that the replacement of the controller or fee will cost a very decent amount. It is advisable to perform a replacement procedure only when the data on the drive is extremely important.

Removable HDD.

In general, the procedure for restoring the efficiency of external hard drives is no different from the usual stationary HDD.

But there are several additional points here:


The execution of these actions should return the device into operation.

What else can you do

It happens that the Winchester begins to slowly work quite for obvious reasons. There are several of them:

  1. Accumulated garbage.
  2. High degree of fragmentation.
  3. Slow connection mode.
  4. Not performed performance optimization.
  5. Crowded list of autoload.

To eliminate all these problems, a separate article dedicated to the drive has already been written. I recommend to get acquainted with it.

What can not do

Not surprising, but there are users who resort to the most desperate measures in order to return to the former workability of the device. But this can not be done.

What I'm talking about:


If there is extremely important information on the carrier, then the best solution will entrust his repair of professionals.

Winchester is an extremely fragile device that is not resistant to overheating or physical damage (shocks or shakes). But even at careful handling, HDD may be broken by itself as a result of the wear of the mechanism. This is a normal phenomenon, because the service life of the Hard is only 5-8 years.

But as practice shows, it fails 2 times faster. Therefore, it is recommended to always take care of the preservation of important data.

Store data is best immediately in several places, for example, in a cloud or on a backup media. In the future, this will help to avoid unnecessary cost recovery costs.

Video Repair Instructions

Many people are trying to eliminate all the problems with their own hands, even if they are not experts in a particular area. If we are talking about the repair of a hard disk of a laptop with your own hands, you need to understand that all information from the disk will be deleted. Therefore, it is necessary to resort to independent repairs only if the information is duplicated or there is no need for it. Repair may be required in such cases:

  • there are traces from dents and blows;
  • pancakes do not spin;
  • loudly clay disk heads;
  • the disk is noisy.

How to check the hard disk on the laptop

If the hard disk or HDD, as it is also called, makes strange sounds, whether it is clanging, crushing or anything else, it may indicate a serious breakdown that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. The reasons for the occurrence of strange noise can be a lot - weak fragmentation, the expiration of the disk operation and so on.

Very bad if the BIOS does not see the hard drive on the laptop. You can check this by clicking on the frame with a description of the equipment that appears on the screen during the initial load.

But there is nothing terrible in this. To resolve the problem, you need to clean the disk from the information. You can use the boot CD on which there is a diskedit program. The computer must earn after reboot.

How to repair a disk head

If a hard disk broke on a laptop and you need to repair the head, first of all you need to find a donor. The donor is a new drive that is installed in the place of the broken. It should approach the hard disk model and be complete.

The most important thing is to know how to remove the hard drive from the laptop correctly. You need to unscrew the screws on it, but the problem is that they are not on all models. After that, you need to remove the cover from the disk, but it is very careful, since it has a disk gasket, which cannot be damaging. First, the magnet is removed, and then screws are unscrewed.

When the magnet is removed, you will see a VCM coil. Immediately behind it there are heads - it will not be much difficult to remove them. It is enough to twist discs from side to side, as they can stick to the surface of the magnet. So that the heads do not stick out, it is necessary to insert some material between them. It can be a piece of fabric or paper. You will need to put new ones. It is necessary to do this with the help of tweezers and necessarily in rubber gloves.

When the heads are installed, you need to put a magnet in place, close the lid, fasten the bolts and insert the disk into the laptop. If the data is displayed after rebooting, it means everything is done correctly.

Damage to the surface of the disc

If a hard disk is heated on a laptop or outlines strange sounds, then there is damage to the surface. It occurs in the event of a laptop fall or if the disk scratched. When the heads of magnets are damaged, and they should be replaced immediately. In this case, restore information recorded on the disk will not be possible.

What to do if the information is damaged on the disk

If the hard disk flew on the laptop and information was damaged, in this case the breakdown can be diagnosed by such signs:

  • the computer does not see the disk;
  • could not see the amount of information on the disk;
  • when working hard disk makes incomprehensible sounds.

Such a malfunction is the result of a breakdown of the disk program or failure one of the heads. In the latter case, damaged information can be restored only in some cases or try to reduce the container of the carrier. If all heads are in order, it is not necessary to reduce the volume of the disk. Here you need to overwrite service information using special hard disk programs.

How to repair a hard disk if it is not readable

Errors of this kind can be identified with special diagnostic support. The reasons for the hard disk breakage on the laptop can be the following:

  • bad channels, transmitting data;
  • dismissed the surface of the disk;
  • incorrect management of management.

Restoring a hard disk on a laptop in this case it is better to entrust professionals. It will not work independently.

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Good day.

If your external hard disk has stopped displayed when connected, or does not give signs of life at all - do not hurry to throw it away and write off from accounts. Sitting 5-10 minutes with a screwdriver - you can try to repair it and restore performance.

In general, I do not engage in professional repair of hard drives (professionally loaded them), therefore, all that is described below is just my experience and my point of view.

Important! Guided by written below - you can spoil the disk and lose all the data on it. If there are important documents on the disk - better treat the service center to those skilled in the art. All you are doing further on the article - do at your own risk.

"Repair" external HDD

In general, of course, the word "repair" - this article is too loud, but otherwise not to convey the meaning ...

Not so long ago, one external hard disk was brought to me, which refused to work: the light bulb (light-diode) lights up (light-diode) and immediately Gasla, then the hard disk did not react in any way until you turn off and you will not connect it to the USB port again. The disc, by the way, is a fairly popular model today - Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 TB Black.

Fig. 1. Outer hard disk Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 TB Black

A bit of theory

An external hard disk is a small box with a USB wire, inside which the usual hard disk is hidden and a small board (controller), a kind of adapter from the USB port to the SATA disk input.

So, very often does not fail disk itself (if you, of course, did not drop it), but this handker. By the way, in many models of disks, it is very thin and fragile, you can damage it once or two.

Therefore, before you put the "cross" on an external hard disk - you can try to open it, get the disk itself and connect it directly to the PC / laptop, or insert it into another Box.

How to disassemble an external disk

Specifically, the model Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 TB Black is opened very easily - it is enough to pry a knife cover (see the red arrow in Fig. 1).

Important!Not all models of the disks are easy to disassemble. Some are generally wearing "tightly", and to open them - you need to break the case (at the same time, there is a big risk to kill HDD itself).

By the way, there are cases when opening the housing, you will see the deposited contacts, crack on the board, etc. Defects - if there is a soldering experience, you can try to restore the fee.

Actually, in fig. 2 The following depicts an external disk, as it looks from the inside: a small charge / adapter connected to a regular 2.5-inch disc. Nothing cunning ...

Fig. 2. External hard disk - view from inside

Fig. 3. Disk is extracted

Next step - Connecting a disk to a computer / laptop. There are two options here:

Instruction: How to connect a hard drive from a laptop to a PC -

Fig. 4. Extracted disk connected to PC

So, the disk removed by me was completely good. By connecting it to the SATA port of the computer - I could copy all the information from it. In general, whenking the external Box - it still serves as faithful ...

Fig. 5. The external container (Box) for the disk - it looks as if it was the external HDD initially

The motive of the article is like: Before throwing out your old non-working external HDD, check the disk itself, and you can and you can repair it so easy and quickly. "Repair".

I have everything, good luck!

In this article we will consider such an unusual question as "repairing a hard disk with your own hands." Probably, every second computer owner came across the fact that yesterday she worked hard drive today hard does not want to be determined by the motherboard.

Of course, if the devices have not yet ended, it is not necessary to carry out the repair of a hard disk with your own hands. But in the case when "there is nothing to lose," you can try to restore the health of the HDD on your own.

About breakdowns

Before you start with your own hands, it is necessary to clearly understand that far from all breakdowns can be eliminated at home. It all depends on the complexity of the fault. For example, do not even try to repair the hard disk after falling, and it is better to immediately contact the service center (SC). But failures in the transmission of the signal on the loop and some similar "little things" can be completely eliminated.

DeviceHDD.

Structurally, the Winchester consists of two blocks: the humbling with a set of magnetic disks and the drive of the reading heads, as well as the external electronics fee. Open the humbound case without creating special conditions can not. The fact is that dust particles, which inevitably fall inside when removing the cover, will subsequently damage the magnetic coating of the discs. If necessary, at least consider the data, in the SC, the lid is still removed and after repair, dust particles flow of air from the canopy. But after that, it is not worth the long-term operation.

Drinking the sleeves ...

Repair of a hard disk with their own hands begins with extracting it from the system block case, disconnecting the power wire and the interface loop and attentive inspection. On the electronics board should not be burnt elements (sometimes due to overheating fails the microcircuit). In most HDD models, all elements are located on the outside and are visible without removing the board. In others, they are turned to the germoblock. So, with the help of magnificably glass on the removed board, it is necessary to examine the places of the soldering of the connectors: sometimes one falling feet interferes with the work of the entire device. You can restore the solder with a pulsed soldering iron and a solid hand.

In the old HDD with an IDE interface, a non-accurate connection often led to the bending of one or more copper pins. If there is such a malfunction when inspected, it can be eliminated using a small tweezers, aligning contacts. The following problem is the violation of the electrical contacts of the board and the germoblock. Since the transmission of signals (and nutrition) is performed not by the loop, but a simple clamp of copper surfaces, then their resistance increases due to oxidation. Solve this problem is simple: you need to wipe contacts on the humbling and electronics board with the help of the stationery.

It is noted that some hard drives work unstable in high-speed modes. Therefore, it is useful with the help of jumpers (it is in most models) to translate the hard drive to the slow mode, for SATA, the transmission will be not 3, and 1.5 GB / s. "On the eye" a slowdown will be virtually unnoticed.

Repair is performed in the same way. We note one important fact: many are convinced that by simply replacing the electronics block on the removal of a worker-working identical model, you can "revive" the device. This is true only in part. The fact is that the board is the ROM into which specific information is entered (for example, failed sites). Therefore, the simple replacement is not always effective, as it may be necessary to flash.