WD Elements. Spins up. Clicks once after about 1-2 Minutes.

[peon]

Hello

For my background you can have a look at my introduction thread if you like (https://www.data-medics.com/forum/hello-t2236.html)

I have a question about a typical kind of failed external drive that I see quite often nowadays. It's about 2,5" WD Elements drives (I have a WDBUZG0010BBK-04 just here on my desk) which all show the same behaviour:
The drives spin up normally (no suspicious noise) then keep spinning for about 1 or 2 minutes, then make one single loud click/squeak, spin down. And this all over again.
These drives don't show up directly in the OS. But they are recoginzable in the log of a Linux system, for example. ("spinnig up disk" etc.)

Is this a "usual" thing for the experts and does it have a clear and common cause? Is there any chance on correcting this "software-wise" or have they go to a lab?

I had probably like 5 or more of this kind brought to me during the last 6 - 12 months. (As described in my introduction thread I'm not a data recovery specialist [of course] but I offer my customers a check of their failed drives because in the majority of the cases it's a problem that I can solve with my limited knowledge. In the other cases I offer to redirect the disk to a lab, but a lot of my customers can't afford this so I'm always keen to learn something new and maybe being able to help one more customer.)

 

[Jared]

In all liklihood the drive(s) have one or more failed read/write heads. At least some of the heads must be good enough for it to read the system area (where the firmware code is saved on the platters) otherwise it'd immediately start clicking. Then, when it starts trying to prefetch data and prefill the buffer it tries to read from the bad head(s) and.....click...spin down.

We see this all the time. Typical process is to first replace the USB PCB for a SATA one along with reprogramming the ROM to make it compatible. Next we patch up the firmware to turn off functions like bad sector remapping as well as disable the failed heads. We extract all the data from the remaining good heads, then replace the heads from a donor and read out and combine in the data from those heads.

Typical price here for this is $650 plus the cost of the donor hard drive to pull the heads from.

In some cases it's just caused by a firmware glitch related to bad sector re-allocation gone haywire, but usually then it won't click at all, it'll just never mount. If we don't have to replace heads, then it's a flat $450 by our pricing (up to 2Tb size).

 

[peon]

Thank you very much for your good explanation.

This means that they have to go to a lab since I don't have the equipment and skills to replace the heads.
I guessed that this is the case and have handled it like this in the past (told the customers that we'd have to send them to a lab if they're able/willing to pay for it). Now I know for sure.

Unfortunately you are located more than 6000 kilometers away form me, otherwise I'd gladly ship them to your lab if I have a "willing" customer. The local lab here usually demands nearly 1000$ (including taxes, shipping and replacement drive).

 

[Jared]

Which country are you located in? Perhaps I could recommend someone else.

 

[peon]

I'm located in Switzerland

 

[pclab]

I'm in Portugal if you want!!

 

[peon]

The actual case is finished because the customer told me that she isn't able to pay more than 500$ overall.

But maybe in the future if we can find a way that is good for both of us?

To speak open. With my current lab partner it's like this:
He does free analysis and binding cost forecast and pays for the courier service of the disk. He also provides a new external HDD for the rescued data and manages the rest (incl. payment) directly with the customer.
If the customer accepts the cost forecast, the lab pays me 20% commission (= ~ 200$, usually).
So this is of course quite comfortable and riskless for me.
But it also limits the number of customers, because a lot of them aren't willing or able to pay ~ 1000$ for the recovery. (The usual rate of my current lab.)

So to see if it's worth it for both of us to work over this distance I'd have to get an idea at which prices you can work / what conditions you have. (Unfortunately, Swiss Post are quite expensive, so we are looking at around 50$ shipping costs form here to Portugal. Other way round is probably cheaper. But we have to take this into consideration, since in cases where you can't rescue data it would be wasted money. Unless you can always rescue, of course ;-))

 

[pclab]

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