Data Recovery from a WD Blue Hard Drive

We regularly see WD Blue hard drives in the data recovery lab - here's how our data recovery team got on. 

The WD Blue hard drive, with a storage capacity of 1TB, arrived into our office along with the job reference number and QR code and was immediately sent to the data recovery lab for diagnostic tests. The client engaged us after his hard drive started making a new and unusual ticking noise when it was powered up. While he ignored it at first, it began to get louder, and so the drive was powered down immediately. A new noise emanating from a hard drive is never good news, so the correct course of action was taken. The drive hadn’t been backed up in over a week, and there were valuable files written to it since then.

Our data recovery got to work immediately, disassembling the hard drive in our class 100 clean room. A clean room environment ensures that the air is clean and free of contaminants, and all physical data recovery work is undertaken here. The data recovery team ascertained that there was a dislodged head, and this was causing it to come into contact with the platter. The client had previously mentioned that he had recently moved offices, so it’s likely the drive sustained a knock or bump during this move. A new set of read/write heads was sourced from our library of spare parts, and the data recovery team used specialist head stack replacement tools to install them. The drive was then imaged, and 100% of the data contained on it was recovered, and sent back to the client on a blank external hard drive. The original drive was not operational at this point, so it was safely destroyed and disposed of.

If your hard drive is emitting a new noise, and you can rule out a problem with your computer’s fan, you should immediately power it down and consult a professional data recovery specialist. The earlier you act when it comes to physical problems like head crashes and motor failures, the better. Our data recovery team will conduct a free diagnostic test and provide you with a list of recoverable files, along with a no-obligation quote.

Data Recovery