Our data recovery team recently completed work on a Lenovo hard drive after the owner reported a beeping and then grinding noise coming from within the drive.
While it’s normal to hear some noise coming from your drive or machine when it’s running, some sounds can be a clue that your drive is failing or on the verge of failure. A customer approached us after her Lenovo hard drive began making a grinding noise when powered up; prior to this, there had been a beeping sound. Fearing her initial worries were true, as the noise got more severe, she contacted Data Recovery Specialists for help. Upon getting in touch, one of our customer service team gave the customer a job reference number to include with the drive upon dispatch. As soon as it arrived, the hard drive was catalogued and immediately sent to our data recovery team for a free diagnosis.
Our data recovery team is essentially split into three, with the first group of technicians known as the initial assessment team, who will examine your device and determine whether more intrusive action, such as disassembling, is required; often they’ll be able to get data back without resorting to this. If it is determined that your device needs to be taken apart, it will be sent to our continued assessment team, who specialise in physical damage such as motor failure and head crashes, as well as logical and firmware corruption. Finally, our specialist assessment teams deal with legacy formats and more complex data recovery cases, although most devices won’t make it this far.
The customer’s Lenovo hard drive was sent from the initial assessment team to the continued assessment team, where it was disassembled in our class 100 clean room. A clean room environment emulates that in which the hard drive would have been assembled in, ensuring no further damage is caused due to particles of dust or moisture. Our data recovery technicians found that the cause of the beeping and grinding noise was damage to the spindle motor, likely caused by a sudden bump or knock. The hard drive’s spindle motor is crucial to its running – no spindle motor, no spinning disks, and data is inaccessible.
As mentioned above, hard drives are mechanical devices, so they’re not completely silent. However, if you hear a beeping, chattering or grinding noise, it could be indicative of damage to the spindle motor, and the hard drive should be immediately powered down. Attempting to carry on using the drive will only result in a reduced chance of a successful data recovery later down the line.
After diagnosing the problem, our data recovery team sought donor parts from our library of spares, and provided the client with a no-obligation quote to complete the data recovery. We provide a no-obligation quote rather than an up-front diagnosis fee – like some data recovery companies do – as it is a fairer way of doing things. It means you don’t have to commit without knowing your data is actually recoverable because unfortunately, there are many jobs where our data recovery team are unable to help. With our no-obligation quote, you’ll only have to pay if we recovery your data for you.
The customer’s newly recovered data was transferred onto a blank portable hard drive and returned via courier.
