[SOLVED] Hard Drive Failure?

[crow671]

I have a 1TB Western Digital hard drive (WD10EZEX-75ZF5A0) from an old 2012 dell PC that seems to have gone bad.
I left my PC running one night to run a full AV scan and the next day, my pc was sluggish and locked up. When i tried to reboot, it wouldn't get past the BIOS or "repairing windows" screen, so I reset my BIOS, disconnected everything and tore my PC apart looking for some sign of component failure (luckily, it wasn't my GPU as I initially feared). The problem only tarted again once I reconnected my 1TB drive. I tried taking the drive out and hooking it up to an external USB adapter and the same problem happened again: when my PC tried to read the drive, it couldn't recognize the device and slowly started locking up again like a slow-motion crash. I tried this again on a different PC, but the same thing happened: if the drive is connected when the PC boots, it wont get past the bios or repairing windows screens, and if the PC is on when the drive is connected, the PC slowly locks up and wont read the drive.

The drive doesn't sound like there's hardly any activity going on, so i don't think its virus or malware related. given the age of the drive, I'm guessing its just straight up component failure.
This drive has all my documents, photos, videos, device backups, etc, so recovery is an absolute must.

A Local data recovery shop wants $300 minimum, but I'm still shopping around. once i get this sorted out, I'm buying 2 drives and hooking them up in RAID 1 so i don't have to deal with a $300 fee to get my own data back.

I remember years ago, I had a similar problem on another drive and I just bought another drive of the same make and model and swapped out the controller board and it seemed to work. Idk how well that would work on a more modern drive, but is there a cheaper way of diagnosing/fixing this?

Edit: ok, so no RAID 1, ill just make a point to buy multiple drives

 

[kanewolf]

I have a 1TB Western Digital hard drive (WD10EZEX-75ZF5A0) from an old 2012 dell PC that seems to have gone bad.
I left my PC running one night to run a full AV scan and the next day, my pc was sluggish and locked up. When i tried to reboot, it wouldn't get past the BIOS or "repairing windows" screen, so I reset my BIOS, disconnected everything and tore my PC apart looking for some sign of component failure (luckily, it wasn't my GPU as I initially feared). The problem only tarted again once I reconnected my 1TB drive. I tried taking the drive out and hooking it up to an external USB adapter and the same problem happened again: when my PC tried to read the drive, it couldn't recognize the device and slowly started locking up again like a slow-motion crash. I tried this again on a different PC, but the same thing happened: if the drive is connected when the PC boots, it wont get past the bios or repairing windows screens, and if the PC is on when the drive is connected, the PC slowly locks up and wont read the drive.

The drive doesn't sound like there's hardly any activity going on, so i don't think its virus or malware related. given the age of the drive, I'm guessing its just straight up component failure.
This drive has all my documents, photos, videos, device backups, etc, so recovery is an absolute must.

A Local data recovery shop wants $300 minimum, but I'm still shopping around. once i get this sorted out, I'm buying 2 drives and hooking them up in RAID 1 so i don't have to deal with a $300 fee to get my own data back.

I remember years ago, I had a similar problem on another drive and I just bought another drive of the same make and model and swapped out the controller board and it seemed to work. Idk how well that would work on a more modern drive, but is there a cheaper way of diagnosing/fixing this?

RAID is not the solution to your $300 problem. Backups are. Three independent copies (this is where RAID fails -- the copies are not independent. Delete a file and it is gone on both drives. Plus you need an offsite copy to protect against theft, fire, flood, etc.

 

[USAFRet]

once i get this sorted out, I'm buying 2 drives and hooking them up in RAID 1 so i don't have to deal with a $300 fee to get my own data back.

Nope.

A RAID 1 is NOT a viable 'backup' solution.
That only protects against physical drive fail, and only if you need actual 100% uptime.

A true backup routine protects against physical drive fail, and all the other forms of data loss.

 

[crow671]

RAID is not the solution to your $300 problem. Backups are. Three independent copies (this is where RAID fails -- the copies are not independent. Delete a file and it is gone on both drives. Plus you need an offsite copy to protect against theft, fire, flood, etc.

Nope.

A RAID 1 is NOT a viable 'backup' solution.
That only protects against physical drive fail, and only if you need actual 100% uptime.

A true backup routine protects against physical drive fail, and all the other forms of data loss.

ok, so ill buy extra drives then, so what can i do about the drive that currently has all my data on it?

 

[kanewolf]

ok, so ill buy extra drives then, so what can i do about the drive that currently has all my data on it?

You could try connecting the drive to a functioning computer and using recuva -- https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
O you could pay a data recovery service. Or you can take this as a lesson, change your behavior and move on.

 

[crow671]

You could try connecting the drive to a functioning computer and using recuva -- https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
O you could pay a data recovery service. Or you can take this as a lesson, change your behavior and move on.

data recovery it is then. any pc this drive plugs into wont even recognize the device and it slowly shuts down like a slow-motion crash, so software doesnt seem to be viable