[SOLVED] Need help troubleshooting my HDD - possible physical damage for SATA cable

[ryanloeh]

Laptop model: ASUS FX503VM NS52
Basic specs:

• CPU: Intel i5-7300HQ
• SSD: Sandisk sd9sn8w128g1002
• HDD: "Seagate Mobile HDD 1TB"

Problem is that the HDD is no longer detected by the laptop. I have removed it and plugged it into the USB port with a SATA adapter. It powers on and Windows detects the device, but I get the error of "The last USB device you connected to this computer malfunctioned, Windows does not recognize it." After reboots and rescans, I cannot get my laptop to recognize it.

I can see no physical damage to the pins in the HDD itself, or on the internal SATA cable in the laptop. I fear that there is something wrong internally with the drive that is beyond my expertise.

I still run my laptop on my SSD for now, but I'd like to recover the data on there if possible.

 

[Newtonius]

Do you hear any clicking sounds come from the drive when it's on? If not, then your drive's logic board could be defective instead of the platters or read head itself.

 

[PC Tailor]

Welcome to the forums my friend!

The best way to test is to simply use another SATA cable in another PC and see if it starts, however by the sounds of it the USB test should hae also sufficed to identify if it is functional or not. But I might still be tempted to try it on a different PC and see if it can get detected.

I still run my laptop on my SSD for now, but I'd like to recover the data on there if possible.

If it is indeed faulty, unfortunately, the best measure for saving data is to proactively back it up. If the drive is faulty there is no guarantee that even if it becoems detected, that the data isn't corrupt.

Following that, proper data recovery is a specialist and delicate process which costs a LOT of money due to the nature of it. Which is why backing up is the only real way to guarantee safety of your data.

 

[ryanloeh]

No, no clicking sounds, that was kind of what I figured was the issue, something internal.

I was fairly proactive with backing up data. I have my most important documents backed up so its more so the annoyance of having to redownload some things/ getting a replacement drive. At the end of the day, the cost of an HDD is much less than data recovery services from what I'm told.

 

[ryanloeh]

The best way to test is to simply use another SATA cable in another PC and see if it starts, however by the sounds of it the USB test should hae also sufficed to identify if it is functional or not. But I might still be tempted to try it on a different PC and see if it can get detected.

Tried this, same thing on my old laptop sadly.

 

[PC Tailor]

In which case, the latter part of my post is probably your bet.

If the hard drive is faulty and can't be detected at all, professional data recovery is the way to go, but is also very expensive.
It's why backups are always the best for data recovery unfortunately.