Anytime I hear that a Toshiba drive is making a beeping sound and not showing up on the computer, I think of stuck heads. Beeping drives are very commonly drives with heads stuck on the platter. With a beeping Toshiba drive, you usually hear a beeping sound 1-3 times before the drive just goes silent. Because the heads are stuck on the platters, the platter is not able to move. You hear a beeping sound because the motor is trying to spin and failing.
Toshiba Mail-in Recovery
In this beeping Toshiba drive case, the customer took their computer to a local computer repair shop because their drive had just stopped working. The shop diagnosed the problem as a bad hard drive and told them to mail it to us for recovery. The customer contacted us to see if we might be able to recover the important photos and excel files present on the drive. Based on our track record with beeping drives, I assured them there was a very good chance the data would be recoverable.
Toshiba DT01ACA100 Diagnosis
Once the Toshiba hard drive came in I opened the cover in our clean room environment to complete a visual inspection. I saw right away that the heads were indeed stuck on the platters. This means the first step is to get the heads back to the ramp where they are supposed to be when the drive is off. A lot of drives have special tools you can use that allow you to safely lift the heads away from the surface of the platter and move it over to the ramp area.
Moving the stuck heads
Once the heads are off the platter, the next step is to check the heads and the surface of the platter for damage. It is necessary to use a microscope to complete this inspection because you are looking for minuscule signs of damage. Do not trust your naked eye when completing this type of inspection as missing an issue with the heads can cause irreversible damage to the hard drive.
In this case the heads looked great, and the platters looked great as well! This meant I was able to put the original head stack back into the DT01ACA100 hard drive with the heads parked properly, rather than having to order a replacement head stack. Because I didn’t have to order replacement parts, this recovery was considered a Standard+ tier rather than the more expensive tier 3 recovery.
Imaging the hard drive
Once the drive was spinning and reading properly, I completed the standard pre-configuration steps before beginning the imaging process. Another quick tip is to always use a good imager with drives that have had stuck heads. Just in case there are issues with the sectors that were under the head when they got stuck, you want an imager that is able to skip over problematic areas during the imaging process.
In this case, on the first pass, I was able to get all the important data! The entire beeping Toshiba hard drive recovery was completed in 3 days from the time I received the drive until it was ready for pickup. This particular recovery fell under our Standard+ recovery rate, which is an extremely affordable data recovery rate.
Starting a recovery for a beeping Toshiba drive
If you need help with a beeping Toshiba drive recovery, please let me know! I am available to talk about your project over the phone if you would like at (620) 615-6836, or you can fill out my quote form with a description of what kind of issues you are having with your drive and I will get back to you with what I recommend.
Drive Info: Toshiba DT01ACA100 SEP-2014 1TB 3.5 inch
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