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Quantum QM313000CX-A Data Recovery Details
Quantum drives fail and the QM313000CX-A is no exception to this.
   
My old harddrive recently started making strange noises, and won't boot up anymore. I'm positive this is a physical problem with the harddrive. When I power on my computer, it makes a continous "click click click" noise, similar to the single "click" it makes when it first powers on but the noise keeps going like it's trying to do something but failing. My bios does not detect the drive anymore ... and when I unplug everything but the power cable going into the drive I still hear the "click click click" sound, which doesn't stop. I'm afraid the harddrive is toast which is fine, but I'd like to access a few files on there that didn't make the last backup It's a Quantum(model QM313000CX-A).
...John May
Birmingham
Quantum hard disks are well-known for their factory firmware problems. Factory Firmware is stored on the disk platters in the so-called System (Service) Area of the hard disk. If one of the disk modules becomes corrupted the whole hard disk micro-operating system can't boot up, the drive cannot initialise correctly and thus stops working. If you attempt to boot up from such a Quantum hard drive or read any data from it you would get "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter" or "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail" or "No operating system found" or "USB Device malfunctioned" error or "S.M.A.R.T. Capable But Command Failed" or some other BIOS error.
Currently there is no way to fix this type of firmware corruption at home. It is quite a complicated procedure and requires use of specialised expensive equipment and deep knowledge of hard drive design and data recovery technology.
My Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 40Gb has died. It is seen in the BIOS, but as time passes it goes away. Maxtor Diagnostic Software detects an error immediately after test starts, offers to recover it, but to no avail. I have managed once to prolong its life by freezing it, long enough to start copying some pictures, but it stoped after a few seconds. Before and after the freezing, it only managess to show folder list, and after that keeps showing message Delay Write Failed.
..G Duffy, Co Cork, Rep of Ireland
The No1 issue for Quantum hard drives (especially Quantum CX and Quantum LCT series) is damage to components on the PCB board. Quantum Hard Drives are vunerable to overheating and power surges which can lead to a burned out motor or blowing a controller chip on the logic board. If the chips on the PCB burn out you would smell smoke in the air. On next boot your Quantum hard disk will probably not even spin up.
The Quantum drive can spin up and the head starts clicking right from the beginning with a regular clicking sound
. More times than not this a sign of bad heads, if this is the case it is very important to perform accurate diagnostics and eliminate a chance of possible firmware corruption or PCB failure that sometimes could also cause clicking.
The last typical Quantum hard drive issue applies also to all other hard drive makes and models, the problem is called bad sectors. After some period of time the platters were the data is located starts to degrade and bad sectors appear.
Whenever the hard drive attempts to read bad sectors it could start freezing, scratching, ticking and sometimes loud clicking. This leads to further damage to the surface and causes more data loss. As soon as you start experiencing such symptoms while reading important files, stop the drive immediately and consider sending it to a data recovery company like ourselves for a free diagnostic. Any further attempts to read the Quantum drive would just add up to the problems and make more data unrecoverable. In our Data Recovery Lab we use expensive imaging tools that are capable of force reading bad sectors from Quantum Hard Disks. This is usually the only way to effectively retrieve data from these Drives. If you experience any of the symptoms described above with your Quantum QM313000CX-A please call us on 0207 112 1770. If you hear your Quantum QM313000CX-A hard drive making some other unusual noises please call us on 0207 112 1770.
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