The symptom · a disk nothing will show
If you have a hard drive which your PC does not recognise and so cannot access, this does not mean that it has been erased. It has simply lost the way to introduce itself to your system. This introduction mechanism is contained within the hardware (electronics) and the firmware (the software in the hardware), but these do not contain files. To find out which of them failed, use the following three-step process, in order: has the BIOS recognised it? Is it listed in Disk Management? Can it be accessed by Explorer? The point where the failure occurs will tell you what went wrong: was it something electrical (hardware), was it the program that controls the disk (firmware), or is it the volume? Hard drives come into our workshop from all parts of London, and all of them say they have a problem because their PC can't see them, but what they are really telling us is that there is a problem with a circuit. One drive costs £300 + VAT. We don't charge to assess it. If we have to do some chargeable work on the job, then the price of that work will be shown to you in writing prior to doing it, and on most jobs you only pay if we recover your data.
Put it to an engineer — the first look costs nothing
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| How it shows itself | The usual reason for it | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Windows reports Unknown, Not Initialized | The drive answers but has no valid signature and can’t use its partition table | Turn that prompt down |
| A prompt reading “…before Logical Disk Manager can access it” | Say yes, and a blank partition map goes over the top of the lot | Shut it down first, then pull the cable |
| Disk Management shows No Media | This fault means only the controller is talking to you and nothing else behind it can be reached, which makes it a hardware fault rather than a logical one. | Unplug it now and don’t turn it back on |
| The drive isn’t showing up at all in the BIOS | Either the electronics or the firmware have gone bad: a finished board, a shorted protection diode, or service-area code that won’t load | A repair at component level |
| A 1TB drive listed as an 8MB disk by the BIOS | Bad firmware or a damaged translator, so the capacity reported is completely meaningless | Firmware tools rather than software |
| It draws power. That’s all it does. | Its power circuitry failed, and the TVS diode shorted while doing so. | Usually still recoverable |
As soon as your parcel arrives here, an engineer assigns a case number that same day, prior to determining what has really failed, which is the first thing done and costs you nothing. In addition to a note of what can and cannot be recovered from your drive, you will receive at the same time the fixed, written price for restoring what can be recovered. You can accept this quote, or decline it, which will result in no further obligation on your part and nothing owed to us.
We don’t open any part of your drive at this stage, and we never run any programs against your data while nobody watches. The first step always begins in the BIOS, the second step is Disk Management, and the third step is Explorer. After those three steps the job has narrowed down to fixing the electronics, rebuilding the service area, or putting the file system right on the copy.
The shorted TVS diode is removed and a fresh one installed. When a board cannot be saved, a donor deputises for it and takes your own ROM chip along, since the adaptive values written on that chip were from your platters and fit no other disk.
A sector-by-sector image of your drive is created the moment the drive answers. Everything subsequent runs off the copy, and your drive is shelved away and untouched throughout the entire recovery process.
You will see what has been recovered as a list first, after which a bill exists. Accepting the list means that a bill will be issued. Rejecting the list means that a bill will not be issued, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. The recovered data travels from here back to you via new media purchased specifically for your project, with the cost of postage paid by us. Your case is not resolved (i.e., "closed") until you personally view the files on a computer of your own.
Worth keeping hold of: when a disk shows up unseen by the computer running it, the explanation is almost always an electronic failure or a firmware failure. The electronics and the firmware both exist to manage the introduction between a disk and a machine; neither ever comes close to where documents live. An invisible drive is reporting a problem with its own hardware and nothing else, which explains why recovery jobs of this type generally end better than most. Identifying which of the two you hold costs nothing.
The mains power went out overnight at an office, and by morning the desktop was listing only one disk instead of two. The WD was silent, with no entry from the BIOS, and a shorted TVS diode was the entire cause of the failure on the board of the WD. Its own ROM went across onto a PCB from a donor unit, and a complete image was made of the drive two days after the parcel arrived.
Generally, yes. Once a board has died out, it needs mending or swapping for another one, and whatever killed the board seldom makes it past the electronics to reach the platters (or, on a flash unit, the NAND chips sitting behind them). A hard disk can fail in many different ways; complete silence like this is one of the more predictable forms of failure.
Never. What this dialog box writes is an empty partition map directly over the top of the one that contains the information on where all your stuff exists. Do not accept this option. Take the drive out of your computer and let a professional look at it before you allow anything else to touch it.
No. A drive in this condition has lost its ability to identify itself (not any files that you may have put on it). The problem exists in the electronic circuitry, or in firmware located in the service area, and none of your files are stored in either.
Likely. Very likely. The protection diode shorted itself during the spike. This is why the diode is put there in front of the rest of the electronics. It's a sacrificial component, designed to fail before anything else in order to save the dearer components. As far as the electronics go, they are finished. Your data remains in exactly the same state as when you saved it.
It doesn't cost you anything for us to look at it. All we do is give you a breakdown of what opened and what did not, plus a single fixed price to complete, written down before you agree to let us continue. On most jobs, you only pay if we recover your data. Please don't turn on the drive until you get that breakdown.