Featured Article

Customer Emails and Articles

Hitachi Deskstar 1TB SATA Drive
We have a computer that has been operating with a Hitachi Deskstar 1TB SATA drive (I don’t know the exact model) that has recently developed a fault. For reasons unknown to us when switched on (it runs on Windows Vista) the computer started to run chkdsk. We did this the first few times and then eventually the computer would do nothing other than power on and beep continuously. We’ve been told by a friend of the family that the beeps relate to faults in the machine and that they are signifying the hard drive is no longer operational. Now we have no way of recovering the data from the drive and need help in doing so as we have a lot of family memories stored on there that we’d like to get off.

Hitachi Deskstar 500GB External USB Drive
On a desktop PC running Windows XP (I know its old but it has never let me down) I have been using an external USB-ed 500GB Hitachi Deskstar drive. I use it a lot for the work that I do, principally as a backup device, and found to my horror that when I went to boot up the computer (which started normally) it failed to recognise the external Deskstar and indeed would not register it when I unplugged and plugged it back in. I’ve got all of my business contacts details on there as well as a lot of personal data and can’t get at any of it now regardless of what operating system or computer I use. It seems to be powering up okay but beyond that there is nothing happening and I’m totally baffled as well as concerned I will lose my data. Someone online recommended swapping platters but (a) I don’t know what it really means and (b) it sounds dangerous.

Hitachi Disk Repair

Hitachi have been producing hard disk drives now for some years and as with all manufacturers they are not without their own set of problems, especially when used as components in the computers of other manufacturers.

Again many of the common problems relating to Hitachi hard drives are caused by hardware failure and an inability for the computers they are installed in to cope with specific sizes.

One might think this is an odd problem to occur but over time it has become apparent that certain machines have difficulty recognizing Hitachi drives of certain sizes.

Computers containing Hitachi drives look for and register the hard drives at 2GB, 8.4GB and 32GB. It is in-between these volumes that problems can occur and can lead to problems with bad sectors or CRC errors.

CRC refers to Cyclic Redundancy Checks that are carried out as the disk spins around. If a sector is not recognized, perhaps because of a problem with cabling, then the computer will ignore them when it comes to physically writing information to the drive.

Bad sectors are most common though over time when a drive has had considerable use. If a user leaves a computer powered on for lengthy periods of time without shutting down and restarting this can lead to problems such as ‘Head Crash’ which is the sudden displacement of the drive’s spindle. The resultant damage caused to the platters because of a displaced spindle can leave the drive unable to spin or simply spinning but not recognized by the disk operating system.

A disk that is being recognized by the BIOS of the computer but not the operating system will generally display the message ‘Missing NTLDR’. If when booting your computer you see this message you should seek professional assistance immediately. Do not simply try to reinstall your last or most current version of your operating system over the top as this will do not to solve the problem of bad sectors and will erase the data already resident on the drive.

‘Missing NTLDR’ relates to the master boot sector on your hard drive, the partition upon which the start-up information for your operating system is held, and a failure in this sector can cause many problems of a hardware nature – most commonly the fact that drives and other attached hard drive will be recognized by nothing more than the BIOS.

If your computer contains a Hitachi Hard Disk Drive and has developed any of the problems listed above then you should consider contacting www.swanseadatarecovery.co.uk who will be happy to help you with the recovery of your valuable data.