In May 2011, a request was sent to the lab for an expert data retrieval service on a Western Digital 500GB hard drive. This unit was shipped to us via courier from Europe and received the next day at the main lab.
Here is the case study:
Client advises the computer worked perfectly well, then one weekend the machine was switched on and the user heard a clicking sound from the desktop.
Diagnosis:
The hard disk was submitted to us along with a shipping form which stated the device was making a audible clicking sound. The engineers carried out the analysis of the drive and found several parts of the head stack assembly had become damaged and thus resulted in the drive not operating correctly and no user data accessible.
Spec of this Western Digital WD5000AACS-00G8B1 hard disk drive:
500GB SATA Desktop 3.5" hard disk drive
Manufactured February 2009
7200RPM
Transfer rate: 3GB/s
16MB cache
What was the outcome?
After a head stack assembly replacement, the team were then able to image the drive and successfully recover the data from this drive, in total 81GB of music and documents were recovered; this was shipped back and all completed in 4 days.