Mechanical

Hard Disk drives are mechanical devices that can develop faults with their internal components.  Any moving part failure within a hard disk drive is classified as a mechanical fault. Mechanical parts that commonly fail include the read and write head assembly and the spindle motor bearing. At some point in a drive's life, if another fault type does not claim it first, every hard drive will develop a failure that is classified as being mechanical in nature.

When a mechanical hard disk failure strikes, professional data recovery services are often the only solution for retrieving your lost data.

Identifying a mechanical fault is normally a relatively simple task, a drive that has developed this kind of fault will start to display one of the following symptoms:

Head Failure

A drive with head failure will normally either:

• Click continuously
• Click and then spin down
• Or in some cases, refuse to spin at all

Motor Failure

A drive with a seized or partially seized motor bearing will:

• Not reach the correct coperating speed
• Make a constant buzzing noise
• or in certain cases make an almost musical tone

Motor failures often occur following an impact, either the drive being hit or dropped whilst in operation.  Leakage of the lubricant from a motor bearing assembly can also cause the assembly to fail in rare cases.

More information about head faults and motor bearing faults can be found using the links below:

Hard Disk Read / Write Head Faults.

Seized Motor bearing and other motor related faults