Recovery of a Clicking Western Digital Hard Drive

The Problem (Before)

A client contacted us regarding a 2TB Western Digital My Passport external hard drive. The drive contained a family photo archive spanning over 10 years, with no other backups available. The issue began after the drive accidentally fell from a desk. When attempting to reconnect it to the computer, the drive emitted a rhythmic clicking sound and was completely unrecognized by the system.

The client initially attempted to use free data recovery software found online. This only increased the stress on the drive without yielding results, as the underlying issue was a severe physical failure.

The Solution (After)

Upon receiving the drive at the Datacodex laboratory, it was immediately inspected inside our certified Cleanroom. The diagnosis revealed a failure in the Read/Write heads caused by the physical impact.

Our recovery engineers performed the following steps:

1. Replaced the damaged read/write heads with fully compatible parts from a donor drive.
2. Modified the drive’s firmware to safely accept the new mechanical components.
3. Connected the drive to specialized hardware tools to image the data sector-by-sector, minimizing physical strain.

Final Result: We successfully imaged the drive and reconstructed the file system. 100% of the lost data was recovered and securely transferred to a new external hard drive for the client. All precious family photos were fully restored.