Data Recovery Blog

Most laptop computers are designed to give the owner the ability to replace the internal hard disc drive. The computer usually has an access cover or door on the bottom side of the system. There are systems that are not designed for user access. Sometimes these systems have warnings about voiding the system warranty. Be sure to study your system’s documentation to learn about upgrade policies and methods.

Like desktop computers, laptop computers have one of two possible hard disc drive interface: SATA and ATA (also called IDE or PATA). The type of hard drive you select must match the system because they are not interchangeable.

Electrostatic discharge is a risk to electronic components. To help prevent static discharge, observe the following precautions:

Before handling any components, put on a grounded wrist strap.
Use antistatic padding on all work surfaces.
Avoid static-inducing carpeted areas.
Keep the drive in its static-shielded bag until you are ready to complete the installation. Do not attach any cables to the drive while it is in its static-shielded bag.
Handle the drive by its edges or frame.
Do not touch the I/O connector pins or the circuit board.

Laptop hard disc drives are thin and delicate. For this reason, always hold the drive on the sides. Do not apply pressure to the top or squeeze the drive.

Some laptop motherboards use a small adapter part to connect the disc drive to the system. If an old drive was removed, be sure to check if an adapter is still attached to the drive. If so, carefully remove and transfer the adapter to the new drive. Make sure that the pins and connectors are properly aligned when mounting the drive to the motherboard.

If your system design uses screws to mount the hard drive, be sure not to over tighten the screws. Fingertip tight on the screwdriver is all that is necessary to secure the drive. Too much screw pressure can cause the disc drive to go out of alignment and possibly ruin the drive.

You will need to boot from the Operating System Setup CD when preparing a new installation of the OS. Many laptop computers are brand name systems with recommended OS recovery procedures. Again, consult your system documentation for more information. Otherwise, the OS installation procedure is the same as for any other computer.

Note: It is important to install the OS while connected to AC power. Battery depletion during the OS setup is known to corrupt the installation.

After the installation is complete, please practice safe handling of your system and hard disc drive. First, always provide clear and open access to the air-cooling vents and fan. Laptop computers depend on the cooling vents for the overall health of the system and disc drive. Second, using the disc activity LED as a guide, try not moving the computer when the hard disc is highly active. If you must move the computer during this time, go easy and set the system down softly. While mobile hard drive are designed with much higher G-Force ratings while operating, protective habits are a good idea.

Hard Disk Repair

Electronic noise and how it can affect your system

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago7 years ago04 mins

Due to the increased speed, size and quantity of devices in many PCs the system can be very vulnerable to electronic noise on the data lines. This may in fact be the cause of your particular problem. Symptoms of electronic noise can include the following:

Slow performance.
Drive not detected in BIOS.
Drive detected incorrectly in BIOS, with nonsense (garbage) figures (e.g. $0&*?%2).
Drive shown on boot up with an engineering name instead of model number (e.g. Millennium).
You may receive invalid error codes with the SeaTools diagnostics utility.

In order to overcome problems with electronic noise please try the following:

Make sure the PCI clock speed is not above 33Mhz (this would usually correspond to a 66Mhz Bus speed, or 100Mhz on newer BX chipsets). This is achieved by checking the jumpers on the motherboard. The information on the jumper settings should be explained in the motherboard documentation.
Using a shielded IDE / ATA (40-pin, 80-conductor) cable will most certainly help improve your system’s performance. The secure cable has grounding lines running between the signal lines, which ensure a clearer signal to all devices. You should also attach the master drive to the middle connector on the cable and not the end, so that there is as short a distance as possible between the drive and the motherboard.
One simple way of checking if there are noise issues in your system is to reduce the mode to PIO mode 2 in your BIOS as a test. You should also try disabling the UDMA mode of your BIOS.
In some IBM PCs the hard drive is fixed in the bracket by means of 4 rubber grommets with screws through them so the drive has no hard grounding. This can cause problems with electronic noise but they can be resolved by putting a hard ground fixing into the drive through one of the available top holes. Another possible cause of electronic noise/interference is that on some systems the IDE cable is tucked slightly under the drive (presumably as a cable neatness measure). If the cable is re-routed slightly (no particular direction) from this position it should help but it is important to make sure that the cable does not come loose from the drives or motherboard when you move it.
A power supply fluctuation within the system can also create the same type of symptoms. To try and identify a malfunctioning power connector, make sure the drive is installed alone on a power cable. You should also try connecting the drive to a different power connector.

Hard Disk Repair

How to upgrade my computer to a larger capacity drive?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago1 year ago04 mins

When upgrading to a larger capacity drive, the main thing to consider is whether or not your computer is capable of addressing the extra capacity provided by the larger drive. If the system is several years old this is especially true.

Here are some common thresholds for capacity limitations:

2.1 GigaBytes
8.4 GigaBytes
32 GigaBytes
137 GigaBytes
2 Terabytes

As an example, if you have an 80 GigaByte (GB) drive, and are considering upgrading to a 160 GB drive, it would be wise to verify that your system BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is capable of addressing capacities above 137GB before purchasing one. If it is, you can safely use drives up to 2 Terabytes in capacity.

To check system BIOS compatibility, contact either the system vendor (HP, Gateway, Dell etc.) or the system mainboard manufacturer. Mainboard manufacturers usually have capacity limitations listed in the specifications on their website.

ATA Controller Cards

A workaround for a capacity issue with a Parallel ATA drive is to install an ATA controller card into a PCI slot in your system. Drivers will be provided by the card manufacturer to be loaded into Windows or MacOS. The larger capacity drive would be connected to the card instead of the mainboard so that the card can provide the addressing to the drive and enable larger capacities. A modern ATA-133 controller card would support up to 2TB in capacity per drive (usually up to 4 drives per controller card).

Serial ATA

For Serial ATA (SATA) drives, all Serial ATA controllers are capable of up to 2TB in capacity so it is safe to assume that when you are upgrading a Serial ATA drive to a large capacity one, it will be compatible with your system.

You can also purchase a SATA-150 or SATA-300 controller to install into a free PCI slot that will enable compatibility with a Serial ATA drive for up to 2TB in capacity (usually up to 2 drives per controller card, commonly up to 4).

External and Networking Products

When upgrading to larger External and Network drive products, the extra capacity is handled by the operating system, so doesn’t rely on BIOS addressing. It is safe to assume that if you are upgrading to a larger capacity External drive product, the same system would be able to handle the extra capacity if your older drive is already supported by the Operating System.

Controller Vendors

Here is a list of ATA and SATA controller vendors.

Hard Disk Repair

Unable to delete a partition or logical DOS drive using FDISK

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago01 mins

When you attempt to remove a partition using the FDISK utility that is included with Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows Me, you may receive the error message “Cannot delete Extended DOS Partition while logical drives exist“.

However, when you attempt to remove a logical drive in the extended DOS partition from within the FDISK utility, you may receive the error message “No Logical Drives defined“.
This behavior occurs if the extended DOS partition is an NTFS partition. This behavior can also occur if the partition has been created with a third-party operating system such as BeOS, Linux, or versions of UNIX.

To remove this partition, use SeaTools for DOS’ 0-fill option.

Note: 0-filling a drive is data destructive. All data will be lost.

Hard Disk Repair

How do I determine what type of hard drive you have?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago7 years ago04 mins

The following methods can help determine what kind of hard disk you have inside your computer.

1. Seatools For Windows

Seatools for Windows can detect all hard drives connected to your computer.

2. Device Manager

a) Users running Microsoft 2000, XP, or Vista

Microsoft Windows users can easily determine the type of hard drive that is currently installed in their computer by following the below steps.

Right click on “My Computer”.
Select “Manage”.
Click on “Device Manager” in the list on the left.
Select the “Disk Drives” entry.

Note: This will not show the serial number of the drive, just the model number.

b) Users running Apple’s Mac OS X

Follow these steps to open Disk Utility.

Open a Finder window
Open “Applications” (if necessary).
Open “Utilities”.
Once Disk Utility is open, it will show all of the connected hard drives on the left. It will show capacity and model number.

c) IBM-compatible users

Users of IBM-compatible machines can usually enter the computer’s CMOS to view additional information about their hard disk drive. Commonly, the CMOS will list the drive’s serial number and/or model number, cylinders, heads, sectors, and/or the size of the drive.

If the CMOS is not configured to auto-detect the drive, it is important to note that the drive values may not be correct. All modern drives should be set for automatic detection.

3. Disk utilities

Many disk utilities designed to setup the hard disk drive will properly detect and setup a drive; in addition, they may also provide the user with some basic additional information about the drive.

For example, using the FDISK utility, you can display additional information about the size of the hard drive and partition information.

4. Other methods of determining the type of hard disk drive

One of the best methods for determining additional information about a hard drive is to check the sticker or label on the drive’s top. The majority of hard drive labels will list not only the RPM of the hard drive but other useful information, usually including the model, kit, serial, and/or part number(s). Turn off the computer and physically open it to see if this information is visible on the drive label. If you are unable to locate the information you need through software, it is recommended you open the case and remove the drive to get the information you need.

Determining the speed or RPM of a hard disk drive

To determine the speed or RPM of a hard drive, you must first determine the manufacturer and model of the drive. Once you’ve determined this information, you can lookup the drive on the manufacturer’s website to determine its RPM.

Hard Disk Repair

Ultra ATA/100 FAQs

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago03 mins

ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) refers to a common standard used to connect hard drives and other storage devices to a motherboard. It is also referred to as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), though the terms are not technically interchangeable. Ultra ATA is simply next generation ATA with improved transfer speed and architecture. There are several buzzwords surrounding Ultra ATA that can make it a little confusing for consumers, but each buzzword refers to an aspect of the standard that forms the overall architecture of Ultra ATA.

Ultra ATA/100 use the new Ultra DMA mode 5, supporting interface transfers at 100 MB/s.

1. What is required to run in Ultra ATA/100 Mode?
Similar to Ultra ATA/66, there are basically four requirements:

An Ultra ATA/100-capable system board and BIOS. (Ultra ATA/100 expansion cards are also available.).
An Ultra ATA-capable 40 pin, 80 conductor cable with the blue (system board), black (master) and gray (slave) connectors.
An operating system capable of DMA transfers, such as a Windows OS.
An Ultra ATA/100-capable device.

2. Are the Ultra ATA/33, Ultra ATA/66 and Ultra ATA/100 interfaces backward compatible?
All Seagate Ultra ATA/100 drives are backward compatible with Ultra ATA/33, Ultra ATA/66, and legacy ATA interfaces.

3. How do I know if my system can support the new Ultra ATA/100 products?
Please check with your preferred motherboard manufacturer or system manufacturer for Ultra ATA/100 support information.

4. Will performance be affected if I have an Ultra ATA/100 disc drive on a slower ATA controller?
Using a slower transfer mode affects only the external transfer rate of the device. If an Ultra ATA/100 device is configured for a slower transfer mode, its maximum speed will of course be limited to the maximum burst transfer rate of that mode. However, the internal performance is not affected by the external transfer mode, therefore the sustained transfer rate will not be as drastically affected as the maximum (burst) transfer rate.

Hard Disk Repair

How to Overcome GPT Protective Partition Issues

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago05 mins

What is a GPT disk?
The GUID Partition Table (GPT) was introduced as part of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) initiative. GPT provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that has been common to PCs.

A partition is a contiguous space of storage on a physical or logical disk that functions as though it were a physically separate disk. Partitions are visible to the system firmware and the installed operating systems. Access to a partition is controlled by the system firmware before the system boots the operating system, and then by the operating system after it starts.

Problem: When connecting an internal and/or and external hard drive to a Windows XP (or newer), 32-bit Operating System, the drive is inaccessible and Disk Management reports that the drive has a GPT Protective Partition on it. The drive cannot be repartitioned and formatted in this state.

Cause:The internal or external hard disk was previously prepared on either a Windows or Macintosh computer with a GPT partition.

Solution: Normal Disk Management facilities will not overcome this issue. To prepare this drive, you will need to use the Windows diskpart command-line utility. The following procedure provides the steps for cleaning a GPT Protective Partition from a hard disk drive connected to an existing Windows XP (or newer), 32-bit Operating System.

Note: This is a data destructive process. This procedure not only removes the drive’s partition, but also removes the Drive Signature. It is highly recommended that you backup any/all critical data on the drive before proceding. Secondly, you may wish to open Disk Management and document the Disk Number of the drive containing the GPT Protective partition…you will need this information later in the procedure.

1. Open a Command Window. From the command prompt, type diskpart and press enter. The diskpart prompt will open.

2. From the diskpart prompt, type list disk and press enter. A list of disks will appear in a text format. You will return to the diskpart prompt.

3. From the diskpart prompt, type select disk disknumber (for instance, if the disk containing the GPT Protective partion is Disk 4, you would type select disk 4)and press enter. A message appears saying that the disk is selected. You will return to the diskpart prompt.

4. From the diskpart prompt, type clean and press enter. At this point the drive’s partition and signature a removed. You will return to the diskpart prompt.

5. From the diskpart prompt, type exit and press enter. Type exit once more to close the Command Window.

At this point, the internal and/or external drive can be re-initialized, partitioned and formatted. Launch Disk Management…to initialize the disk:

Use the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard…-OR-
Close the Wizard, right-click on the disk in question and select Initialize Disk from the drop-down menu.

Once the drive is initialized, continue using Disk Management to partition and format the drive.

Hard Disk Repair

Hard Drive Capacity Measurement Standards

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Discrepancy Between Reported Capacity and Actual Capacity
Many users are confused when their operating system reports, for example, that their new ST31000340AS 1 Terabyte (1000 GB) hard drive is reporting only about 909 Gbytes in “usable capacity“. Several factors may come into play when you see the reported capacity of a disc drive. Unfortunately there are two different number systems which are used to express units of storage capacity;

Binary – which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes
Decimal – which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes.

The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. Even though in binary you have more bytes, the decimal representation of a Gbyte shows greater capacity. In order to accurately understand the true capacity of your disc drive, you need to know which base unit of measure (binary or decimal) is being used to represent capacity. Another factor that can cause misrepresentation of the size of a disc drive is BIOS limitations. Many older BIOS are limited in the number of cylinders they can support.

Motivation for Proposed Prefixes for Binary Multiples
Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 1024 or 2 10 (binary) was very nearly equal to 1000 or 10 3 (decimal) and started using the prefix “kilo” to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But almost overnight a much more numerous “everybody” bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams.

Two Different Measurements Systems

Abbreviation	Binary Power	Binary Value (in Decimal)	Decimal Power	Decimal (Equivalent)
Kbyte	2 10	1,024	10 3	1,000
Mbyte	2 20	1,048,576	10 6	1,000,000
Gbyte	2 30	1,073,741,824	10 9	1,000,000,000
Tbyte	2 40	1,099,511,627,776	10 12	1,000,000,000,000

Often when two or more people begin discussing storage capacity, some will refer to binary values and others will refer to decimal values without making distinction between the two. This has caused much confusion in the past. In an effort to dispatch this confusion, all major disc drive manufactures use decimal values when discussing storage capacity.

How Operating Systems Report Drive Capacity?

Windows XP/2000/NT
From Windows Explorer, right click on a drive letter, then click on Properties. This shows capacities in bytes, Mbytes, and Gbytes.

Windows 98/Me
From Windows Explorer, right click on a drive letter, then click on Properties. This shows bytes, Mbytes, and Gbytes.
DOS Prompt ? CHKDSK shows bytes
DOS Prompt ? FDISK shows Mbytes

DOS/Windows 3.x
CHKDSK shows bytes
FDISK shows Mbytes

Hard Disk Repair

How to Low-Level Format a Hard Drive?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago7 years ago06 mins

What does “Low Level Formatting” mean?

Actually the term “low level” is a bit of a misnomer. The low-level process first used years ago in MFM hard drives bears little resemblance to what we now call a “low-level format” for today’s SATA and ATA (IDE) drives. The only safe method of initializing all the data on a Seagate device is the Zero Fill erase option in SeaTools for DOS. This is a simple process of writing all zeros (0’s) to the entire hard disk drive.

Why would I want to Zero Fill my drive?

The most common reasons to Zero Fill a SATA or ATA (IDE) hard drive are:

to remove a virus that cannot be removed without destroying the boot sector.
to change from one operating system to another and wish to remove everything from the drive.
to erase confidential information for privacy reasons.
to scan for bad sectors that can be detected and replaced with good spare sectors when writing to the sectors.

By design, modern disc drives maintain spare sectors for reallocation purposes. Usually, sectors become difficult to read long before they become impossible to read. In this situation the actual data bytes in the sector are preserved and transferred to the new spare during a sector reallocation. Similarly, when a disc drive writes data (like a zero fill erase procedure) and encounters a problem, the drive firmware retires the problem sector and activates a replacement before giving successful write status.

How to Zero Fill my hard drive?

Zero Filling a SATA or ATA (IDE) drive destroys 100% of the data on the drive. Make sure the drive is completely backed up before proceeding.
The Zero Fill erase option in SeaTools for DOS is the best method for use with Seagate hard drives. Some system BIOS may include a Low-Level Format option; these should be avoided, as they may produce undesirable results.

SeaTools for DOS can be downloaded from Here. It includes three Erase (Zero Fill) options. Zero Fill writes zeros in each data sector for the complete capacity of the drive and cleans up most defects.

The download routine for SeaTools for DOS creates a bootable CD or floppy diskette. Boot from the CD media or diskette to start SeaTools for DOS. After startup, it is a good idea to test your drive. The Basic Short Test takes less than a minute to complete. The Basic Long Test can take several hours to complete, depending on the capacity of the drive. When you are ready to erase the drive.

Select the drive you want to erase. Then select one of the three zero fill Erase functions.

Erase Track ZERO: Erases just the first 63 sectors on the drive which takes less than a second to complete. This procedure removes the Master Boot Record (MBR) and Partition Table. This will cause the drive to look “empty” to a new installation of the operating system.

Timed Erase: Erases sectors for various time limits up to 5 minutes. These options will overwrite the sectors at the beginning of the drive where the majority of the static operating system files reside.

Full Erase: Erases every data sector on the drive and takes a long time to complete. This procedure can easily take several hours to complete. The advantage of this option is to discover and reallocate any defective (hard to read) sectors to good spares. This option comes closest in concept to the original idea of a low level format.

When the process completes, reboot the system from the operating system install CD and follow the instructions to prepare (partition and format) the drive and install the operating system.

Hard Disk Repair

6 Reasons BIOS will not detect or recognize your drive

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago7 years ago02 mins

There are 6 main reasons why a system BIOS will not detect the presence of an internal hard drive. Here is a list of them. They are not in any particular order, but you can follow these steps one by one to troubleshoot this problem:

After verifying that your ATA or SATA port is set to Auto-Detect or is enabled, if you find that your disk drive is not being detected (auto-detected) by the system BIOS, try the above steps to try and isolate/troubleshoot the problem.

If you have completed the above checks and procedures and the drive is still not properly detected, please attempt to use Seatools for DOS (see the tutorial here) to test the drive. If SeaTools does not detect the drive after the steps followed above, or an error code that signifies drive failure displays, you can begin a warranty replacement order.