I have several old laptops came with broken 2.5" IDE hard drive (< 4GB). Just wondering if it's possible to fix them without sending to professional service?
The data in the drive is not important, I only interested in files like OEM drivers, OEM wallpapers, etc
OEM driver disks (operating system install disks) for various laptop manufacturers can be found on ebay or archive.org. Eg. Hp, Compaq, Dell. They most likely install the OEM wallpapers.
If the hard disk won't physically spin, you can take a chance dissasembling it and spinning the disk by hand to see if that brings it back to life.
If there's too many bad sectors, or a bad MBR, you could try connecting it to another PC as an extra drive and get the files you need. Then format it with "format <drive letter>: /q /s". It creates an MBR and copies command.com to boot to DOS.
In 40+ years, I've had remarkably good luck with hard drives. Prob had over 1000 go thorugh my hands, and only had a couple real failures.
Are you sure they've actually failed (make unusual noises etc.) or could it just be that the boot sectors/OSs have been damaged and
the drives need to reformatted/restores.
I've only "fixed" one of the actual defective drives... This was a case of "stiction" where one of the drive heads stuck to the platter
and it wouldn't spin up. I disassembled it, freed the head, polished the spot on the platter ... didn't expect much, but the drive
did come back, formatted without errors and I used it for several more years (never really trusted it so I didn't put valuable stuff
on it).
Not sure I'd try this on a laptop drive ... very small room to work!
Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal
One of the broken hard drive is from a Panasonic ToughBook CF-M33, manufacturer never create recovery cd for it.
When the hard drive is powered on, it makes clicking sound, so I am sure the drive is defective.
sangokushi wrote on 2025-08-06, 15:54:One of the broken hard drive is from a Panasonic ToughBook CF-M33, manufacturer never create recovery cd for it.
Ouch... so your only real option is to figure out what "hardware" it has (You can prob. install a newer OS enough to run, then look at the devices it found),
then hunt down device specific drivers. (With luck is has - or can recognize an extenral CD drive you can boot from - without the original hard
drive)
When the hard drive is powered on, it makes clicking sound, so I am sure the drive is defective.
Is this powered on by itself (not in a system) - I've seen drives where the boot was so corrupted that it would routinely
seek "off the ends" - but this shouldn't happen if you're not trying to boot from it.
Have you tried these drives on USB "drive cables" - if you're not trying to boot you might be able to read "some stuff" under newer OSs
(trying stull like this shouldn't hurt - if it is detective enough that it already can't be read at all, you're not going to "make it worse")
Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal
Sometimes it’s not the motors or heads or platters with the problem, but the electronics.
I’ve had some success by swapping the boards between identical models of drive.
It can also be worth trying the freezer as a last ditch effort, this has saved some irreplaceable files from some disks for me in the past, but you have to work VERY quickly.
