Laptop Hard Drive Data Recovery

Laptop hard drives, in comparison to desktop 3.5″ hard drives, are 2.5″ in size and pack all of the internal components into a much smaller space, in terms of width and length and, especially, height. Laptop hard drives are a mere 9.5mm in height squeezing up to 2 disk platters and 4 read/right heads into this tiny space. Along with the size difference laptop hard drives also make use of other certain features required to protect the data and hard drive considering the portable nature of laptop computers.

Some high-end laptop hard drives make use of features such free-fall sensors. These will sense a laptop in free-fall and park the heads safely so as to prevent contact and damage to the platters. Laptop hard drives also make use of ‘parking ramps’ on which to park the heads when not in use. These provide a safer storage area for the heads when the laptop is being moved about in its day-to-day use. As you can see in the image below, the heads are held safely on the ramp and only deployed towards the platters when the drive is powered on.

Laptop hard drives do not suffer from PCB issues to the extent that desktop 3.5″ hard drives do seeing that they are powered by a power supply unique to the laptop, which is then fed to the hard drive via the laptop itself. Desktop 3.5″ hard drives often suffer from PCB issues due to cheap, bad quality power supplies or users accidentally plugging the wrong power source into the drive. Considering the mobility of laptop computers they are often at the mercy of physical damage. A large portion of laptop hard drives requiring data recovery have been subjected to physical damage such as a fall or impact whilst being used in the laptop itself.

Laptop hard drives do possess certain traits which make them more robust than desktop hard drives. Due to their smaller platters and head assembly construction, there is less mass to move around whilst in use, adding to the longevity of the hard drive. This coupled with the ramp parking and other features means that laptop hard drives are, for the most part, reliable and hardy if looked after correctly.

SouthBit Data Recovery provides hard drive recovery services for all brands of laptop hard drives.