Quick Way | How to Fix & Recover Laptop Hard Disk Crash?

How to fix a laptop hard disk crash? On this page, you will learn the quick way to fix it and recover data from crashed logical/physical hard disk of laptop. Causes and other information are included.

Lori

By Lori / Updated on April 2, 2024

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A laptop hard disk crash happens when your computer's hard drive malfunctions, making it impossible to access stored information. This situation is not uncommon in laptops such as Toshiba, HP or Dell.

toshiba hdd

If you've ever encountered a spinning or knocking sound when trying to turn on your computer, it might signal a hard drive crash. You might wonder what to do when a laptop hard drive crashes.

Don’t worry, there are still ways to fix the logical/physical laptop hard disk crash and perform laptop hard disk crash recovery. Also, learning the causes and taking preventive measures for hard disks is important.

What Causes a Laptop Hard Disk to Crash?

What kills a laptop hard drive? Let's know 6 common reasons for the hard drive crash to help us fix hard drive errors and recover data from the crashed hard drive.

1️⃣ Mechanical wear: Over time, a hard drive's mechanical components, such as the read/write heads and spinning platters, can wear out, causing failure.

2️⃣ Overheating: Overheating can damage the sensitive components of your hard drive. Poor ventilation or cooling issues within your computer can cause overheating.

3️⃣ File corruption: Improper shutdown, sudden power outage, or system crash can lead to file corruption. If critical system files become corrupted, it may affect the overall functionality of the hard drive.

4️⃣ Power surges: Power surges caused by power fluctuations or lightning strikes can damage your hard drive's electronic components. Using a surge protector can help mitigate this risk.

5️⃣ Physical damage: Exposure to water, light, and strong magnetic fields can cause damage or even complete failure of the hard drive.

6️⃣ Human error: Accidental deletion of critical system files, improper installation of software or operating system updates, and other human errors can cause a hard drive to crash.

Physical Hard Drive Crash Vs Logical Hard Drive Crash

Before we fix the laptop hard drive crash, you need to confirm that your hard drive has actually crashed. Therefore, it is important to understand the two classifications of bad hard drives and What are the symptoms of hard disk failure in laptop.

Generally speaking, there are two main types of hard drive crashes: physical hard drive crash and logical hard drive crash. Both types of crashes can lead to data loss in the hard drive.

🎇 Physical hard drive crash involves actual damage to the physical components of the hard drive, such as the mechanical parts or the disk platters.

🎆 Logical hard drive crash is related to software issues or logical errors that affect the file system or data structure of the hard drive.

Symptoms of Physical & Logical Hard Drive Crash

Physical hard drive crashes and logical hard drive crashes have their own signs. By identifying these symptoms, you can better determine whether your hard drive has crashed physically or logically. Therefore further determine the appropriate fix or recovery steps.

Physical Hard Drive Crash:

The computer's operating system does not recognize the hard drive.

Boot or installation error.

The computer makes unusual noises (clicking, clunking, grinding, or whirring).

The hard drive has physically visible damage (damaged circuit board or other visible component).

Logical Hard Drive Crash:

Computer blue screen appears.

Cannot reboot your computer.

Error messages appear indicating problems with reading or writing data, corrupted files, or hard drive spinning but not detected.

Sudden performance degradation, including slower processing, delays in accessing files, or freezing.

Intermittent or persistent difficulty identifying the presence of the hard drive.

Part 1. How Do I Fix Logical Crashed Laptop Hard Drives?

How to fix a logical crashed laptop hard drive and recover data from a crashed computer? You can use MyRecover, which not only helps you reboot the crashed laptop by creating a bootable disk, but also recover data from crashed laptop.

⚠️Notes:
  • Prepare another working Windows PC to download and install MyRecover.
  • The USB flash drive will be formatted in the process and all data on it will be lost. If there is important data in it, please make a file backup via free Windows backup software AOMEI Backupper Standard.
Download Software Windows 11/10/8/7/Server
Secure Download

Here are the steps to create a bootable disk in MyRecover.

Step 1. Download and install MyRecover

Run MyRecover and click "Crashed PC Recovery".

crashed pc recovery

Step 2. Select a path to execute

Select a way to create the WinPE bootable disk based on your needs and click "Execute".

execute

🌟Tips:

You can create a Windows PE-based boot disk in three ways.

  • USB boot device: Create a bootable USB device.
  • Export ISO file: Use this method to make a bootable ISO file. After exporting the ISO, you need to use a third-party burning program to burn it. Alternatively, you can use the ISO to boot some virtual machines or burn them to other devices.
  • Burn to CD/DVD: Create a bootable CD/DVD.

"Add Drivers" allows you to manually add other necessary drivers to the bootable disk so that more devices are available after starting WinPE.

Step 3. Format the USB flash drive

After choosing the way and continuing, an information window will pop up. The USB flash drive needs to be formatted and all data on it will be lost. If there is important data in it, please make a file backup first. If you confirm, click Yes to continue.

confirmation window

Step 4. Create a bootable USB disk

The creation operation will begin and you can check the creation process. The progress of creating a WinPE bootable USB drive will take a few minutes.

creation process

Step 5. Compete the process

Once completed, you will receive a success message. Also, you will be notified of the steps to boot from a bootable disk and then recover from crashed PC.

successful

How to Recover Data from Crashed Hard Disk of Laptop?

At the same time, MyRecover is a powerful hard disk data recovery tool. Especially for users who have lost data due to laptop hard drive crash and have no disk file backup. MyRecover helps you recover data from crashed hard disk of laptop easily with a high recovery rate and fast recovery speed.

MyRecover
Laptop Hard Disk Recovery Software
  • Supports various data loss situations like system crashes, accidental deletion, disk formatting, virus attacks, etc.
  • It can recover data from HP laptop hard drive, and other brands of laptops, such as Dell, Toshiba, Asus, Lenovo, Razer, Acer, Samsung, ect.
  • Recover 200+ file formats: Recover deleted Microsoft Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, PPTX, ODP, CSV, WPS files, and so on.
  • Quick Scan and Deep Scan can find all your deleted or lost data without omission.

Here are the steps to recover data from laptop hard drives.

Step 1. Download and Install MyRecover

Run MyRecover on your Windows. Hover the mouse over the drive saved deleted files before, and click Scan.

select-the-formatted-partition-to-scan

Step 2. Scan for deleted or lost files

MyRecover will scan your hard drive automatically and thoroughly to locate all the found data. Try to use the Search Box or the Filter feature to quickly locate the data you want to recover.

scanning-formatted-hard-drive

🌟Tip:  Preview or filter date depending on Files Type, Size, Date, etc.

Type: Select the file type (Documents, Images, Videos, Audios, Mails, Webpages, Compressed files, etc.)

Date modified: Set the date (today, yesterday, last 7 days, last 30 days, and custom.)

Size: Filter the file size (<128KB, 128KB~1MB, 1MB~ 512MB, 512MB above, etc.

Step 3. Select files and click recover

You will see a list of data that MyRecover found on your hard drive. Select the files you want to recover and click Recover x files.

select-files-to-recover-from-formatted-partition

Step 4. Select a new location

Choose a new location to save the recovered files and click Select Folder to confirm it. Your files will be recovered in a few minutes, depending on the size of your data.

Select Location

🙌 Tips:

Also, this powerful data recovery tool can help you recover files from SSD that won’t boot.

To recover a large number of deleted or lost files from your hard drives, please consider upgrading MyRecover to the Pro or Tech edition to enjoy unlimited recovery size.

Part 2. How to Fix Crashed Physical Hard Drives? (2 Ways)

When it comes to physical hard drive crashes, there are still a feasible ways solve how to fix crashed hard drive. 

Way 1. Check the Hard Drive

The first step is to check if the hard drive is still usable, you can do this at home or you can leave it to a computer expert to determine if the hard drive is still able to handle it.

If the hard drive damage is not serious, you can keep it for future use. Serious problems may require discarding the drive to be on the safe side.

Way 2. Seek Help from Recovery Services

If the hard drive is severely damaged and the data in the damaged physical hard drive is critical, consider seeking professional help from a data recovery service such as Geek Squad.

Geek Squad Icon

Choose a reputable data recovery service that has expertise in fixing and recovering data from crashed physical hard drives. Or, take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade to a brand new hard drive to improve performance.

How to Prevent Laptop Hard Drive Crash

Now that your data is safe and your hard drive is back in working order, it's easy to relax. However, to prevent yourself from experiencing the pain of a hard drive crash again, take a moment to focus on the following preventive measures.

1️⃣ Back-Up Your Data: Regularly back up your data to avoid extensive losses during a crash. You can try to use this free backup tool for Windows like AOMEI Backupper Standard. In this case, you can easily restore files from backups.

File Backup

2️⃣ Shut Down Safely: Always shut down your computer safely using the proper options instead of holding the power button. This helps prevent data corruption and file system issues.

3️⃣ Perform Health Checks: Check hard drive health regularly to detect potential problems early.

4️⃣ Protect Against Malware and Viruses: Install reputable antivirus software to protect your system from malware and viruses. Be cautious when opening apps or downloading files from unknown sources.

5️⃣ Avoid Overheating: Ensure your computer is adequately ventilated to prevent overheating. Dust and debris can accumulate inside your computer, so clean it periodically.

Conclusion

In this article, you can gain an effective way to fix the logical/physical laptop hard disk crash and perform laptop hard disk crash recovery.  Moreover, MyRecover, a multifunctional hard drive data recovery tool, can also recover data from Dell laptop hard drive (won’t boot).

To avoid data loss again due to laptop hard disk crashing, you can also use this free Windows backup tool AOMEI Backupper Standard. It can backup the system, file or folder, partition, and the whole disk to other storage devices.

FAQs

What happens when a laptop hard drive crashes?
 
It can cause irreversible damage and data loss. In the worst case, debris scraped off the damaged area may contaminate all heads and platters, leading to the destruction of all data on the drive.
What are the symptoms of hard disk failure in laptop?
 
Slow computer, blue screen of death, frequent error messages, really slow file access and folder opening, hard drive spinning but not detected, Windows will not launch.
Can laptop work after hard disk crash?
 
The ability of a laptop to work after a hard disk crash depends on the extent of the damage. If the hard drive is severely damaged, it may be challenging or impossible to recover data or get the laptop working without a replacement drive.
Can a HDD cause crashed?
 
A failing or faulty hard drive can indeed cause crashes and freezes in a computer. You can try running a diagnostic tool like CrystalDiskInfo to check the health of your HDD. Alternatively, connect the hard drive to another computer and see if that causes any problems.

After fixing the crashed hard drive, you can use trustworthy hard drive recovery software like Myrecover to recover lost data from hard drive.
How do I copy files from a crashed Windows?
 
Step 1. Insert the Windows installation media (DVD or bootable USB drive) into your PC, enter Windows RE, and click Next.
Step 2. Choose Repair your computer > Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.
Step 3. Type Notepad, click File > Open, and locate the files you want to recover via File Explorer.
Step 4. Right-click on your selected file and select Send to another storage device.
How do I recover Windows after crashing?
 
You can use System Restore to restore your computer to its previous state.

Step 1. Select the Start button, then type Control Panel to open it.
Step 2. In the Control Panel search box, type recovery and select it > open System Restore > click Next.
Step 3. Select the restore point that you want to use, and then select Next > Finish.
Lori
Lori · Editor
Lori receives professional technical training since joining AOMEI, and aims at helping users troubleshoot problems on data recovery and protection. She focuses on simple, efficient and practical methods, and provides professional advice. Being able to help readers and users is her ultimate goal.