Nicolas Bouliane

How to fix a beeping/buzzing hard drive

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A few days ago, the hard drive on my ThinkPad T510 stopped booting. When I booted the laptop, I got the following error:

Error 2100 HDD0 initialization error (1)

If I went in the BIOS setting, the hard drive was not detected. I borrowed a friend’s hard drive dock. When I put the hard drive in the dock, started making a beeping noise.

With nothing to lose, I opened the hard drive. There were 6 screws around the edge, and 1 hidden under the label. As soon as I removed the hard drive cover, I saw that the head was stuck on the platter. The noise came from the struggling head motor.

There is a hidden screw under the label.
The head is stuck over the platter. It should be stowed on the side.

I used my screwdriver to rotate the platter, and pushed the head back in place with my finger. I reassembled the hard drive, and the laptop booted right away. This let me extract all the important data use it as a primary drive for another 6 months before replacing it.