---
title: "Data Recovery from WD External Drive after Spontaneous Failure - EXALAB"
description: "The hard drive exhibited typical symptoms of read head and/or data platter failure - clicking and subsequent spontaneous shutdown. The cause was spontaneous failure."
url: "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes/data-recovery-from-western-digital-external-drive-it-can-fail-without-obvious-cause"
date: "2026-06-20T00:19:16+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

##  Data Recovery from Western Digital External Drive. It Can Fail Without Obvious Cause

The hard drive exhibited typical symptoms of read head and/or data platter failure - it clicked and shut down after a while. The failure occurred without an obvious cause - spontaneously. Western Digital hard drives are usually relatively well manageable when such an error occurs and the cause is not mechanical damage. However, it is necessary to check the condition of the data platter surfaces.

  ![Data Recovery from WD External Drive after Spontaneous Failure](https://www.exalab.cz/images/blog/EN2404171-zachrana-dat-z-disku-wd-w1200.jpg) Sometimes the problem can be caused by a fall or impact without the user's knowledge. Clicking or other strange sounds from the drive indicate that the drive is unable to initialize correctly and attempts to do so several times before shutting down.

After a thorough visual inspection of the read heads and data platters, we proceeded to modify the disk's electronics (PCB). This model of WD hard drive from 2013 has relatively simple PCB (by today's standards), allowing it to be adapted for communication through different interfaces by various methods. After modifying the PCB, it was possible to initialize the hard drive by modifying its service data, and a partial binary copy was successfully created. It was then necessary to replace the read heads and complete the binary copy. Finally, the file system was checked and user data was restored.

![Hotline](https://www.exalab.cz/images/svg/hotline.svg)DATA RECOVERY
 +420 608 177 773

Sometimes the data recovery process from a drive with this type of failure is quite straightforward, while other times it is influenced by certain data platter errors, service data failures, or a combination of these problems.

**External Drive:** WD WDBUZG5000ABK
**Internal Drive:** WD500BMVW-11AJGS0
**Problem:** Spontaneous hard drive failure, data inaccessible
**Solution:** Drive modification, service data modification
**Result:** 100% data recovery

In this case, we achieved complete data recovery, with which the client was completely satisfied. It's a bit of luck in misfortune, as only the read heads failed, and if such a drive is handled by a professional, most or all data can usually be recovered. It can be worse with a drive that has suffered a fall or impact, but that is not the subject of this post. If your hard drive also fails, take advantage of our free diagnostics.

   Details   By Frantisek Fridrich  Frantisek Fridrich   Parent Category: [Z praxe](https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice)   [LABnotes](https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes)

## Schema

```json
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.exalab.cz/en" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Blog", "item": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "From Practice", "item": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "LABnotes", "item": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "Data Recovery from Western Digital External Drive. It Can Fail Without Obvious Cause", "item": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes/data-recovery-from-western-digital-external-drive-it-can-fail-without-obvious-cause.md" } ] }
```

```json
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes/data-recovery-from-western-digital-external-drive-it-can-fail-without-obvious-cause.md" }, "headline": "Data Recovery from Western Digital External Drive. It Can Fail Without Obvious Cause", "description": "The hard drive exhibited typical symptoms of read head and/or data platter failure - clicking and subsequent spontaneous shutdown. The cause was spontaneous failure.", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.exalab.cz/images/blog/EN2404171-zachrana-dat-z-disku-wd-w1200.jpg" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "EXALAB Data Recovery", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.exalab.cz/images/logo/logo_600x600.png" } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Frantisek Fridrich", "url": "https://www.exalab.cz/en/blog/from-practice/labnotes/data-recovery-from-western-digital-external-drive-it-can-fail-without-obvious-cause" }, "datePublished": "2024-06-21T07:41:52+00:00", "dateCreated": "2024-06-21T07:36:15+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-05-02T21:45:33+00:00" }
```