Follow along as reader [anonymous Gort] swaps the guts of two hard drives to bring one back from the land of the dead.
Someone at work had a laptop computer they never backed up. They traveled 1000 miles to give a presentation, using the laptop
First, this is a good thing. Data is more important than hardware. Remember that. Always.
Second, I’ve been thinking what one could still do with old (damaged) drives. Indeed, practice, reconaissance (learn from how details stick together before taking action) and swapping parts.
If you take it the way it is stated, it looks pretty simple, but messing with valuable data is indeed tricky. The last (7th) statement should be repeated endlessly: it might be your last option/chance/attempt…
- Unomi -
Posted at 11:14 am on Nov 17th, 2005 by Unomi
Wow. Thats like a computer surgery, i had no clue that this sort of data recovery adventure was even feasable. Good Job!
Posted at 11:35 am on Nov 17th, 2005 by Josh
how much would you charge to do this for me??
anonymous.spammer AT gmail.com
Posted at 11:38 am on Nov 17th, 2005 by Chris
Often (well, in my experience at least) the internal platters, read/write heads, motor, and solenoids etc. of a “fried” hard drive are all perfectly fine, but the logic board on the bottom will have had a component fail. Luckily – these can be removed and replaced with identical logic boards from a good drive without exposing the platters. In the past I’ve saved hard drives from the trash this way.
I assume however, that in this case you knew some internal mechanism (though not the platters themselves) had failed?
Posted at 11:43 am on Nov 17th, 2005 by smilr
As anyone who has taken a hard drive apart knows, the platters are held together by physical force of a top mount clamp held by torex, there is no key to keep them aligned, so if one platter is out of allignment with the other, then the bottom of the last platter’s sector loction information should not be in allignment with the other platters, and all but the one platter with the sector alignment data should be unreadable. There is no way to take all the platters out as a single unit. OF COURSE there could be a newer standard of sector location data prefixing each sector on the disk, in which case, this _might_ work. Either way, the screws that hold the platter bobbin and spindle motor to the case are found under the platters, and necessitate their removal (with consequential misallignment). Given the lack of real specifics on this treatment, I think that this operation is fake.
In addition, what went bad on the drive… the spindle motor? the actuator mechanism? the platter surface?
Freezing the drive seemed to help me once, a better idea is to put the drive on a linoleum (sp?) floor covering concrete, and put a heavy block on top to stabilize the drive against vibration (if that is the mode of failure).
Posted at 12:05 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by joe
I have done this many times throughout the years. My nick name actually comes from doing it in high school for a principle that was so excided to get his data back goofed up some words and said I reversed the corruption on the drive
Posted at 12:15 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Reverse Corruption
In response to #5, the drive in question was a laptop HD which I take only consisted of one platter in which case the operation was not fake. I suspect your alignment concerns are valid for multi-platter drives.
Posted at 12:20 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by hwyman
When removing the platers from the disk, how do you stop the head from touching / scratching the disk. I have found that the “clean room” does not have to be so clean if you work quickly. I ran a 6GB disk with the cover off (running a contious scan disk) for a whole weekend before bad sections of the drive started showing up.
What does the cold do to the drive that helps recover the data?
Posted at 12:44 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Joez34
he says there were 2 platters in the article, not one.
Posted at 12:45 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by chris
This is such a load of horseshit. Um, there’s no way to realign the heads on the platter so they start at the correct sectors. I’d say you could have recovered the info if you had bought an identical drive and swapped out the pcb on top of the drive. That works a lot of the time, but, there’s no way in hell you took apart a drive and recovered the info by swapping the platters to another drive.The platters themselves spin at thousand of revolutions a second. What do you think would happen to your alignment if there was the tiniest piece of dust that impacted the head, that microns above the surface of the platter. Why the hell do you think they’re assembled in a green room to start with?
Sorry, but this kind of misinformation pisses me off.
And no. Freezing the drive will do doodly squat in reviving it. Most times that clunk you hear in your HD is the sound of the drives head tearing itself free. Unless the pcb itself is gone, there is virtually no way to ever recover the information outside of a professional setup.
Posted at 2:02 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Tercero
If the allignment truly is a problem, might there then be a way to raw-copy the entire drive with respect to the platter indexes? Thereby creating separate raw image files for each surface, copied sequentially from the outer to inner track (or vise-versa, I forget the proper order). And when it finishes, let some custom software examine the individual platter structures looking for inter-sector gaps and other physical properties of the drive that would have been copied as data to effectively re-align the platters and then produce a functional disk image.
Posted at 2:11 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by ziekrage
Whenever you have to make any sort of presentation, always always ALWAYS print out lecture notes and overhead transparencies, and keep those in your carry-on luggage (but not in your laptop case). It’s cool that they were able to hack out a solution to this, but never be without a technology-less backup.
Posted at 2:25 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Carter Adams
raw-reading the un-aligned data is unlikely to work. modern drives store the actual data in a very different format that what it looks like from the outside.
for instance: from the outside each track has the same number of sectors (at it used to be on real drives, and still is on floppy disks), but the drive will probably put more sectors on the outer tracks, because they are longer and therefore can store more data per revolution.
aligning the disks may not be a problem at all (at least when reading a single platter), because they probably use the data on the platter to get the alignment info anyway. The motor is not accurate enough to predict the exact location of the disk, and a separate sensor that generates a sinc pulse every revolution is an (expensive) extra part, and probably also does lack the needed accuracy.
I think you can at least read some of the data this way.
a couple of (small) dust particles are not a big problem. most drives circulate part of the inside airflow over a filter that picks up any dust particles, and even if dust is slowly sanding the heads and/or platters, you can probably get the data off before it stops working.
He mentions a lot of noise after the swap. this is very likely because he did not do any balancing of the platter assembly. also if the platters are mounted off-center the heads will need to vibrate very fast in order to keep following the track. but i think a drive is capable of following an off-center track, just like a cd-player. have you ever bend a cd and watches the cd players lens move up and down to keep the focus correct ?
joe and Tercero, Have you actually tried what you are describing and failed or are you both talk out the side of your necks? The platters do not stop so that the the heads can read them, instead the platter spins, the head just grabs what it wants when it comes by, the drive should easily be able to “seek” for the particular data, even if it has to wait multiple revolutions for the right sector to come by.
Posted at 2:57 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by chinakow
#9 freezing works. I’ve done it. I have friends who have done it. It is a well documented solution. What it does (I’ve heard…not sure of this) is shrink the parts a tiny bit, which can, in some cases, allow you to use it while it stays cold. Though I know someone who had that fix it perminantly. I mean, considering that I’ve managed to fix things by opening them, deciding I couldn’t fix them, and closing them up again, I wouldn’t discount any theories.
Having just had a WD 160g die on me, i’m rather interested in this article. Reading through the comments, esp about alignment concerns me though. The drive powers up and it sounds like the head arm is whacking against the body for about 90sec and then it just stops and the bios doesn’t recoginize a drive there.
Would this be worth cracking open? Regardless, does anyone know legitimate, reputable, trustworthy, etc companies/sites that can perform proper repair? Many sites offer no charge unless data is recovered, but since the drive was part of a raid/lvm array, the costs seem to double.
Anyone?
Posted at 3:43 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by nilrake
#16 if it was part of a raid array then fu*k it who cares about the data. its on the other drives as well unless you used raid 0. if you did use raid 0 then youre screwed because the data on the other drive is mostly trash as well.
but anyways it sounds like the bearings in the head have gotten sloppy so freezeing the drive should allow you to back up the data onto another drive. next time you should use raid 1 or raid5
Posted at 4:55 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by duffman3030
‘The hard drive got fried and all there photos, movies…’
‘there’ should be ‘their’ ;)
Interesting way to recover data, though – I’ll have to keep this in mind if/when one of my clients’ drives give up the ghost.
Posted at 5:01 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Colin
Will this work for the infamous IBM Deskstar drives? i had one fail about a year ago, it’s still sitting in my room someplace because it had 120 gigs of data on it that i really miss. if i can get another, working deskstar of the same size, can i drop the new head/arm on the old drive or pull the platters out as the article poster did and drop em in the new drive?
Posted at 5:12 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by pweiproduct
This is a great fix but should only be used as a last resort. I recommend
1) Tap all drive sides sharply against a table. – This will often free the drive if something is binding.
2) Freeze the drive in a zip lock sack (to reduce chances of condensation.) – This will cause shrinking and increase molecular density very slightly.
3) Replace the PCB with an exact match. This will rule out electronic components and can be done without opening the housing.
4) Open drive and transfer platters to a second drive. On many drives the platters can be removed as a unit.
I used to work in a computer repair shop and had a number of customers willing to try anything to get their data back so I’ve had several HD’s to try these steps with. I’ve had successes and failures with all of them. However, I haven’t tried a platter removal where the platters couldn’t be removed as a single unit so I can’t speak for or against the possibility of misalignment in that situation.
Remember – Some Data is always better than No Data
~Ty~
Posted at 6:47 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by tyler w. cox
I call BS, too. With modern drives, they assemble the platters and lock them to the spindle, then at the factory (and never again) the servo tracks are written to that particular alignment of the platters and spindle. The position of the tracks is not obvious to the heads; they seek the servo track info to find the tracks. So there’s no chance of moving platters to a new spindle and preserving the alignment of the platters to the spindle. Imagine how hard it would be to re-align concentric circles within a few microns. They might be able to do this at the $1000+ data recovery places, but I don’t think it can be done in a “clean room” on a desktop.
Swapping logic boards – yes, that’s easy and often successful.
I hope all of you have learned to keep backups of the data you care about. It’s always a gamble whether these recovery methods will work, but if you have a backup, it’s a SURE THING. Every time.
Back your data up. Keep a backup off-site of your most critical data. Never trust any single hard drive to keep your data safe. Ever.
If it sounds like I’m preachin’, that’s because backing up is a religion that everyone should follow.
-Z
Posted at 7:13 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Zorin
After almost spending 2500 bucks on HD recovery, but having the initial fee waived because it was unrecoverable by a place one step down in price from drivesavers, I stomaeched the PTSD once again and kissed my 145th gig of lost data goodbye.
I have lost 2 HDs and quite a few gigs just to formatting and enthusiastic youthful error, but nothing is worse than not having the recoverable state to work with. This operation is executable only if the drives platters are good and there are few errors on them.
This is an excellent tutorial, but more detail and specific scenario recovery tactics need to be developed and disclosed. At a minimum more detail is reccomended, as this is more of a seeded concept with pictures than a convention at this point.
I strongly reccomend that anyone who has a hard drive fail turn off their computer and leave the L1 and L2 recoveries to dedicated machines, as attempting to recovery is more challenging than it is presented here.
Posted at 7:39 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by blackbeardscbc
To chinakow…
Yah. I’ve done the freezing route. Doesn’t work. I did have success with replacing the pcb, and got the info out that way.
There’s also a number of software tools you can use to access the drive. Do a google for a software called PC3000. It’s made by a Russian company, it’s very expensive, but it’s made for recovering info from supposedly dead drives. Also look for firmware that will re-intialize your pcb if it’s gone funky.
Diskexplorer, Easyrecovery, GetDataBack…there’s dozens of other types that will work on a drive that’s been wiped…but not a dead drive.
Lot’s of people who are throwing ideas here have never tried to recover the info, or they wouldn’t repeat what doesn’t work.
//14 years at IBM, Toronto/Ontario/R&D…
Posted at 7:55 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by Tercero
I heard a guy once who froze his drive to 0 Kelvin, then took it apart (with gloves), transferred the platters to another drive which was kept at 30 Kelvin. He then flipped it upside down and tapped at the exact center 5 times (very lightly) with a hammer. He then put it in a paper sack, buried it in his backyard for a week. Some animal dug it up though so we don’t know if it would have worked or not.
Just kidding. These are all good ideas, and why not try them on cheap old drives. Discounting the post based on what you “may know” is silly. Unless you try it don’t knock it. It’s all heresay in this post.
Posted at 8:01 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by strictor
As in # 15, the drive does wright and read on the fly. This is the cause of fragmentation. Also when formated, each sector are identifyed. So I guest that it could be possible to run the HD for a few hours. But it might mecanily suffer a lot and die because of the extra work neede to read sector in order.
Posted at 8:26 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by technoplume
The freezing thing is for drives that fail with the click of death once they warm up. I have never put one in the freezer but I have used ice packs many times on drives that are failing in this way. I have also use the method of swapping logic boards but apparently you need to have a drive of the same make/model created in the same batch to even hope that it works. I’ve had more failures on this recovery type than success.
Posted at 8:34 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by marilyn
I recently had an important 200gb drive crash on me due to a corrupt Master File Table. Does anyone know if it’s at all possible to rebuild said file table? I know the data is still accessable because I have run sector reading software with a 95% success rate.
Posted at 8:55 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by John
the operation works i tried it on a seagate baricuda that lost a head luckily the platters sufferd no damage and the drive worked long enough to get my valuable porn off of it clone it is a good utility to use also for doing the data transfer
Posted at 9:05 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by INfrared
I have had success with a logic board swap. I had a RAID 5 array of 4 120GB WD drives that I bought from Dell for a steal. First, one drive failed, and then another. Data lost. Not too happy about that but life goes on. I think it was a bad batch of drives. My suspicions were pretty much confirmed when a friend complained that their computer wasn’t working. I took a look at it and their hard drive had died. I took the HD home to see if I could get any data off of it. No luck. Then I looked at the label on the drive. Hmm… 120GB WD drive! I matched the part number/batch number exactly to the drives I had in RAID 5. I was able to do a board swap and get the data off. I suspect that would have worked with the two drives of mine that died, but I didn’t have enough logic boards. Logic board swaps work!
From my experience while in the industry of fixing computers, there are 5 solutions to fix drive problems. Listed in order of price.
1) Put drive in another machine, run data recovery app on drive.
2) Open drive. Spin the platters with fingers. Fixes bearing issues where they have seized. Freezing the drive _sometimes_ also works.
3) Image the drive (ghost,etc) and place the image onto another (good, working) drive. Use data recovery app to retrieve data.
4) Replace electronics (PCB) with identical model.
5) Take platters out. Smash them into the customers face, because he is a moron for not backing up his data.
The only thing I have not done, and know nothing about is swapping platters. From my limited knowledge, it’s possible, as in the 80’s, you could take the platters off, spit on them, wipe’m clean, put’em back… and it would work for another year or two. Rinse and repeat. Old bud of mine STILL does this. None of this platter allignment mumbo-jumbo. My BS flags are going up on that one.
The clean room thing is bullshit if you are trying to recover the data off the drive.
Granted… if you plan on using the drive for any length of time (i.e. longer than it takes to get the data off), you kind of need a dust free area… and don’t do it in your back yard. The kitchen table is fine.
These are the methods I know work, as I’ve used them personally a lot more than once.
Posted at 9:43 pm on Nov 17th, 2005 by nate
In response to all the freezing comments, I’ve had good luck in restoring bad drives by throwing it in a firewire enclosure, then throwing that in the freezer. The condensation issue never happens, and ice crystals never form because there’s a dessicant in the drive anyway (silica gel, anybody?). I’ve restored 2-3 drives this way, and each time, they ran for a decent amount of time.
(One 200GB drive ran for about a week, and a small 10GB server OS hard drive managed to survive for about 3-4 days.) Luckily I’ve been able to get away with not managing to rust my enclosure’s circuitry (thank god for good assembly/solder paste).
If the drive starts dying in the freezer, you can usually powercycle it, and it’ll come back for x amount of time before it dies again.
Whatever ailment the freezing route fixes, I’m not sure. But it’s worked in my cases.
“if you plan on using the drive for any length of time (i.e. longer than it takes to get the data off), you kind of need a dust free area… and don’t do it in your back yard. The kitchen table is fine.”
Acually the kitchen will still probably be dusty if it has open entrances. For a “true” clean room simulation you want to use the bathroom. Turn on the shower until the room completely fills with steam, turn shower off, let the steam settle. The steam brings all the dust to the floor/toilet/sink surfaces and gives you as close to a “dust free clean room” as you’ll get in your house.
I’ve used this method when windowing hard drives and it’s worked great-i’ve opened drives, put them back together and have them still running to this day. Of course all this should be done very carefully and only if you really care about your data.
“if you plan on using the drive for any length of time (i.e. longer than it takes to get the data off), you kind of need a dust free area… and don’t do it in your back yard. The kitchen table is fine.”
Acually the kitchen will still probably be dusty if it has open entrances. For a “true” clean room simulation you want to use the bathroom. Turn on the shower until the room completely fills with steam, turn shower off, let the steam settle. The steam brings all the dust to the floor/toilet/sink surfaces and gives you as close to a “dust free clean room” as you’ll get in your house.
I’ve used this method when windowing hard drives and it’s worked great-i’ve opened drives, put them back together and have them still running to this day. Of course all this should be done very carefully and only if you really care about your data.
To the two jokers who claim this is impossible. OnTrack and a dozen other companies offer this exact service professionally for thousand sof customers every year. This is EXACTLY how you recover data in a last resort situation. Since the platters SPIN, there is no need to “align” it any more than you align a record.
Posted at 12:44 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Grey hodge
For the people who question about what happens when you freeze a drive, here’s my guess:
The effect freezing has on matter is that it slows down particles/electrons. I think that by slowing down the operandi of the drive, the chance that it finds the correct data is getting higher. It is not going to the max at high speed, but just at a lower speed making it more accurate.
I have no clue what I’m talking about, since I’m not a specialist at all. It is just what I think what could be logical. Anybody else an opion on this?
- Unomi -
Posted at 4:13 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Unomi
To all the idiots who refute any of this is possible, you clearly don’t realise that each seperate problem has it’s own unique fix. Simply because something didn’t work for you it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. Either you tried the wrong fix or you were stupid or unlucky. To the fool who started to confuse people by introducing the term “align” instead of “synch”, take solice in the knowledge that you are 100 times more respected than the fuckwit who decided to spell lame someone.
All the methods used have worked in the past. Platters are locked together as a pair and can be removed as such. If anyone claims that they cannot it simply means that the poster was unable to do so.
I worked in IT for bluechip comapanies for over 2 decades. I have worked for disaster recovery and data recovery companies so I do know what is done and what the outcome can be.
Can someone explain why half the respondents here want to shoot people down in flames when it is patently obvious that they haven’t got the technical accuity to install a new drive into a PC, let alone take one to bits?
Posted at 4:29 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Gazwad
The first time I opened the chamber of a hard drive was in 1983, was a 15MB Tandon MFM drive, and it had been clobbered by UPS. That one turned out to be stuck heads (meaning jammed so the positioner couldn’t free them). After I freed them and put a clear lid on with double-sticky, the drive worked for over a month before starting to show bad sectors…
Since then, I have literally “fixed” thousands of drives working inside the chamber; but, never by swapping the platters because I found there was microscopic slop on the spindle and I worried about never being able to get them centered properly.
My technique has always been to move the head assemblies from an identical drive (after the PCBA, of course) and the reason it was fabulously successful was because the final, analog, read/write IC is on the head assembly, prone to being blown by power surges.
It is often necessary to tweak the position of the heads on their shaft (sometimes it takes hours to get it right); but, when the drive performs it’s POST and restores to track 0, a quick cloning gets the data onto a good drive.
No, the drive won’t last very long; but, even when the only tool for cloning was Norton, which took forever, it worked 70+ percent of the time.
One drive, in the late 80’s was 8 platters & 16 heads, all recessed down inside the chamber. Now that was tricky!
Having said all this, I should add a big note; recent models of both Maxtor and WD drives fail by corrupting the Grown Defect List which is on the media and, because there is no blown hardware, just a confused drive, none of these techniques will work. I have tried……
Posted at 8:14 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Davis McCarn
I’ve had several drives die in the past month and just started toying with this process earlier this week. Anyone have any advice on moving the heads off of the platter? The last drive I played with had a single platter, but heads on both sides. In order to get the platter out, I had to drag the heads across the platter and off where the heads proceed to slap together. To get them back on the platter you have to somehow get them spread and slipped back on. That drive ended up dead…
Is it bad to drag the heads across the platter since they normally float? Or is it acceptable since the platter isn’t spinning? I guess I need some sort of little block to keep the heads separated so that I don’t twist them trying to get them back on the platter.
Posted at 9:03 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Matt
I worked in a PC repair shop for 6 years and now have a degree in computer engineering. I saw all kinds of messed up hard drives come in. I have repaired many hard drives in my day using various methods. This is a last resort in the case the drive IS spinning but not being read by the BIOS.
Older (<60G) drives
4/4, 100% success in retrieving data
Newer drives (20G laptop, 160G)
0/2, 0% success
I am inclined to agree with the folks saying alignment is critical with multi-platter drives. This swap technique may only work with single-platter. I recommend swapping the board/chips first if the drive still spins up.
If it doesn’t spin up, I agree with #22’s steps. Freezing is a stupid idea in all, but I have seen it work before. Of course the drive imploded 5 min later.
A note on cleanrooms:
I stole this from a FAQ on mushroom growing. To create a ghetto cleanroom try these steps in a bathroom:
1. Seal/Tape off all vents (and windows if necessary). You do not want ambient breezes stirring dust.
2. Clean work surface and tools with lint free cloth. Set up workspace, leave HDs in static bags.
3. Turn on shower with hot water for 10+ min. Leave door closed for 20-30 min. The steam will cling to dust and settle it out of the air. The humidity will also reduce the potential for static buildup.
4. Move very slowly back into the room and close the door gently. Try not to stir or breath heavily.
5. USE AN ESD OR GROUNDING DEVICE OF SOME KIND!
Posted at 9:18 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by rage007
i am supprised it worked because from what i heard the platters have other servo tracking dta on them so that they can sync up the data and if one platter is off by a fraction then the hardware cant track the data when data is spanning multiple platters.
single platter drives you may have better luck with.
Posted at 10:26 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by ejonesss
I am rather sceptical about tranferring the platters to another drive. I do agree with freezing and finding the identitcal “top board” those 2 will work and actually I have had a rather high success rate using those two methods. When I say identical I mean identical
all the way to the second decimal of the Rev on the board.
Posted at 10:51 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by David Atkins
Generally – platter swapping will NEVER work on current 3.5″ drives unless it’s a single platter (and REAL low capacity). The reason this worked so well on the laptop drive is because most of them have a “park” position that is completely off of the platter surface – this makes removal of the platters very easy (although still not the right way to do it).. Ever since 120 to 160 gb and bigger 3.5’s starting coming out, the track density has been greater, and alignment and flying height MUCH more critical. I work for a Data Recovery shop and we do these day in and day out – moving heads across the platters while not spinning will destroy the heads and most likely the platters as well. Freezing is by far the most correct first step for the layperson. However 90% of what we see lately is FIRMWARE related. Clicking – firmware, not posting – firmware, bad sectors (CRC errors) – firmware. The comment above about PC3000 is also correct – great package (if you’ve got an extra $6k to $8k and read fluent broken russian) but this utilizes a hardware component not just software and only works on 1 out of 10 drives because of newer firmware incompatibility.
Posted at 11:11 am on Nov 18th, 2005 by Data Recovery engineer
if you have time , that is all you can can hope for
Posted at 12:32 pm on Nov 18th, 2005 by jim powell
btw this is someone really wasting a hd
http://www.offliners.com/movs/hdwreck.mov
Posted at 4:25 pm on Nov 18th, 2005 by qgi
The best way to destroy a drive…
http://homepage.mac.com/barrywoods/FileSharing42.html
Posted at 12:06 am on Nov 20th, 2005 by Barry
Hey all.
I’ve recovered a few deceased Microdrives this way- actually got some data back off two of the three Ebay drives. The trick is to get them to spin up as the failure mode on these seems to be “stiction”; for this I first froze the drive then tapped it as it tried to spin up. One drive I repaired worked for weeks before failing.
I’ve also used this trick on Magicstor drives, in fact these are more likely to be a bad control PCB which is swappable.
-A
I was interested by the comment #46 that many of the recent problems are firmware related – “clicking”. I’d like to know more about that problem… Clicking usually implies a mechnical problem to me.
Yes RAID should be the defacto standard. Still my customer wants to roll out PC that are cheap as hell. So I’ve gone back to good old 80gb drives. Which seem like about the last size group of HD that were worth a damn (reliability wise).
Is it my imagination, or is WD really making some unreliable drives lately? In the last few years, I’ve seen more these drives fail, than all of the other drives combined over my career.
I sent a drive in to a professional data recovery service. They wanted $1600 for the job. In todays economy, not even a blue chip corporation is likely to go with that program. Unless it is a (manufacturing) production machine or server. In which case it would have had a backup anyhow.
Posted at 1:53 am on Nov 21st, 2005 by Steve
I had an old IBM 3.2GB drive about 5 years ago that had some bearing problems (it was in the back of my car as an MP3 player). I used to have to physically spin the thing in a certain direction with some verocity to get it to spin up. Once spinning, I didn’t have a problem with it. It worked for about 2 years and then I shorted out the power supply and threw the whole thing in the bin!
Posted at 7:40 am on Nov 21st, 2005 by Aaron
I was curious. I have a 80 gig WD drive,and the drive when the machine is turned on sounds like it’s smacking something. This lasts for about 1 min, and then stops like the power was killed to the drive. Would freezing help me get the data off the drive? If so. How cold should you get the drive. I have heard that the moisture or ice crystal forming can kill the drive.
I have access to Liquid Helium, which would bring the drive to -420 degreas in a flash. This should stop the formation of any ice crystals. My next worry would be that it’s too cold at that point? Any help would be great.
Posted at 1:27 pm on Nov 21st, 2005 by Rob
I was curious. I have a 80 gig WD drive,and the drive when the machine is turned on sounds like it’s smacking something. This lasts for about 1 min, and then stops like the power was killed to the drive. Would freezing help me get the data off the drive? If so. How cold should you get the drive. I have heard that the moisture or ice crystal forming can kill the drive.
I have access to Liquid Helium, which would bring the drive to -420 degreas in a flash. This should stop the formation of any ice crystals. My next worry would be that it’s too cold at that point? Any help would be great.
Posted at 1:39 pm on Nov 21st, 2005 by Rob
I was curious. I have a 80 gig WD drive,and the drive when the machine is turned on sounds like it’s smacking something. This lasts for about 1 min, and then stops like the power was killed to the drive. Would freezing help me get the data off the drive? If so. How cold should you get the drive. I have heard that the moisture or ice crystal forming can kill the drive.
I have access to Liquid Helium, which would bring the drive to -420 degreas in a flash. This should stop the formation of any ice crystals. My next worry would be that it’s too cold at that point? Any help would be great.
Posted at 2:07 pm on Nov 21st, 2005 by Rob
I had a 60Gb harddisk which I managed to fix by doing a PCB swap. I fried the original board by accidently earthing a chip pin on the PC case it was sitting on. A friend offered me a loan of a 20Gb drive that had a few sector errors cropping up to get me by. When I got the 20Gb drive I noticed both where by the same manifacturer and had the same shaped boards. So I did a board swap. Hey presto – Working drive – all 60Gb. Quite surprised it worked however as the 20Gb was only a 5400 RPM drive and the 60Gb was 7200 RPM still didn’t complain – Its still working about 5 years on. And to top it off my friend who lent me the 20Gb drive now has a wall display he’s quite pleased with!
Posted at 11:46 am on Nov 22nd, 2005 by Phil
anybody got links or details to logic board swapping?
sources of logic boards?
Posted at 5:27 pm on Nov 22nd, 2005 by ron
i have had several hardrives in the past few years and the only 2 drives that ever failed were both WD. So I see I am not alone. I really needed the data off of one of the drives so I had to get profession help. The best deal I got was at http://nationwidedatarecovery.com/ for $500.00 now down to $400.00. I am thankful that they job done right away.
Posted at 3:34 pm on Nov 23rd, 2005 by abe
I have a US logic (USLO60U) external HD that doen’t spin. I’d really like to get the data off. How should I proceed? Is this someting a novice can do? If not, who can I take it to & how much (a range) will it cost me? The HD has always read ok, but occasionally has “startup probs” i.e. doesn’t spin. Thanks for the help.
Posted at 12:59 pm on Nov 24th, 2005 by blluesman
I am in the process of performing data recovery on a WD 160GB drive and came across this post. The drive was originally mounted in an enclosure, saw some rough use, started making the dreaded clicking sound and generally became unrecognizeable. So I stuck it in the freezer – didn’t work. Sent it to 3 data recovery companies. 1-Iomega, the enclosure manufacturer’s service via ActionFront – who quoted me $1800, 2-Gillware, who in reality only performs software recovery as a front for a high-dollar invasive service which quoted me $2000, and 3-Nationwide Data Recovery, who also advertised inexpensive services, but failed to deliver and gladly offered to refer me to their super-expensive ‘partner’ company. Next, I obtained a refund from the manufacturer which was used to ebay an identical drive for the electrical system. This didn’t work either. So I set up my ‘cleanroom’, opened the drive and found that the post which the heads pivot on had snapped in half. It looks as though this post is unreplaceable, therefore I am left with two options; supergluing the broken post back into place, or transplanting the platters to my fresh drive (last resort). Never trust drives.
Posted at 3:06 am on Nov 26th, 2005 by drrty byl
Can someone tell me where to get a guide of openning hard drives? I know that it is self explanatory, but I am stuck at the platters, with strange screws. I need to know what they are called, and where I can get bits for them. I know the danger, but it is a 12 year old drive and its just for experience. Thanks!
Posted at 10:10 am on Nov 27th, 2005 by Solomon Herscovitch
#2 ” Data is more important than hardware” yes, yes.
#39 Thanks
#41 Will look into the “Grown Defect List” and changing the “head assemblies”, I did try to change the logic board a few times.
# 43 I plan to get some drives and test the alignment issue. The platters have no “key slot” or holes for screws so I never thought about alignment. I do plan to test the alignment issue on laptop and full size drives.
# 49 I tried to use dd but the disk had errors and it took to long. tried dcfldd on another drive and it worked better (FoRK cd disk).
Thank you for your input, tests on the alignment issue, “head assemblies” and “Grown Defect List” will help me to learn. Thank you hackaday and all your comments.
Posted at 10:02 pm on Nov 27th, 2005 by anonymous Gort
Maybe this freezing gamble seems to work because of a temporary faliure. U might as well wipe the enclosed drive on a donkeys a** twice and then try it again unless u get a kick in your face for being gullable.
Posted at 8:27 am on Nov 28th, 2005 by drmoo
Yep, I’ve run a drive with the cover off before and it’s not like they die instantly. A similar disc was dropped and began failing … what happened in the dropping instance is a tiny amount of oil was squeezed from the spindle bearing and began it’s vertigal journey to the outer edge of the platter; colliding with the heads.
While I’ve never swapped the platters themselves and attempted a recovery like this one it sounds feasible since you only need the drive in it’s new home to function for an hour or two ..about the spindle alignment, maybe it’s impossible with some models I generally take the motor/platters out in one piece by sacrificing the heads, this could probably be done without scratching the disc…. how does it help to disassemble the spindle anyway? That’s just unnecessary.
Posted at 11:09 am on Nov 29th, 2005 by mike
I am in the process of performing data recovery on a WD 160GB drive and came across this post. The drive was originally mounted in an enclosure, saw some rough use, started making the dreaded clicking sound and generally became unrecognizeable. So I stuck it in the freezer – didn’t work. Sent it to 3 data recovery companies. 1-Iomega, the enclosure manufacturer’s service via ActionFront – who quoted me $1800, 2-Gillware, who in reality only performs software recovery as a front for a high-dollar invasive service which quoted me $2000, and 3-Nationwide Data Recovery, who also advertised inexpensive services, but failed to deliver and gladly offered to refer me to their super-expensive ‘partner’ company. Next, I obtained a refund from the manufacturer which was used to ebay an identical drive for the electrical system. This didn’t work either. So I set up my ‘cleanroom’, opened the drive and found that the post which the heads pivot on had snapped in half. It looks as though this post is unreplaceable, therefore I am left with two options; supergluing the broken post back into place, or transplanting the platters to my fresh drive (last resort). Never trust drives.
Posted at 11:41 am on Nov 29th, 2005 by drrty byl
This is nothing new, not a bad article though. :)
BTW freezing is really effective.
Posted at 1:51 am on Nov 30th, 2005 by polobunny
So I fixed the snapped head post on my WD 160GB drive and the clicking noise is gone & BIOS now recognizes the drive (but at the wrong size), however I am unable to access it and it doesn’t show up as a logical drive — booting from various recovery utilities and into windows. I was told by the last data recovery co that its problem lies in “recognizing the primary data track”. I tried manually configuring head settings in BIOS but this didn’t help. Any data recovery professionals have suggestions as to what my next DIY step is? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Drrty
I am trying to do a PCB transplant on a WD800BB as a friend of mine managed to melt bananana on t the PCB. Is taking the PCB off and replacing it easy? Do I need to solder anything?
Posted at 8:57 pm on Dec 7th, 2005 by stan
I’ve got a Maxtor 30GB drive that failed a couple of years ago when the power supply on my PC literally blew sparks out the back. I’ve tried it in a couple other machines but it’s certainly not recognized in the BIOS at all and I’m pretty sure it’s not even spinning up. Since I gave up on it I’ve kept it well packed in anti-static bags and bubble wrap, just in case.
Recently I’ve been pining for that old data so I decided to get adventurous and was able to find an online retailer who still had some of the exact same model of drive in stock. My intention is to swap out the PCB, but reading the comments of #42 make me fear that the head assembly may be blown. Does anyone else have experience with recovering a drive after a power supply failure?
I’m fairly technical, but the idea of ripping hard drives apart is still a bit intimidating. If anyone in the Madison, WI area has experience (and success!) with recovering failed hard drives and would like to take a stab at it I’d be willing to pay a reasonable amount for your assistance. Contact me on shantismurf at gmail.com. Thanks!
Posted at 4:58 pm on Dec 8th, 2005 by shanti
i think i will try the disk platter swap thing i have a few old 1.0 gb one with win98 and one with some other win95 mess on it… they are same model.. i’m going to see if the timing thing is an issue…
Posted at 11:42 pm on Dec 8th, 2005 by Richard
Swapping the PCBs doesn’t even work properly anymore on high density drives because of manufacturing tolerances.
Data will be written to a flash during the low level format.
so, swapping the pcb will work only if you are extremly lucky.
It was different a few years ago.
Posted at 8:35 am on Dec 12th, 2005 by Thomas
I am interested in this curruption of the defect list in the hard drives. Ihave a fairly new Maxtor 40GB drive that had just failed. It doesn’t spin up and the computer bios doesn’t recognize the dead drive. It’s in the freezer now,but i am not holding my breath. This curruption list seems intriguing, as I would assume some hardware and software combination could clear this list or something?
Anyways, I don’t have any torque screw drivers, but I removed some metallic film from the bottom of the drive to discover a bunch of ball bearing like items encased in a clear bathtub like enclosure. I always wondered what this was, and by reading someones post, i could assume the conclusion that it is to trap moisture. When I removed this capsule, I was able to have a peek at a fraction of a pallter, and the underside of the arm. The platter doesn’t seem to move freely, which I assume suspect since I opened up a 500Mb Maxtor drive and was able to freely spin the pallter without much force.
Posted at 2:33 am on Dec 13th, 2005 by lotacus
I have a 250 gb harddrive with about 80 gigs of important data on it that i dropped (its in an external case) does anyone have any recommendations or anyone know what the problem is? It starts up but makes a clicking sound. My comp recognizes that the harddrive was connected but the HD doesnt come up as a drive in “my computer”..Email me @ vmodi89@yahoo.com please
Posted at 8:00 pm on Dec 13th, 2005 by Vinay Modi
I have a 250 gb harddrive with about 80 gigs of important data on it that i dropped (its in an external case) does anyone have any recommendations or anyone know what the problem is? It starts up but makes a clicking sound. My comp recognizes that the harddrive was connected but the HD doesnt come up as a drive in “my computer”..Email me @ vmodi89@yahoo.com please
Posted at 8:04 pm on Dec 13th, 2005 by Vinay Modi
Please let me know how you built a clean room on your desk. I have a laptop drive that sounds like the motor spins and then stops. And it repeats itself. What do you think the problem is since you’ve diagnosed so many drives.
Email me @ bluedevlx@hotmail.com
Thank You
Posted at 6:01 pm on Dec 14th, 2005 by getter
Hi Sir
I need some of your brains right now
i have just blown a hard drive the circut board on the back to be exact
i have purchased an identical drive and used its circut
but the computer does not recognise the drive.
what do i do now
Posted at 4:56 am on Dec 15th, 2005 by steve
Hi Sir
I need some of your brains right now
i have just blown a hard drive the circut board on the back to be exact
i have purchased an identical drive and used its circut
but the computer does not recognise the drive.
what do i do now
Posted at 4:59 am on Dec 15th, 2005 by steve
I see a few questions asking for info, help.
will try to help.
#77.Please let me know how you built a clean room on your desk.?
in the photo you can see my desk.
I used a fan before (not during) the attempt.
I used painting gloves and a mask, used a clean new cover on the desk.
washed / dried the tools before (to get oil off, if any) to clean them.
#78 I have just blown a hard drive the circuit board. ??
1.what do you mean, how did you do it.
2.computer does not recognize the drive. ??
put the pcb back on the “good” drive and insure the Bios and computer finds it.
Remember reliable static control, Anti-Static Wrist Band.
Buy a few 2 dollar drive on ebay ro some place and practice first.
Posted at 3:49 pm on Dec 15th, 2005 by anonymous Gort
I believe that freezing sometimes works because lowering the temperature of the drive and it’s electronics increases the signal-to-noise ratio of the head amplifier and possibly the signal coming out of the head too.
Google “noise temperature” for more than you could ever want to know about this.
Posted at 4:00 pm on Dec 15th, 2005 by brian leeper
hey guys I think this a good start for those who are intersted in harddrive architecture.
check out this link.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/177
Posted at 12:09 am on Dec 16th, 2005 by dakis
wat if my hard drive wasnt fried but like it just says disk boot error can those steps also work for my hard drive too?
Posted at 1:51 pm on Dec 17th, 2005 by Bob
I have the same problem as a few people here – a 160gb WD drive that was in an external enclosure. I dropped it and now when turning it on it clicks over and over, then after a while it stops as if power had been cut to the drive. Can anyone offer any advice on this one? My email is bendowling[at]lineone.net. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers, Ben
Posted at 6:35 pm on Dec 17th, 2005 by BEN
The reason the drive still works without the platters being
Posted at 2:59 am on Dec 19th, 2005 by Michael O'Quinn
If alignment of platters is critcal, why not simply glue them togther before unscrewing them? If you got a long-bore, hypodermic needle and filled it up with a bit of CA, you could very carefully apply it to the platters and collars, then lift it out as one unit.
Posted at 12:26 pm on Dec 25th, 2005 by Justin Bell
Post 85 is the best and is what i was able to understand from lots of websites .
i would sugest to all of you especially Michael O’Quinn to start working on reverse engenearing mail HHD model with PIC’s
i would like to ask Michael O’Quinn who can i access the CPU or PIC or ECU what ever it is called on a HDD so i can reprograme it or read if it is still runing correctly ???
mabey even reprogram it thought the BIOS of teh PC isnt reconizing the HDD.???
Posted at 9:41 am on Dec 26th, 2005 by issa omran
I have done it with floppies really easily, i have tried it with HDD’s and it is extreamly difficult. I don’t think it is fake i just think he is really lucky. It is very hared and thought on most modern drives the platters do not need to be lined up exactly the heads, which are extreamly fragil must line up at exactly the right hright above the drive as to not cause the heads to scrape the platters, I have tried this about 10 times with mechanical failure of a drive and only once i was able to recover aly of the data, the bathroom steam trick i have heard before and used my self, there is great logic behind it just make sure the humidity is not too high.
Posted at 5:31 pm on Dec 31st, 2005 by minni
As far as recovering hard drives…. I’ve been recovering drives since the days when 20MB drives were big. (No, that is not a typo 20 MB drives from the 1980’s.) I’ve frozen drives and was able to recover them. I’ve swapped logic boards and recovered them. Freezing and logic board swaps do work nicely.
There was one fellow tech that came across a repair that to this day I find amazing. He went on site to repair an original MAC with a 20MB external hard drive. (Think 1986.) The customer showed him how he had to start up the computer each morning. The customer removed the plastic cover off the drive case, then removed the metal cover off the drive, he then reached in and spun the drive platter to start the drive explaining he had to do this every morning for the last nine months. Since hearing that story I’ve used this as a last resort. Sometimes a quick snap of the entire hard drive will do the same thing. But sometimes a drive needs a little help to start spinning again. Physically forcing the drives to spin is a last resort but DOES work.
Posted at 4:11 am on Jan 1st, 2006 by jollyrgr
I have a IBM Deskstar 80gig and the other day i openend the computer to add a new mobo + cpu combo to it and after installing the new hardware i was plugging the hdd power cable from the powersupply in, and kind plugged it in at an angle and a spark shot out of the connector and the pc turned off after turning the PC back on the hard drive is no longer listed in teh startup or bios, and the drive just clicks all the time when powered, is the the PCB/logic board fryed or did something worse happen? plase help nolconnetworks@hotmail.com
Posted at 7:32 pm on Jan 4th, 2006 by Nolan
Hi there, I have never seen this site before today but it’s funny ‘cuz three weeks ago I did this same thing except I did not have other drives to play with first. This guy’s HP laptop drive (IBM) went down and HP sent him a new one (WD) and I cracked it open and swaped them out and used my Knoppix disk did a full save in my tower and did the swap again and every thing is working fine. Knowing all of this now I will remember to be a lot smater about it next time. Thanks for having such a good site guys. MaDMAn
Posted at 4:58 am on Jan 6th, 2006 by James Fuller
These people have saved two companies (with way too little understanding of how important regular backup is) from going under.
ActionFront (www.actionfront.com)
They cost a lot. I had 72GB of data to rescue for one company who lost a server during a recent hurricane in Florida. Their tech even dicked around with the drive for a while, possibly screwing it up more.
This company recovered everything, and shipped it back on an 80GB IDE drive the day after they received the original drive. I think the bill was around $5000. The other option would have been to manually enter years and years of accounting data into a fresh system.
For business needs, this company is the safest bet you’ll ever make. I’ve had a 100% success rate referring to them.
Posted at 11:44 am on Jan 7th, 2006 by trajik2600
Thanks to all who have posted to this page. I did a successful logic board swap a week ago on an old 5.7 GB Maxtor using a board from an identical drive. The revived drive runs normally, and I’ve mirrored it to another drive in a RAID 1 array.
The part that died on the old logic board was a chip located near the spindle motor contacts. The corner of this chip was fried. I assume the chip had something to do with controlling the motor. Why it fried after 5 years in a clean and well ventilated case is a mystery. The PC is plugged into a good UPS. I removed the old power supply and replaced it with a new power supply made by Antec. If nothing else, the new power supply has a much quieter fan.
Post #70 asked if anything needed to be soldered when you swap the logic boards. Nope. Click on the link at post #82 and then click on Figure 6 to see an enlarged view of the contacts that touch the back surface of the logic board. These contacts spring up a bit from the surface of the drive when you remove the old board. Tightening the screws on the replacement board presses the board against the contacts, creating a good connection. The logic board swap requires no more skill than handling a logic board properly and keeping yourself electrically grounded. Anybody with a set of small torx screwdrivers can swap logic boards. Success is not guaranteed, but the odds of messing up are very small if you’re reasonably careful.
Posted at 6:00 pm on Jan 13th, 2006 by sambo
i am the guy with the 160 maxtor prob #78
i purchesed an identical hard drive and i took off the working circut and placed it on the hard drive that had its circut blown
they are the smae model but the circuts look a bit different
the hard drive spins up but is not recognised by the computer,do the circuts have different firmware and if yes how do i change it
please help
thanks
Posted at 3:21 am on Jan 15th, 2006 by steve
To steve , 160 maxtor prob #78.
Use a known good hard drive (formatted in fat 32)
and CD drive on primary IDE cable. ( to send data to)
Put the pcb back on the “good 160 Maxtor” drive you bought
and insure the Bios and computer finds it.
Use in “master setting” on secondary IDE cable.
See what the BIOS shows when it picks up the drive.
Boot the computer and see if it shows drives.
Put the pcb back on the “broken 160 Maxtor”
(Use “master setting” on secondary IDE cable.)
drive and see if Bios and computer finds it.
Try a new or another IDE cable, try on the primary ,secondary IDE cable.
Try reseating the pcb back on the “broken 160 Maxtor”.
Try another computer and cables. Try cable select, matter or slave.
Remember reliable static control, Anti-Static Wrist Band.
Boot a CD and transfer the data if you can.
I set up a AIM name of “anonymous Gort” to help.
Put “160 Maxtor” in the message.
Posted at 8:23 pm on Jan 15th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
Hello everyone -
I have been reading through all the tips and wanted to thank everyone offering suggestions. My Maxtor SATA 160 gb just went tonight (coincidence that the guy right above me has the same one?). Anyway, ran diagnostics and it said the drive failed. This is despite the error showing up in the logs is: “Keyboard Error” – and I tried switching keyboards. The hard drive has always been pretty loud, but now it will chug its normal chug when it the computer is attempting to boot, then kind of just stop. Had a few questions for anyone that can help, before I may have to pay for some assistance:
1) The diagnostic saying it failed definitely means it is done correct?
2) Is there any use in trying any other fixes before I remove the hard drive and move it to another for testing?
3) Will further booting/testing of this as the primary SATA do MORE damage or lose MORE data in the end?
4) Can anyone recommend a good program to use to get data off the drive once I transport it to another system? And this will work even though the thing spins then quits?
5) I am somewhat familiar with ghost, and I am assuming that is the next step after #4.
6) If all else fails, I doubt I will attempt to disect the thing, or freeze it, and will probably look to have it done professionally. Can you recommend a good/cheap mail off service?
Thanks for all your help and suggestions, james
Posted at 4:02 am on Jan 20th, 2006 by James
#24- It is impossible to reach absolute zero and even if he did reach it what did he use to get it that cold?
Posted at 6:26 pm on Jan 22nd, 2006 by Paul
I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160 gb HD that got a sweet drink spilled nearby and is longer recogised by the Dell Dimension that it runs in. When the machine boots it clicks repeatedly before the error comes up. Contains a lot of data, only partly backed up. What should I do? What kind of damage might the liquid have caused? Is the general opinion that putting it in the freezer a good idea? How does one handle the HD fresh from the freezer so if doesnt get too much condensation on it?
Posted at 12:01 pm on Jan 23rd, 2006 by Mark k
Hi Mark
I have to recon that your idea about freezing hard drives left me without voice! I suppose you have no idea about computer hardware in general and laptops in particular. No offense, but I also suppose that you missed some chemistry and physics classes! If you’ve been paying attention to the article you’ve been learning that it’s all about BATTERIES, my friend! Please, give me a favor and DON’T freeze that poor HDD! You have in my opinion, allot of chances to recover your laptop just by cleaning it.
All my good thoughts to you.
Posted at 2:14 pm on Jan 25th, 2006 by dan b.
I have a RCA Lyra RD2762 and I have lost the ability to read or transfer any files to the 4G harddrive. I can see the drive but when I try to access the drive it does not allow me access. I think I’ve unplugged it before it was safe and lost the lyra application file off the hardrive that allows it to communicate with the CPU. Is there anyway I can add the Lyra Application back to the harddrive? Thanks
Posted at 6:21 am on Jan 26th, 2006 by Darrick Terry
i am going to attempt a pcb switch on my WD800BB hard drive. i need the data on it, but can’t afford professional prices, period. what i would really like to know is if the firmware is going to be a problem for this drive. anyone who has a success or failure story for pcb switching in WD 80gb drives, please post it!
Posted at 11:50 am on Feb 3rd, 2006 by ryan
Many great suggestions in this thread, would like to add something that hasn’t been mentioned. With the hard drive apart, if you can’t or will not be recovering data, the magnets in these drivers are awesome! We’ve pulled apart a number of dead drives just for those powerfull magnets!
Finally, anyone have thoughts on how long to keep the hard drive in the freezer?
Posted at 11:23 pm on Feb 5th, 2006 by chicagocomputers
What is PCB?
Posted at 9:05 am on Feb 7th, 2006 by Brent
What is PCB?
Posted at 9:07 am on Feb 7th, 2006 by Brent
Anybody reading this in the Atlanta area who can provide help swapping platters?
Posted at 9:35 am on Feb 7th, 2006 by Brent
I’m going to attempt this surgery on my 75 gig ibm deskstar. What kind of snpa ring tool did you need? Internal or external? I imagine you used the snap ring tool to remove the plates. Thanks for the info.
Posted at 2:11 pm on Feb 8th, 2006 by Pedro
Remember, disassembling is the last, last thing to attempt.I practiced on 2 old 160mb drives (cost 2 dollars each).Used the star/Torx drivers and snap ring tool to disassemble the drive.(size = T5 to T9 star/ Torx)
The Torx driver to unscrew the center screw as the snap ring tool held the assembly still. I practiced 4 times insuring I could get the disk platters in and out.Try a (pcb) logic board /printed circuit board swap first.
Practice on dead or low cost drives first.
practice with T5 to T9 star/Torx driver and snap ring tool to disassemble the drives.
Make the target drive FAT32 or EXT2/EXT3, not NTFS.
Have a computer with a CD, a CDR and a FAT32, EXT2/EXT3 hard drive as big or bigger than the drive you
Posted at 9:10 pm on Feb 8th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
S.O.S. HELP! HELP! HELP! Very afraid after reading posts that I did further, possibly unrecoverable damage… chronology of events:
Computer: Dell Latitude CPx Laptop, 20G HD.
OS: Win2k
1. Took out keyboard (tried to clean before replacing).
2. Replaced keyboard. Went to boot. Windows rebooted over and over several times. Worked as usual and turned down.
3. Powered up next day. Blue Screen of Death.
4. Error message: Windows could not find file…SYSTEM/SECURITY. and “system hive error”.
5. Ran Norton Emergency Boot… said virus found but unable to repair.
6. Ran downloaded boot repair and purchased recovery software. Both wouldn’t load.
7. Ran Windows Recovery Console… at first, recognized O.S…. but after several starts / stops with all of the above… no longer.
8. New message: 0×0000007B 0×81867910,0xC0000102, etc. & INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
9. Took to Best Buy Geek squad… at first, agreed w/ my assumption that sounded like virus. (I was thinking it was a virus in the boot sector… oh, had also created new boot record)
10. Then told it was a bad platter after running diagnostics and nothing recoverable…
QUESTION IS: How reliable is Best Buy diagnostics??? Can I still send to place w/ clean room??? Have found 2 reasonably priced…
No whirring, whizzing, whining, or any noises of any sort before I removed the keyboard and used canned air… could this have done something??? Did my constant rebooting while trying to fix what I thought was a virus done too much damage??? ****My next step was going to be attach the drive as a slave to another machine… after reading posts, that should have been first step… but, again, never suspected drive nor did MS tech support area lead me to believe it was the drive??? IS ALL HOPE LOST??? Sorry for long post. Any suggestions, ideas, admonishments, public flogging appreciated.
Posted at 2:14 am on Feb 14th, 2006 by liquidpaper
Question 1 , did the laptop work ok before you took it apart ?.
Question 2 , did you
Posted at 11:43 am on Feb 14th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
anon gort…
Thanks for reply.
Q.1: Everything worked just fine until removed keyboard and cleaned keyboard and other areas w/ canned air.
Q.2: Did not attempt reformat or reload of any software… (data too precious)
…. purchased new harddrive for laptop (just to get it up and running) that came w/ 2.5″ USB drive enclosure… was going to use that…
Sooo… will try the other steps and let you know…
Posted at 2:39 pm on Feb 14th, 2006 by liquidpaper
I had a hard drive in a laptop crash, but it was still under warrantee. I had to save the information without taking the hard drive out (otherwise warrantee void…) I tried a plethora of methods, including Linux Live-CDs. Linux could recognize the drive, but couldn’t mount it, and I didn’t have any recovery tools that would work under linus. Eventually I found a way to create a Windows “live-CD”: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
I was able to recover my data, and sent the laptop in for a replacement.
(The next two replacements had various problems too and finally got a different brand with the third……what a mess. Don’t buy an Averatec laptop!!!)
Posted at 1:24 pm on Feb 15th, 2006 by steve
If a multi-platter drive has only one read channel, then aligning platters to each other probably doesn’t matter a lot, because only one head is active at a time. A head selector connects the desired head to the read channel, apparently.
I once revived a stuck Hardcard drive by whacking the drive housing so the platter’s inertia made it lag behind, as the housing rotated around the platter. Once unstuck, the drive ran fine. Didn’t have to hit it hard.
I’m amazed that HDs can work after being opened in ordinary (but clean) rooms. Perhaps any ordinary dust is so big that it can’t possibly fit between head and platter!
salvage:
Head actuator bearings are just peachy, for building precision mechanisms. Platter spin motor also has lovely bearings, but they are hard to get at. Yes, the magnets for the head actuator ar wonderful. Wear gloves, so you won’t get pinched (as badly :) ), if you take them apart.
Good luck, folks!
Posted at 3:07 am on Feb 19th, 2006 by Nicholas Bodley
I was using a 30GB Toshiba 2.5″ HD in an external enclosure to store photos when It bounced off a bunk bed and wouldn’t work anymore. I’ve 9GB of pictures that I hope to recover by swapping the disks to another Toshiba HD, almost the identical model. Then I’ll copy the files to an internal HD with plenty of free space. I’ve been practicing on a couple of IBM 2.5′ 60GB HDs. A couple of questions
Should I format the good drive where I plan to place my platters?
DOes one use some sort of a tool to handle the platters?
Removing the top platter is easy. Should I try it alone first?
Posted at 7:35 pm on Feb 20th, 2006 by Walt Carnahan
This is all very fascinating. Possibly educational? Thanks to everyone for posting here.
I’m about to throw my Toshiba 40G (MK4026GAX) laptop hd into the freezer w/ fingers crossed, of course. The drive crashed today (scratching and clicking noises; faliure to read error upon attempt to boot, etc.), after only 5 months of use. Has any one tried gutting one of these? If so, any success? I have a relatively small amount of very important info that I would really like to recover (~1 month of law school notes). Does anybody have any other suggestions regarding this type of drive that do not involve spending several hundred dollars?
Thanks again folks
Posted at 10:29 pm on Feb 23rd, 2006 by s
Hi,i’m the 75 gig IBM deskstar guy. Thanks for setting up an AIM alias to help. I actually just got my replacement drive, same model, serial numbers etc on the new identical drive. I’ve practiced thus far on a 20 gig drive. Have a couple of question. How did you remove and then handle the platers once the screws holding them in were removed from the rotor?
Can you touch the edges of the platers if using gloves? What kind of gloves do you recomend i use? thanks for your help.
Posted at 10:58 pm on Feb 23rd, 2006 by Pedro
The photo # 1 and # 3 shows a bent tweezes , I took a clean pair of tweezes and bent the edges as shown..
First platter was easy, came right out second platter required a tilt as it came out. To install the platter I just reversed
Posted at 9:56 pm on Feb 24th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
I recovered a Maxtor ARES C64K drive that was 20gigs. It had a single platter with a single read head. Initially, I thought the circuit board was bad, so I bought 2 identical drives to swap with. Didn’t work.
So, I removed the platter from one of my new drives and placed the platter from my broken drive inside. It took a couple of tries to get the platter lined up correctly (there was a lot of vibration) and the disk would POST. Remarkably, I recovered 100% of the data I was looking for and the rest of the directory structure was about 80% recoverable.
$21 on ebay for 2 broken drives with the identical firmware.
Not bad for no clean room and no gloves. Did it in my basement :)
Posted at 11:38 am on Feb 27th, 2006 by Dan
The freezing method doesn’t work on my 200 GB maxtor diamond plus 9 hard drive. The cold temperature only delayed the clicking/clunk (it looks like that the voice coil actuator starts to work only when the platrers spin up to a certain velocity). Carefully listen the clicking/clunks and they are likely from the position of voice coil actuator (enlightened by the detailed inlustration of http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/177). But still don’t know what’s wrong inside the hdd. Why the arm keeps swinging back and forth without settle in its ready position? The read-write head is dead? How poor am I! Looking for an identical drive for future swapping parts like what is said above.
Posted at 1:46 am on Feb 28th, 2006 by haitao
Dan…
Thank you for the feedback on the
Maxtor 20gig ARES C64K drive.
Am happy you got your data back.
Posted at 8:54 pm on Feb 28th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
hi, great resources here. I have a maxtor Diamondmax 80Gb plus 9. power surge killed the motor (or the motor control chip?) it does not spin. After buying a replacement drive, and swapping the pcb..no dice. Now it spins, and the bios sees it, but the heads crash. I was told that the firmware needs to be reloaded, and that the mfr’s always keep a redundant copy of the firmware stored in an aternate location on the drive firmware chip.
My question: is this possible, and if so, is there a way to reloade this firmware, or reinitialize it?
I’m at my wits end, and about ready to open the drive and start swapping the platters.
How do you remove the platters, without damaging the surface and the platter heads?
Do the platter heads automatically adjust the proper tolerance between the plater surface, or do we not have to worry about the space, as most platter heads seem to be mounted on flexible metal.
thx!
Posted at 3:56 pm on Mar 3rd, 2006 by basscleff
#120: your donor drive must be IDENTICAL to your crashed drive — model and firmware #s must match.
Firmware is loaded at the factory and cannot be changed, but i could be mistaken.
Your best bet is platter transplant, which is what I’m currently facing (fried motor or seized bearing).
But once again, donor must be identical.
——–
Now, my own questions are :
Has anyone had any experiences with Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB disk (IDE). It has 2 platters and I wonder if they must be aligned dead on.
Worst comes to worst, I’ll buy a brand new one ($80), populate it with data, skew platter alignment and then see if data is still readable. I figure a worthwhile experiment vs $3,000 bill by data recovery Co.
Posted at 11:42 am on Mar 4th, 2006 by HHH
I just want to ask a question.
I tried desperately to recover my data on my HDD. Intially, it was just a problem of me dropping the harddisk. Without any knowledge prior to trying to fix it, I opened my HDD and let dust went inside, and I also took out the “platters”. I touched the platters several times with my bare hands. On top of the above, I even moved the position of the “heads”. At the end, I put everything back together, I even tried to clean the dust myself using primitive tools, i.e. soft fine cloth. (It was very late at night and I was very desperate to get my HDD fixed, I couldn’t call noone for help so I decided to take a look at it myself.)
I just want to know, after I’ve done all those stupid things, is it still POSSIBLE to have ANY of the data recover from that drive?? This drive is a multi-platters drive (250Gb Maxtor). PLEASE HELP ME, I really want to get the data back from that HDD!! I am willing to pay anything to just recover SOME of the data on it!
Posted at 1:21 pm on Mar 6th, 2006 by Desperateman
hi if anyone can help me with this i would really appreciate an email! – bpm105@hotmail.com.
i have a laptop with a 30gig toshiba drive. I came to turn it on yesterday and, despite the drive spinning up and making healthy noises, the system hung at the XP startup screen and windows would not load. i removed the drive and transferred it to a 2.5″ backup case and attempted to read it by plugging it into another machine via usb. this works…although unfortunately not on the main partition – just on the remaining two, which work fine and can be accessed and written to without a problem. the main partition however, is apparently ‘corrupt and unreadable’ according to the box displayed every time i attempt to access it in my computer. the hdd spins as well as ever and is not making any strange noises etc. does anyone have any thoughts as to what this might be or any suggestions as to anything i can try? i’d really appreciate an email if you could help!
Posted at 8:08 pm on Mar 6th, 2006 by bennyb
#122
even if you scratched the platters, data should still be recoverable but it won’t be cheap. Especially in the case of such big drive, you’re looking at thousands.
Look up Action Front or Ontrack in google.
Posted at 10:01 pm on Mar 8th, 2006 by HHH
This is a great article. Also, the comments, #75 especially were very good.
A few answers to some of the questions. I picked up a entire set of 33 piece security bits kit, including torx security bits for $13 at the local ACE Hardware store.
To sum this article up. If your HD is already gone, what have you got to lose by trying? Most of us cannot afford the $1000+ fee for professional recovery, and from what’s been posted above, they will do the same things as this article has suggested. So back up your data, and then give this a shot.
-Binx
After replacing the platters and hard drive spinning, the bios and OS will not recognize the hard drive. Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks,
Posted at 7:47 am on Mar 10th, 2006 by est1712
Could someone please:
1) illustrate what a “snap ring tool” is by providing a link to a web site that sells one
2) describe *exactly* how the “snap ring tool” is used in this process (hard drive platter swap)
Posted at 11:18 pm on Mar 11th, 2006 by frank
#1
snap ring tool , look for
Posted at 9:12 pm on Mar 12th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
anonymous Gort, have you tried this procedure on newer high density drives? ( 100GB+ )
I think the tolerance and measurements are much smaller.
On the other hand, embedded servo is nice – I was playing with old drives and found platters can be put on completely out of alignment, and still, everything will work.
Posted at 12:57 am on Mar 13th, 2006 by sphinx
to # 129 , sphinx
did the 20gb laptop drive.
working on a 20gb Pc IDE now.
Posted at 1:51 am on Mar 13th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
Hey, I droped a disk lastnight and thought I was sunk, but after reading through some of this, I took it, thumped each side hard (not real hard) on a book. It’s working, backed up, and running like nothing ever happend.
Thanks for your help!
Posted at 10:36 am on Mar 14th, 2006 by Rick
Anonymous Gort, let me know how itgoes… from whatever little tinkering i did, I see heads are extremely fragile – those little “pads” keep breaking off when i insert the platters.
1) Do you have a tool or technique for carefully sliding the disk between the heads?
2) how do you remove the metal plate over coil assy, without the arm dancing all over and scratching the platter? the freaking magnet is a pain!
Thanks
Posted at 8:05 pm on Mar 14th, 2006 by sphinx
I have an 80gb IBM Deathstar that died (stopped spinning, no clunk noises). So I just got another hard drive on ebay, same model number and everything, BUT there was a different Part Number. I swapped teh boards, and now the drive spins up but cannot be detected at all by the computer, either by the BIOS or Windows. Is there anything I can do with these drives, or are they totally incompatible. Like I said, visually, they are exactly the same, except for the part number. Augh, so frustrating.
Posted at 1:26 am on Mar 15th, 2006 by AC
ho guys I burnt a chip an pcb(the green piece) of my hard drive. is it replaceable with one of the same model?
Posted at 8:08 am on Mar 20th, 2006 by Elisa
I have a hdd what has been fallen off from the table. Database’s hdd is very important for me. I want to recovery this data but i’m living in the country poor – VietNam.
Anyone could help me? Please get the advice to mail: Hoangcamapas@gmail.com
Should i send the hdd to another country to recovery it?
Posted at 5:53 am on Mar 21st, 2006 by Hoang
I have a failed hard drive with 20,000 plus mp3s on, i ama dj, the control logic board has blown, cooked threw a microchip, anyone tell me where i might obtain a replacment control board for a maxtor maxline 2 250 gig ata drive.
im sure the data is fine just the logic boards cooked, im on uk.
fault was caused by overheating after external drive case fan stopped.
Tim.
I have a toshiba laptop hd which is 30 gigs. model MK3018GAS it was making a grinding noise / spinning down then spinning back on. I got a few blue screens. Thought it was the laptop fans and it wasnt… After listening and hearing the HD spin and then not spin.. So…. The hd spins up makes a grindy like noise like something is given out… Then it stops spinning after a few seconds it comes back on and then no more…. Not sure what I should do. It came up to win xp then it stopped spinning, is it a dead motor or something?. any suggestions?. email me master_of_a_million_styles at yahoo dot com
Posted at 4:41 am on Mar 23rd, 2006 by phraze!
I have a similar issue. I have had success with 3 of 5 attempts at freezing hdd’s. I have a different hdd now and freezing wouldn’t allow it to spin up. I am also looking at purchasing an identical hdd and attempting to replace parts trying to get data off. I am wondering as with one question earlier, is there a good way to get the arm off of the platter and back on. I am seeing that when attempting to manually spin my platter using a torx driver there is a scratching noise telling me that the arms are touching the platter to much. I am thinking if I purchase an identical drive and replace the arm onto the platter maybe this will take care of the issue thus allowing me to get the data off. I am just not sure of the best way to remove and replace the arm as the ends of the arm always move together when not having the platter seperate them. Any help would be appreciated.
Posted at 4:05 pm on Mar 23rd, 2006 by Steve
I have a Seagate 160gb hard drive with a fried chip on the circuit board. Does anyone know where to get replacement circuit boards? The drive is still under warranty but I am reluctant to send it to them for fear of losing the data.
Your help and thoughts are appreciated. Email me with any sources for logic boards.
Robert
Posted at 2:23 am on Mar 25th, 2006 by robert
I had a large Maxtor drive with a very important document on it (worth 25,000 usd) fail. I read the initial posts about platter replacement. I seriously considered going this route so I continued reading for fail/success/advice posts. Came across many different ways to get the drive back up. The freezer deal scares me the most. It’s a hit or miss (or should I say total destruction) with this method. How cold? How long to leave it in? Is your freezer colder than mine? Too many unknown variables in this equation for me. I can see how this will work for ‘frozen’ parts such as arms and other moving metal parts. When the metal freezes, it contracts and thus may free up a stuck part. However, if you leave it in too long, you can end up with condensation (which we all know is water) in your hard drive.
Luckily for me, Microcenter had a sale on these drives and I purchased two at that time. I took the board off the good one and placed it on the failed unit and voila. ALL data retrieved. No need to ruin the platters with contamination or water.
I understand that different situations call for different remedies but, ALL remedies should begin with the same simple element – a coherent thought process.
Happy recovering.
Posted at 12:56 pm on Mar 26th, 2006 by JAMAN
# 139 – See if you can do an advance swap for the drive at Seagate. That would allow you a few days to get it done on your own time. The only drawback to this method is the FW versions btwn the two drives. Hopefully they will match.
Posted at 1:29 pm on Mar 26th, 2006 by jaman
Hey does anyone know how to take the head, in the new hdd, off the patter and then put the head back on the old platter? When i am practicing with a new working hdd i am taking the head off the platter then just putting it back on the same platter. When i power the hdd up the head starts clicking. What am i doing wrong?
Thanks everyone.
Posted at 3:08 pm on Mar 30th, 2006 by matt
I have a Wester Digital WD400 portable hardrive.There’s lot of data inside.Unluckyly, one day the hardrive was fall, and a few days later all the data and partition inside was gone.
Could you give me a few tips how to retrive my data back?Tq
Posted at 9:32 pm on Mar 31st, 2006 by Invince_Z
i didn’t see anyone mention a trick that worked for me once. i took a laptop drive out, with an adapter, attached it to an open pc. at boot up, while it was trying to start, i spun it, (while keeping it level – more like a flick of the wrist) a few times and it started and mounted, which it wouldn’t do before. i recovered the important stuff just by copying files! might be worth a try, instead of hitting a drive, when it won’t spin up. i think it was a bearing issue.
Posted at 4:12 am on Apr 4th, 2006 by pal
Attempted to fix a 40 Gig Maxtor Diamondmax plus.
Tried 10 different PCBs and a few different cables.
Took 2 nonworking 40 Gig Maxtor s apart for practice.
Then moved the platter to a good drive.
Made the same seek sound the rest (6) made.
The drive has 1 head and 1 platter, when I looked under it the surface was bad.
I think the
Posted at 1:32 am on Apr 6th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
Will this void my warranty?
Posted at 10:31 pm on Apr 6th, 2006 by bob dilon
yes it will void your warranty you er.. uneducated person.
good article, interesting ideas, i needed to recover data from laptop drives, although i dont know where to get the damned screwdrivers, cant buy them locally, maybe online..
yeh
Posted at 7:53 am on Apr 9th, 2006 by alexei joukovski
The freezer method worked very well for me.
Posted at 5:46 pm on Apr 11th, 2006 by Oleg
This might be an obvious one but I have been told by a data recovery place that my drive’s firmware is messed up. Is it risky to change the board that has the firmware? I suspect not since the only board I know of on HD’s is external. Just wondering thanks. Its a Seagate 200GB 7200RPM ATA133.
Posted at 8:07 pm on Apr 11th, 2006 by RAzOR
Since this seems to still have been an active topic relatively recently, I’ll give this a shot. Would like to pull the data from my old Amiga SCSI drives (yes, I’ve got an Adaptec SCSI controller on a PC here), but the boot drive seems to have died in storage. It makes no sound upon startup, but the LED comes on so I think it’s just the motor. Any suggestions? How do I properly mount the drives so they can be read (I’m open to either Winbloz- or Linux-based solutions)? And how do I make a disk image from them that’ll work in UAE?
Posted at 2:26 am on Apr 21st, 2006 by CaptainBrowncoat
CaptainBrowncoat
is the “boot” drive the one with the data. ?
can you boot the Pc with a live CD like Knoppix 3.9.
knoppix mounts the drives “read only: at boot up.
also put a target SCSI drive to put the data on.
remove any drives with OS or data you want to keep.
I set up a AIM name of “anonymous Gort” to help. Put “Amiga SCSI drives,” in the message so I know its you.
Posted at 7:46 pm on Apr 21st, 2006 by anonymous Gort
I had a client with a Thinkpad 20GB drive die and they didn’t have any backup.
I ordered two drives exactly the same as the dead one on eBay.
I swapped circuit boards and it would power-up but wasn’t recognized.
I tested opening one drive for practice to see what to expect inside.
I wasn’t sure how the platters were aligned, so I decided to swap the electronics instead. I removed the heads, arms and electronics from the good drive and put them into the bad drive. Very tricky trying to get 4 heads around the two disks! I didn’t have a clean room, just a clean desk.
I didn’t get the drive-lock parts in place but hoped that they weren’t required.
I was sure that it wouldn’t work, but when it powered up, I used a USB adapter with WinXP and copied all of the necessary files across.
Several times the drive would time-out and/or die on me, but after repeated attempts I managed to get everything off.
I hadn’t found this article until after I finished. Funny that he swapped platters and I swapped components.
Alternatively, there are many companies that can recover your data (www.datarecoverycanada.com) but they are expensive.
My client will be very happy to learn that their data has all been recovered.
The next step is to ensure their network is properly secured and backed up.
Posted at 12:24 am on Apr 22nd, 2006 by Kevin roosdahl
I had a client with a Thinkpad 20GB drive die and they didn’t have any backup.
I ordered two drives exactly the same as the dead one on eBay.
I swapped circuit boards and it would power-up but wasn’t recognized.
I tested opening one drive for practice to see what to expect inside.
I wasn’t sure how the platters were aligned, so I decided to swap the electronics instead. I removed the heads, arms and electronics from the good drive and put them into the bad drive. Very tricky trying to get 4 heads around the two disks! I didn’t have a clean room, just a clean desk.
I didn’t get the drive-lock parts in place but hoped that they weren’t required.
I was sure that it wouldn’t work, but when it powered up, I used a USB adapter with WinXP and copied all of the necessary files across.
Several times the drive would time-out and/or die on me, but after repeated attempts I managed to get everything off.
I hadn’t found this article until after I finished. Funny that he swapped platters and I swapped components.
Alternatively, there are many companies that can recover your data (www.datarecoverycanada.com) but they are expensive.
My client will be very happy to learn that their data has all been recovered.
The next step is to ensure their network is properly secured and backed up.
Posted at 12:25 am on Apr 22nd, 2006 by Kevin roosdahl
I really need a clue…without going into a lot of history my Dell laptop hard drive failed to boot. I recieved and installed a new drive and am now trying to recover my data from the old drive. I have attached my old drive to my laptop with a USB 2.0 case but my new drive cannot see the external drive. What am I doing wrong? Please help if you can. You are all appreciated for sharing your knoweledge.
Posted at 12:35 am on Apr 22nd, 2006 by mgal
I am trying to swap platters with two 18G Seagate SCSI SCA Cheetah HDDs (ST118202LC).
I came home one day to find my power out and server off. I got power back, but upon powering up the server, the HDD never came up. After trying the freezing, knocking the corner on the desk bit, no luck. Finally I decided to buy 5 identical drives from ebay.
Got them in the mail, put on the new boards, and they all allowed the drive to spin up, but nothing could be read… the system could not read it at all. So now I am thinking the heads are bad and want to swap the platters to a good drive.
I got everything apart and the cover off, however I cannot figure out how to get the platters off. There was a torx screw to release the head mechanism, but the heads wont come up without the platters.
So my question is, how do I release the platters from the case? There is a C-Clip on the top most plater which came off, but the platter is still tightly held. I am assuming now that the heads are mounted as one unit, and they must be removed as such.
There is a set of three holes in the exterior of the case, the center part of the heads, where the spindle is. It looks like I may need some special tri tipped type tool to remove/unscrew this “core” piece?
Can anyone offer help with this particular model of drive? TIA!
Posted at 1:13 am on Apr 24th, 2006 by viperccp
I am trying to swap platters with two 18G Seagate SCSI SCA Cheetah HDDs (ST118202LC).
I came home one day to find my power out and server off. I got power back, but upon powering up the server, the HDD never came up. After trying the freezing, knocking the corner on the desk bit, no luck. Finally I decided to buy 5 identical drives from ebay.
Got them in the mail, put on the new boards, and they all allowed the drive to spin up, but nothing could be read… the system could not read it at all. So now I am thinking the heads are bad and want to swap the platters to a good drive.
I got everything apart and the cover off, however I cannot figure out how to get the platters off. There was a torx screw to release the head mechanism, but the heads wont come up without the platters.
So my question is, how do I release the platters from the case? There is a C-Clip on the top most plater which came off, but the platter is still tightly held. I am assuming now that the heads are mounted as one unit, and they must be removed as such.
There is a set of three holes in the exterior of the case, the center part of the heads, where the spindle is. It looks like I may need some special tri tipped type tool to remove/unscrew this “core” piece?
Can anyone offer help with this particular model of drive? TIA!
Posted at 1:34 am on Apr 26th, 2006 by viperccp
As i work for a computer repair company, i often find placing a failing hard drive in the fridge for a few days allows it to boot for a short while, thus allowing you to connect it as a slave and get the data off as quick as possible. Im not saying it works everytime, but it does often!
Posted at 4:25 pm on Apr 26th, 2006 by jiggaman
Holding my breath for some good news here… my WD 80gb external hard drive won’t be recognized on my computer… I think what I did wrong was I plugged my 19V power cord (from my laptop) into the 12V port on the WD drive – just a stupid mistake – it lights up but no spinning noise, did I fry it by just plugging the 19V in briefly???
Can I fix it and/or get the info transfered off it in ANY way?
Please let me know, thanks a lot!!!
Posted at 7:04 pm on May 15th, 2006 by Derek graddock
# 158 Derek graddock
1. try to put the WD 80gb external hard drive in a computer via a cable.(take it out of case and use IDE cable)
2. order a drive exactly the same as the dead one.
try to swap the circuit board into the dead drive.
( you may have fried the circuit board)
# 153 Kevin roosdahl, good job.
Posted at 10:57 pm on May 16th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
#158: “did I fry it by just plugging the 19V in briefly???”
HD’s contian delicate electronics; accidentally sending 60% more voltage through it than it is used to can easily fry components. Even for just a second, damage was probably done. But, sometimes you can get lucky. It sounds like you didn’t. I just realized a little while ago my router was using a 12V power supply when it’s only rated for a 9V one. (OCd my router ^_^)
It’s amazing how many crashed/frozen hd’s are wd. After reading through this post I currently have my wd600 sitting in the freezer wrapped in glad wrap and will try a recovery tomorrow. This hd has my only record of hundreds of photos of two weddings. Fool me used a hd as a backup of the camera’s memory.
My question is why do you have to use knoppix (or similar) to read/transfer the data if the hd is up and working, if only for a short time?
Another question (if it’s not considered OT), what’s everyone’s opinion on reliable/non-reliable hd’s?
Posted at 4:28 am on May 20th, 2006 by Nordo
I have frozen HDs on many occasions with success. Sometimes you have to freeze it a couple of times to get all of the data off.
AS to why it works, I dont really know. I do know that we use component cooler to isolate defective ICs on circuit boards. This is just cooling all of them.
Posted at 9:30 am on May 21st, 2006 by dRfEL
I put my wd600 in the freezer overnight, and it worked !!!! Got all the data i wanted.
i then put another old hd in the freezer, and got all the data i wanted off it as well !!!!!!
my only problem was i had trouble accessing the personal documents and settings. using knoppix, i found i still couldn’t copy them over, but i could burn the data to a cd. perfect!!!
Posted at 7:06 am on May 22nd, 2006 by Nordo
Okay I’m going to try the freezing operation on my seagate 160gb barracude. The only thing was it was making clicking nosies, now after reading everything that was on this site, I will try this first and come back with the resulest in some time. The only thing that I hope is that I won’t have to come down to send my hard-drive off to get it repaired. All in all you think that not backing up your system is bad, imagine losing about $12,000 dollars worth of programs (not saying how I got them) but still. BACK UP EVERYTHING, I just had to learn the hardway.
Posted at 11:30 am on May 24th, 2006 by Chris fallen paladin
Hi
I have a WD1200JB-75CRA0 and i think its the pcb there are tosted ….
(it doesnt spin up, just sits there like a dead drive, saying “we ant got any power capitan”)
but anyway… i have a drive almost like the broken one, and if i switch the pcb out, then i can hear the drive is spining, but i cant see the drive at the POST.
Soo the big question is …. where do i get a pcb that will fit for this hard drive ?
Posted at 11:13 am on May 31st, 2006 by Gizz
Thanks for the suggestions for my wd80gb external hd… no luck yet… I tried:
1. try to put the WD 80gb external hard drive in a computer via a cable.(take it out of case and use IDE cable)
But still no power to spin up the motor – I’m guessing my last resort is to order the identical one (i found it) and try to switch out the pcp boards…? Is that difficult – any sites I can go to for directions…
Suggestions? Is all this talk about freezing and option for my situation? Thanks a ton
Posted at 9:41 am on Jun 1st, 2006 by Derek Graddock
Okay, I have a western digital. On boot I get the dreaded strike F1 to reboot F2 to enter setup. I tried a new cmos battery with no luck.
I set the drive in another computer as a slave but the computer did not find or recognize it. I booted with a win 98 boot disk. Using fdisk I get a reply no fixed disks present. On occassion I get a clicking from the hard drive, however, most of the time it makes no sounds. Any ideas how to read it to get the data off it? Will the freezer trick work? How about throwing it off a very tall building?
Posted at 11:33 am on Jun 1st, 2006 by JIM
Swapping guts between harddrives can be done… I did it once with a old old pair of RRLL HDD and it worked… The second time I tride doing it with another pair of HDD I failed…
Posted at 8:22 pm on Jun 1st, 2006 by Grey rabbit
I have seen the question come up a number of times with no answer,
How do you get the heads back on the platters.
I have two IBM 18.2 SCSI drives that are crashed, one about 4 years ago that I shelved. The other is the same size but a older model IBM. I purchased three identical drives of the first model(3 platters 5 heads) for practice. This is all before I came across this article. I chose to replace the head unit. I destoryed two head units in practice but think i can get it right the third time. This model had a plastic piece just off the platters where the heads parked. This piece had spacers to guide the heads back on the platters. This configuration would make it easy to replace the platters since the heads do not rest on them
I also purchased an identical drive of the older model(5 platters 10 heads) and took it apart(since it was DOA even tho the guy sold it to me as “working”) This drive though apears to park its heads on the outer edge of the platter. Sliding the heads off after removing a retaing pin is easy, though does not sound that good. My concern is getting them back on the platters(it appears I need to hold 5 delicate heads apart while I move them onto the platters.
Anyone had any experience here, or know how this is done.
Posted at 2:59 am on Jun 2nd, 2006 by dave
I have WDC 320gb ide drive, (wd3200JB). I backed up customers hdd to it using True Image, then wiped their machine and reprogramed.
You guessed it! The drive is mechanically dead now and my customers thousands of pictures lost.
My shop drive was in warranty and a replacement is on the way. There is no click of death and the drive just won’t spin up. Seems a good possibility that the problem is on the pcboard.
Now I’m reading that replacing the pcboard may not work even if that’s where the problem lies – different firmware or timeing issues or some such.
My question is…..
Should I not even try the board replacement?
Will Western Digital catch the fact I jiggered with the drive I will be returning? There are no telltales that I can see on the circuit board – there are on the platter enclosure. (Is there a secret telltale that will flag the pcboard removal?)
Is there any possibility that the pcboard won’t work on its home drive when I put it back? I’d hate to ruin a good drive in a possibly vain attempt to save data on a bad drive.
Posted at 3:31 pm on Jun 6th, 2006 by Steve Garrison
Help would be greatly appreciated–great post, and I’m trying something very similar; the data I am attempting to recover is several years’ worth of novel. Don’t even ask about the backups–this is one long list of bad luck!
History: Scsi from 93 (out of a mac lcIII), ceased working after a move in the car–the drive simply no longer worked (it spins up and down, unreadable). Logic board switches with ebay-purchased boards have proved that it’s the guts that are the issue (the other drives run on the original’s electronics). Upon opening the drive, I’ve found that the heads (two, one above and one beneath) were -not- in the locked position, perhaps from the transit; however, even with it in the locked position now, it still won’t work.
Issue: If the heads have been touching the surface of the platter, and swinging all over it, for God knows how long, then will the heads and the platter be destroyed (i.e. data is lost) or will just the heads be destroyed, or neither?
In addition, each time I take apart one of the ebay drives and put it back together, it ceases working as well. Is this because I’ve let the heads touch the surface? If so, how does one keep them from touching the surface during a platter switch?
Any help is greatly, greatly appreciated. I can be contacted at AlphaFeralWolf@Gmail.com
Thanks, and again, good information, thanks!
Posted at 11:51 am on Jun 11th, 2006 by Mac Drive
…. For years I’ve been trying to get this to work.
And my 360-page novel… is BACK!!!
Guess what? Freezing your hard drive works. It really, really works. I’d had the case open and looked at the naked platter, and yet I’ve still managed to get the file saved from the scsi!
Thanks so much to everyone who suggested this!!
Posted at 4:56 pm on Jun 11th, 2006 by Mac Drive
i have a Maxtor DiamondPlus 60 40GB drive that died a while back. It was OEM equipment in a Dell Dimension 8100 system which froze and then blue screened in a lightning related incident (had several electronic devices affect as did all my neighbors). Upon reboot, system could not find a valid boot device. BIOS could not auto-detect the drive. The drive was swapped out for a new 160GB drive and the OS and programs were reloaded on the new drive to revive the system.
Now comes the fun part…recovery of content from the old drive.
When installed as a slave drive, the sick drive spins up but I hear this constant “click-clack” sound from the drive. It also prevents the BIOS from seeing the 160GB device as well. So it looks like the sick drive is hanging the IDE bus. Same thing happens when I try to use the drive in an external USB drive case.
I have another working Maxtor drive (same model number) on its way and I plan on swapping the controller PCB first. I do not have any dead drives to play with so if anyone knows where I can get some, please let me know (send mail to jjh_nj on yahoo, or post here).
My question is whether people think the PCB swap will work in this case. So far, I have not heard anyone explain the root cause for the symptom of a repetative “click-clack” noise from a drive that appears to spin up without any other grinding noises. The sound is obviously mechanical in origin, But is it due to a pure mechanical failure, or is it begin caused by electrical/firmware control problem?
Posted at 10:01 am on Jun 12th, 2006 by jimbo
question if i opened a hard drive and touched disk. is it ruined? totally or can i send it out to someone now to try to recover data?
Posted at 6:31 pm on Jun 14th, 2006 by john
I have 2 Maxtor 6Y120M0 HDs that won
Posted at 4:24 pm on Jun 23rd, 2006 by Mike
#172
Glad the 360-page novel is back.
Am adding
Posted at 7:22 am on Jun 26th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
do you have any ideas that how to replacing a hard drive from my computer? the model is sony-z1wamp1 laptop……….
Posted at 4:43 pm on Jun 29th, 2006 by eric
how to replace a laptop hard drive…
http://www.fonerbooks.com/laptop_1.htm
transfer data from current hard drive to new hard drive
http://www.bixnet.com/lapnothardri.html#where
Posted at 8:45 pm on Jun 30th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
I am probably stating the obvious and it is probably something many people take for granted but it is probably a good idea to make sure there is actually something wrong with a hard drive before trying to attempt any of the recovery techniques here that require physically altering the hard drive. I have seen it so manny times when someone I know would have problems reading a disk and be ready to buy a new drive (hard drive, cd rom, floppy drive, etc) when the problem was simply a loose connection or some sort of device conflict or whatever. I have noticed at least one person here mention putting the hard drive in another computer which I think is a good idea because there could be a problem with another hardware device that causes a problem reading the drive. I do not know a lot about hardware since I am mainly a programmer and usually let the engineers deal with the hardware (I am interested in hardware and sometimes add or replace parts but something like putting chips on a circuit board is way too complicated for me) but in any case a root cause analysis should be followed before doing anything that could potentially harm a piece of hardware. I would not like to see someone destroy a perfectly good hard drive with all of their valuable information on it simply because it did not seem to be working. Sorry if this may be useless or is in the slightest erroneous, but I find the inner workings of hardware quite fascinating even if I do not fully understand it; this is how I came across this article.
Posted at 11:34 pm on Jul 5th, 2006 by Jonathan
After a power surge, my Western Digital 250 gb hardrive can’t be recognized by the computer. Is this an issue with the logic board (controller board)? Will I have to switch out the platters and such, or can I just switch logic boards out with an identical hardrive?
Posted at 4:18 pm on Jul 6th, 2006 by ebdet2002
I’ve also had sucsess freezing the harddrive to get it back for a short while I retrieved about 3 gigs once and only a few files the next day before it died again for good. I believe the problem was the motor would not spin up to the proper rmp. the freezing might have contected the bearings enough to let it spin fast enough. but the motot sqeeled like a pig.
Posted at 4:56 am on Jul 13th, 2006 by Valence shell
I’m sorry. I have sympathy for somebody who may have lost some new data since their last backup. But those of you who whine about losing over a hundred gigs of data and looking for a solution to get it back. WHHAAAHH! If it was so important you should have backed it up. Yeah! I know you thought that little electronic device would never fail especially with moving parts in all:} Well guess ehat hard lesson learned consodering a cd, dvd, or even an external hard drive cost virtually nothing.
Posted at 9:46 pm on Jul 26th, 2006 by sc2171
Thanks to everyone for this great resource!
Can anyone comment on post# 121 – is it really impossible to update HD firmware in all cases? I’ve got a non-spinning (due to a drop) Hitachi Travelstar 30GB (model# ic25n030atmr04). I swapped the circuit board from another drive with the same model# and part#, and this fixed one problem – the drive now spins up – but now the BIOS does not recognize it.
I can see what I believe is the firmware number printed on a sticker on the board (different # on each board – probably why the BIOS did not recognize it), but I can’t find another board for sale with the same firmware# (most sellers do not post the firmware# in their ads).
So, my questions are as follows:
1. Can someone suggest an online retailer who is likely to carry the board I need, and who is also likely to post firmware numbers so that I know what I’m getting?
2. Has anyone ever had success in changing firmware on a HD circuit board, or is this out of the question? If possible, I would love to be able to just change the firmware on the working drive so that it matches that of the non-working drive.
Thanks again.
Posted at 1:26 pm on Aug 8th, 2006 by acidbasement
Hello there
The strangest thing happen to one drive that ive just bougth (second hand)Seagate ST3120026A Barracuda 120GB, when I plug it in for to the pc and sata cable the computer dindt turn on at all after several trys it turn on but next minute when I look there was a litle fire coming from the botom of the drive, ive turn the computer off and toke the drive out, then I notice a litle tiny chip or what that was looked totaly tosted, I pick it out clean the drive on the spot where the chip was then guess what? ive plug it back and it was stil working!!! I instaled the OS in it and is still working fine!!!
Did this ever happen to anyone?
Posted at 9:35 am on Aug 10th, 2006 by mANGAS
to acidbasement;
1. I just buy a lot of “bad” drives and take a chance on the ##
2. only info on changing firmware in HDD
is http://members.cox.net/steved64/mindstor/
its for a MindStor Digital Wallet,
may help you to see its procedure.
did you try the HDD on another computer, with an adaptor , with a linux OS or another windows OS.some say freezing works good. re read #47 ,179 ,85 and 109.
Posted at 6:35 am on Aug 11th, 2006 by anonymous Gort
Yes, I’ve tried the non-working drive on a few other computers (doesn’t spin up when power connected), and I also tried the working drive whose pcb I harvested (worked fine). The fact that the bad drive spins up when the good pcb is installed tells me that its own pcb is dead, which is something that freezing would not fix, based on my admittedly limited knowledge of HDD repair. But, since the BIOS doesn’t detect the now-spinning drive due to incompatible firmware, there’s probably no way for Linux or any OS to detect it either, is there?
I’ll do as you suggest and keep looking for bad drives, hoping to luck out. That firmware upgrade procedure looks a bit too intense for my faint heart. Thanks a bunch for all the suggestions.
Posted at 2:06 pm on Aug 11th, 2006 by acidbasement
when swapping PCB on HDD (logic board, what variables have to match:
1) board number
2) board firmware
3) Main IC…
4) HDD Part Number
do all these have to match, or not. which ones are/can be compatible?!
please email me at: noland@email.com
Posted at 3:19 am on Aug 13th, 2006 by Dmitry
Guys, I had luck with doing platter transplant surgury. See http://www.freewebs.com/bgotchall/index.htm
I’ve got a Western Digital250 hard drive that’s not recognised and not spinning. can anybody tell me which/where are the relevant numbers printed on the Hard drive and or pcb That i need to match if i (as if!!) am gonna do a pcb swap…pleasehelp….. any other ideas? Thanks
Posted at 7:30 am on Aug 15th, 2006 by gandrsoup
Hi,
I tried to swap logic boards of two identical seagate 30gb HDD, after the swap the hdd does not get detected.
Find below the config. of both the hdd
Hdd with fried logic board :
Model : ST93015A
Pn : 9Y1412-331
HDA PN NO : 100302056
date:04386
HP: 356013-002
fw: 4.07
cfg: nhm-04
ct: 27B39006CQ13LJ
Working HDD
Model : ST93015A
Pn : 9Y1412-331
HDA PN NO : 100302056
date:04353
HP: 356013-002
fw: 4.07
cfg: nhm-03
ct: 27B39006CPY4AR
As far as i can see the cfg no and the batch date are different. Is this the reason as why my logic board swap is not working.
please mail me at raghav_krs@yahoo.com
Thanks in advance.
Posted at 5:01 am on Aug 21st, 2006 by raghav
If you switch the diskes from the broken drive to one that spins do they have to be the same drive, because my conner drive stopped spinning and freezing it and tapping it does not work it will heat up but nothing spins and a need to transfer my music files to my new hard drive!
Posted at 11:56 am on Aug 21st, 2006 by Austin CAMPBELL
Some good comments and advice here..but be warned…This is very risky, but plausible. I tend to leave critical data to DTIDATA and DriveSavers, both companies have great affiliate programs. Do what you can without cracking the drive unless you have high degree of skill and experience. Don’t risk your customers data. If it’s your data..have at it..but it is always risky, even the pros have trouble some time.
I had an unbootable, clicking drive that all the “experts” said was definitely dead and unrecoverable other than by “experts” in a clean room. I read from data recovery sites and an article that claimed that the clicking sound was the head banging against the platters and that I would damage the data forever if I didn’t IMMEDIATELY stop trying to recover the data and send it to a special place that could do the data recovery. Sounded like a boatload of manure and my suspicions were confirmed when I read one data recovery place that said I wouldn’t have to pay them if they didn’t recover 100% of my data. Well for them to make that guarantee I knew it must be really rare to lose all your data. Then I read a lot of different stories like those posted here. One guy said he had routinely opened hard drives at his desk and was able to recover all the data from them, often with them running with an open face plate. Someone else mentioned that the CLICKING sound was actually the drive turning off and on. Well that seemed to make more sense than a crashed head. I tried freezing the drive three times but it didn’t work, win XP still didn’t recognize the drive. Neither did Linux. So I found the duplicate hard drive on Amazon and bought it and then switched the logic board from my “dead” drive with the new drive of identical model number and FIRMWARE number (important but often overlooked). It took less than a minute using a Torx screwdriver and removing four screws on each board. (Maybe an expert can do it in less than HALF a minute). The drive was now recognized by Win XP but still corrupted and unreadable. Used Easy recovery Pro and was able to recover 100% of my 200 gigs worth of files that I was told would be completely corrupted if I didn’t send it to the “pros”. My total cost: less than $50. The “pros” ESTIMATES (which they all said might be more once they evaluated it): $800-$2000. Nice scam going boys, but I hope others who can figure out the right end of a screwdriver do what I did and do a little research on how to do it yourself.
What I learned: a little patience and research (a lot of research actually) you can most likely recover you data from a dead drive.
What I also learned: never take the alarmist advice of âexpertsâ, especially when they are in the position to profit (a HUUUUGE profit) off your fears and panic.
Forgot to mention what killed my drive, a dying power supply that was creating havoc for a couple of days, spiking, etc. Power supplies are important, keep an eye on them!
Posted at 1:46 pm on Feb 25th, 2007 by zflynn
Hello there,
It seems I have at last discovered a web site with excellent people who do the oppersate of the general mill who say it cannot be done :)
I also have run up against a hard drive problem (who hasen’t) that has caused me grief in the past, the bit where a sector goes bad in the boot and FAT table areas.
My first question is, is there a program avaliable that can access the HD and write a new Boot and FAT information to the last sectors on a HD so the software can be recovered?
My second solution, if the Boot & FAT sectors are not recoverable, how can I still make the original HD work again?
I will put forward a thesis, maybe it will work, maybe not, however, if one dosent try, one will not know.
As we all know, when the platter with the fat goes bad we heave/throw the HD away, its history, so it won’t matter about the warranty, warning stickers etc etc.
The puritans will gasp, horror they say, they are the ones who never took a chance, got their feet dirty etc.
Make a clean room, you will need a large, cardboard box or anything that can form a box like shape.
You will need a light setup.
Get a clear plastic bag and tape it inside the box. Get all your tools you will need and surgical gloves, set up a computer fan and fit it with a air filter and make a hole in the rear of the plastic bag and box. Push the fan assembly halfway through the hole you just made, and tape/seal it.
Put everything you will need, tools, HD etc in the bag.
Put your hands in the gloves and get someone (wife) to seal the gloves with your hands inside them.
HEY did you go to the loo, you might be here for a couple of hours LOL.
I will explain this recovery procedure (which I have not done), gulp,(:[] with a hard drive which uses just 1 platter for simplicity.
Remember, the FAT and BOOT sector is on just 1 side of the platter, 0,0.
(We will call the side facing you the Red side).
Open the Hard drive, remove the platter assembly from the HD, Carefully, remove the platter fastening screws and then very gently, take the platter off the spindle shaft assembly.
Now carefully turn the platter (the red side)
so it is NOW upside down, and put it back on the spindle shaft.
Reassemble the platter onto the spindle.
Reassemble the assembly back inside the hard drive.
Now, there will by now be some of you who will realise that all the information on the platter will appear under the heads in the reverse order it originally was put there when it was working.
However, this exercise is not to recover the information that was originally on the Hard Drive, (you should have done this before, but to try and recover the HD so it will work again by moveing the bad sectors phisically.
Original platter was setup like this
[f.b......................][.........................]
By flipping the platter over it presents
the bad sectors like this.
[.........................][f.b......................]
This now gives a completly new area for the HD to write a new Boot & FAT table area on the platter :))
[0.0......................][x.x......................]
Scandisk will pickup the bad sectors and write a new bad sector table.
The original Boot and FAT sector/s which were at the beginning of the HD will now be in the middle of the hard drive. :)
When you turned the platter over, it presented the HD with a new area for the format software to write a new Boot and FAT table to a hopefully undamaged sector.
Now this is all theory mind you, but, what were the chances of the platter being assembled in the factory the way you just did it now? 50%.
Is either side of the platter any different in makeup to the other side? I believe not.
Now will it work? I don’t know, but if you have access to the software to wipe out the old format and can do it, then what’s holding you back?
Give it a go, just mabey you can resalvage your big HD and save yourself a few buck in the process.
However, please don’t hold me responsible if you do this to a good hard drive that has information on it you want to keep, as it may not work and you may damage it in the process.
And after trying this, it dosent work, well you havent lost anything, but if it does work, then let us all know.
Hope you succeed
the tinkerer.
Posted at 7:44 pm on Mar 3rd, 2007 by Jim D
That’s a great article. Fixing laptops is my job but I’ve never tried swapping hard drive guts for data recovery purposes. I thought you have to have a special super clean environment to do that and if a small piece of something gets inside the hard drive, it can cause a head crash.
I think it’s time to try it.
Posted at 12:23 pm on May 4th, 2007 by Laptop Repair Guy
I dont know if anyone still reads this. i think im in the same situation…dead harddrive, recovery companys want a couple of grand to fix it, thought i’d give it ago myself. i just wanna know how u make your “clean rooms”.
thanks
jack
Posted at 7:22 am on Jan 6th, 2008 by Jack Lindsay
OK i pluged in the wrong plug into my externial hd. Fried the power. I would like to get the information off of it but guys in my town want $400 to do it. only pics but still want it. Is there a way to swap out the power source to the drive or what else is there I can do.. If some one can help that would be great
Posted at 3:46 pm on Jan 28th, 2008 by MIKE JAGER
What I did for a test before working on the real hard disk is; remove the 2 platters from a laptop hard disk and put them back in, now the hard disk just clicks back and forth a few times and keeps on spinning but no longer tries to read the data. I did not align the platters, do you have to align the platters? if so how do you align the platters
I would not care about this hard drive but it was the one I was going to use for parts, now I have to order another one from over seas…
Posted at 6:39 am on Feb 4th, 2008 by michael
re: above message;
I think the problem was because I bent the heads on the readers. since then I have got another hard disk and pulled out the part to put in the bad one but it reads over the burnt section then goes back in to it cradle.
How do you align platters anyway?
Posted at 2:54 am on Feb 25th, 2008 by michael
i’ve heard that the really old hard drives had replaceable disks.
http://hackedgadgets.com/2007/09/28/huge-1gb-ibm-hard-drive/
http://hackedgadgets.com/2007/04/13/hard-drives-old-and-new/
Posted at 5:50 pm on Mar 26th, 2008 by t1gershark
Hi, I recently my hard drive stop working a few days ago. I accidently spilled a little sprite on my harddrive, since my cover is open to provide better ventilation. The hard drive is 2 months old.
My question is if the motherboard doesn’t pick up the drive, and no funny noise is heard from the hard drive, could one conclude that the logic board is fried, but the data is still intact?
Posted at 3:58 pm on Apr 29th, 2008 by Zane
Post #10, you really don’t know what you are talking about, I have done this successfully 5 times and not successfully 5 times!!!! If you have a single platter, no alignment is neccessary in most cases!!! What do you have a woodruff key on your cds??? Sorry google images woodruff key if your too thick!
Posted at 7:28 am on May 12th, 2008 by Andrew Eve
hello everyone
i replac my hard disk head and it not working !!! its head have dumy movment and not ditect .. and ….is it dead is anyone can help me pleac send me a messeg a im wating for help
thanks .
Posted at 4:30 pm on May 20th, 2008 by oliver
hi!
ive disassembled a hard drive, and i would like to know if it is possible to make it spin with a 9v battery and how should i do it.. thnx ::)
Posted at 4:12 pm on Jul 2nd, 2008 by morin
freezing??that’s something new to me…i have 2 def. laptop hdds and i would love to try that. how long should you freeze an hdd?? and how long will it stay alive when used?
Posted at 2:22 am on Jul 31st, 2008 by chiphazard
Hello All!
Please help me ….. It is possible anyware in this world to put the platters back if you move and separate them? I know the order but I don’t know the positioning. any chance to recoveri like that.. or to read one by one and put them together and then to recover the data? please help my .. send my an email on arsinte_andrei@yahoo.com.
Thanking you and best regards.
Andrew
Posted at 11:08 am on Dec 10th, 2008 by Arsinte Andrei
Try drive orientation:
After 5yrs of daily use, the PATA toshiba drive in my laptop refused to boot. I could see the first bootloader messages onscreen, but then only read errors. The drive made some ugly clunking and buzzing noises that made me think there were serious mechanical problems. I tried the freezer trick and was encouraged since it almost got to the login, but further freezer sessions did not do much. I tried putting the drive in a 2nd bay, but it was not recognized at all. It is very easy to remove the pcb on this drive (same model as here: http://www.freewebs.com/bgotchall/index.htm), so I removed, inspected and remounted the pcb. Everything looked OK.
Someone posted that the orientation of the drive might be a factor, so I used a USB enclosure and began powering it up in different positions (flat, upside down, on edge..). In most cases a drive letter would appear for the drive, but xP claimed it was unformatted, and no other tool could even see it. I then held the drive in a vertical position (connector end up), and when powered, the drive and folders were visible! I ran a quick scan with a recovery tool and it found no problems to fix. By carefully propping the drive in this vertical position, I was able to pull off what I needed and even do a complete image copy. The drive continues to work in this position despite the noises, but as soon as I put it in any other position it makes more angry noises and stops working.
I later saw on a drive recovery infomercial that all the drives in their lab are held in a vertical orientation. It’s definitely worth a try. From this experience I’d guess that serious platter damage is rare, and the drive is not going to degrade that quickly. I wouldn’t rush to open up that drive until you had tried all these other techniques.
Posted at 12:40 pm on Mar 28th, 2009 by tns
Where’s the article or video or blog…all I see is a pic, with 208 comments??????
Posted at 10:53 am on Apr 30th, 2009 by AKS
Same question : where can the article be seen? Thanks.
Posted at 4:29 am on May 17th, 2009 by Gaiel
Looks like a very useful article. I just cant find it or a link to it. Could somebody point me in the right direction please?
Posted at 12:32 am on Jul 9th, 2009 by Nic Wood
Read the article here…
Googling the first sentence resulted in a good link:
http://www.drownout.com/blogsavemyharddrive/2006/01/hard-drive-resurrection-hack-day.html
Posted at 7:03 pm on Aug 23rd, 2009 by Mike S
Ok, Lots of comments, some interesting and true some , well, whatever works for you.
I have watched 13 vids by scott moulton forensics expert on youtube visited his site myharddrivedied visited myrids of other sites and still one simple answer to what I would think is a simple question, what can be used to physically clean platters, doesn’t get answered?
Some have hinted at q-tipsand 99.99 isorypol alcohol. Is there something better to clean cappacino and window cleaner off a platter lol?
According to those vids, realinment of muliple platters is impossible as on micro off would not let the heads read as info is stored all the way down , although in another vid he shows a locking device that hold them together, I never have done it, but I woulds suggest watching those vids very strongly.
Posted at 12:18 am on Sep 12th, 2009 by jim emerson
No edit huh? sorry no s in would etc. What knid of alcohol? lol kind is a joke ok
Posted at 12:26 am on Sep 12th, 2009 by jim emerson
I just had a 1.5 TB hard drive that the spining motor just died, bought a second identical hard drive and put the 4 plates into the new one with god motor, now it spins but no reading, is there any way to allign the plates or just read each one appart or something, the data there is very important !!! please help !
Posted at 8:05 am on Sep 30th, 2009 by DAvid
Hi,
My 80gb Hitachi Deskstar fell may be 2 feet and now the hard drive does not even spin. I have put it in the freezer and I will try to get it going tonight. If that does not work, what are my options? I have some pictures of my kids from 10 years ago on it and would like to retrieve them. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Posted at 6:02 am on Oct 13th, 2009 by Hopefully Lucky
I have a 40gb ide toshiba drive which is out of my g4 powerbook,i can hear it spinning nice and smoothly,it doesn’t grind or make any out of the ordinary noises it’s even recognised when i connect it to my imac via a firewire caddy.it just keeps coming up as locked or the software i have used just freezes\stops responding .has anyone any ideas on any mac software i can use or what i can do…..thanks
Posted at 9:18 am on Nov 10th, 2009 by Turkish
Please can you help me out
i have a maxtor 80GB harddisk it used to work for sometime an lately it can not be detected by bios
i will really lyk to use it again
pls help me
Posted at 5:38 am on Nov 13th, 2009 by Nii
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i’ve also had alot of success with freezing the hard drive. take care not to let ice crystals form on it (…or inside it). it usually has a reduced read speed and it eventually stops working again, but freezing the drive gives you plenty of time to get the data off, or even boot from it if thats what gets you happy. i’ve tried this three times with success each time.
Posted at 11:14 am on Nov 17th, 2005 by jamil