Comments on: Hard drive resurrection

By: marina

marina — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:41:17 +0000

I was hoping someone could offer some suggestions — I have a Toshiba laptop HD (320gb) that isn’t being seen by windows and makes a click click click noise. It DOES spin and the arm does slide across, but seems to get stuck in the center and then tries a few times before it finally slides back to its resting position… I’ve tried everything I can think of — any suggestions? I really appreciate it… Thanks.

By: Muhammad

Muhammad — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:38:59 +0000

I am owning a Samsung 7200 rpm, 320GB hard disk and its not showing up in the bios after the power failure. I identified the damage in its board, so changed the board with another similar board and then identified that the platters inside the hard drive have pasted or locked together. The lock doesn’t seems to get released even though the hard disk starts on after changing the board and again the hard drive is not showing up in the bios. Please advice me on how i am gonna release the platters, is it OK if i release it manually with my hand or is there any other alternative methods to recover data?

By: jimmimcsandy

jimmimcsandy — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:06:06 +0000

I have a 320Gig WD IDE Drive – that.. started to act up.. BEFORE – any kind of S.M.A.R.T. warning (and i always have that turned on in the BIOS)- So i did the traditional CHKDSK /R – it said it found errors and fixed them :) – but.. the drive was still a lil wonky – realizing i had not thoroughly backed up everything on it.. i started backing up.. the remaining 1400-1500 files.. and low and behold.. – what should have only taken.. 15-20 minutes.. reported it was going to be several hours :( (sounded like a heat issue) – yet the drive had “breezy” air on allllll sides, don’t have any freeze spray…didnt want to take those risks..
HOWEVER :) – i do have another WD 320GIG Sata drive whose LOGIC BOARD LOOKS IDENTICAL (of course only 4 pair of drive select jumpers vs. the IDE Version that has 5 pair) .. orrrrrrrrr a slightly different looking.. 160 Gig WD IDE Card (contact points look the same)

MY FEAR – if i use the 160Gig Logic Card (WD) – it may only see / read – half of the disk :(

If i USE the SATA Card on a set of platters that were originally run as.. PATA (IDE) – is the whole drive at risk?.. is the data written/encrypted differently on the platters? .. are the sectors different sizes?

Which way would you go? which board would you try.. has anyone else ever successfully trans-migrated an ide over to Sata – i dont want to do this to extend the life of the drive.. for another year or 2 … NO – just 2 or 3 hours until i can get all the data off

By: jimmimcsandy

jimmimcsandy — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:33:57 +0000

I have a dying.. WD 320 Gig IDE Drive.. (but still bootable.. still readable.. probably overheating?.. drive.. that lets me copy about.. 100 files.. at a time.. before it just starts taking toooooo long to copy them.. (and / or times out)

i also have a perfectly working – new – WD 320Gig Sata Drive. .and.. WD IDE 160 Gig drive

In comparing the logic boards on the bottom.. the SATA looks identical to the WD 320 – except for the 4 pair of pins for (master/slave jumpers) vs. the 5 pair of pins on the IDe (obviously not used in Sata) ..

THE slightly older IDE 160Gig logic card is JUST A LIL different in size and shape.. hence my dilemma..

Do i .. a) .. convert the 320 IDE to a SATA and pull the data off that way? .. ORRRRRRR

b) .. pop the 160 IDE Card onto the 320 IDE Drive .. and HOPE it can.. i) read it.. ii) read it all – and allow me to pull the data all off?

By: AssistMyPc

AssistMyPc — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:05:15 +0000

I had two hard drives (at different times) on one of them when it spun up you could hear the slightest “clicking” or … banging noise – the other no noise at all … totally silent … I could feel both spin up tho – took each drive put in freezer for 4 hours – one SATA one IDE – first attempt failed… still could not see either drive – second attempt 4 hours later this time in freezer for 5 hours……… sata drive came up as did the IDE drive I pulled data from both …
had everything I “thought” I lost forever… thankfully I did NOT read Darrick Terry’s (above post first) if I had … I might not have even tried …………..

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:08:04 +0000

Well I did a swap on a WD passport external drive. It was a dual platter that was NOT locked down. We purchased a new drive, I tried swapping PCB boards and no joy. So I jumped inside and swapped the platters. The little head park piece has a bit of overlap on the platters so it needs to be moved slightly back. Be careful you only push it back slightly as anything more will crush the heads (did this on the old drive). What I did was place a piece of paper over the top of the drive, then I flipped the drive over which plopped the platters out at the same time. I then placed the new drive right over the platters and flipped again. I locked it down and clicked the plastic head park piece back out towards the platters and powered it up. Nothing. I then reseated the PCB board and I got something. The drive showed up and worked. I had issues transferring some files and just kept skipping. I found that if I just unplugged and plugged back in the usb cable it would come back when it was freezing up. I got about 1.2GB off the drive when it crapped out again and would not come back. Unfortunately the data I did get off was not what the customer needed but it was a learning experience. I had no idea the platters needed to be aligned and I find it very strange that I was able to re align them by chance with the sloppy method I used. I even left a tiny finger print on the top of the platter. If I were to do it again I would refuse multi-plattered drives. PS I did not use a clean room, or gloves etc. Though from what I’ve read you should use gloves (that you wash after u put on to get the powder off), you should use eye protection to prevent dust that comes off your eyes with every blink. I would also recommend using every screw when trying the drive. I cut corners a couple times and only used a couple screws to hold the cover and board on while I was swapping them around and I think that caused me some grief. WHen I opened up the broken drive I found the head not parked. I used a small screwdriver and pushed the head back to the parked location from the latch near the magnet. There is a little lock that pops around that end to lock the head in place when parked, just push it there and listen to the horrible scraping sound it makes as it pulls back to be parked. But even with the damage being done the drive did produce data for me. I just wish I had some transfer software available that would rapidly skip files it’s having a hard time reading.

By: T Rex

T Rex — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:37:15 +0000

Why would you freeze a drive to such a low temperature? Just because you use silica gel. Please mention this works “sometimes” and it’s not 100%

By: octel

octel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:35:42 +0000

@TechRx
You can freeze drives without damage, but it takes a little bit of effort.

Materials:
-Dry ice (granulated/crushed)
-Silica gel dessicant (bulk)

1. Remove the moisture in the drive by putting it in a plastic bag along with a generous amount of silica gel. Let sit for 24 hours.

2. Mix enough dry ice and silica gel to cover the drive. Use 1 part dry ice and 2 parts silica gel.

With this method, you can even use the drive without taking it out of the dry ice mixture.

By: TechRx

TechRx — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:22:47 +0000

Yes, Firmware can be “re-programmed” in the system area. It requires special tools; and they are expensive.

Diamond Max drives are common for firmware corruption (about 60% failure rate). TechRxgb.com is a data-recovery company. Feel welcome to ask questions of us, we’d love to help with any issues.

Lastly, DO NOT freeze your drives. It creats small ‘ice shelfs’ on the platters; and can destroy everything.

By: Alen

Alen — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:48:21 +0000

Thank u for the Information. Thx a lot

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:15:28 +0000

I’ve got a Toshiba SATA hard drive that apparently lost a boot sector file and won’t boot to Windows. I’ve removed the drive to try and extract the data with a Universal Adapter, but can’t get it to spin. I attached another SATA to the adapter and it spins fine, so it’s not the adapter. I tried the freezer thing, no good. ASSUMING that the hard drive is frozen/siezed (Which doesn’t make sense because when it’s in the laptop, I can do a hard drive diagnostics in the BIOS…which I don’t think would work if the hard drive had seized). I don’t suppose there’s anyway to carefully open it to give the platter a little spin without screwing up the platter alignment referred to in earlier responses. Thanks

By: Nii

Nii — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:38:48 +0000

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

By: Turkish

Turkish — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:18:23 +0000

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

By: Hopefully Lucky

Hopefully Lucky — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:02:37 +0000

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.

By: DAvid

DAvid — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:05:53 +0000

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 !