Hard Drive Resurrection

235 Comments

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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

235 thoughts on “Hard Drive Resurrection”

  2. 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?

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  3. 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!

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  6. 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?

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  7. 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

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  8. 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.

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  13. 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.

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  15. 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 !

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  16. 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.

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    1. If it fell and doesn’t spin you would think something happened to the connection of the drive motor, or the PCB cracked. So I’d advise you to carefully check if you see any issue with the (flat)cabling to the central motor, and to examine the PCB for any damage.

      It’s unlikely that the motor itself is damaged from a fall like that I think.

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  17. 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

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  19. 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

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  21. 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.

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  22. @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.

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  24. 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.

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  25. 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?

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  26. 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

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  27. 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?

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  28. 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.

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  30. A clean hard drive is essential for best performance. Wash the drive at 40°C for 90 minutes, use Ariel with Actilift with Febreze Effect Powder.

    The cleaned drive will be too good for your PC.

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