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hard drive repair

B

Ben Galvin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk (WD2000JB).
A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then about 10
minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to backup the
contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard drive recovery
services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk
with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator and
the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I know
its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can do. I
opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that the
platters couldn't be moved around by hand. I opened another similar hard
drive (with no data on it) and was able to move the platters easily, so I'm
assuming there must be something wrong with the bearings in the hard disk.
I've managed to get hold of another (almost) identical motor/bearing
assembly, and I'm going to have a go at swapping them over.

My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically like 2
CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I don't
know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I moved them
to the new spindle or not (imagine rotating the top cd around a vertical
axis by 10 degrees - the data would no longer be sychronised between the 2
platters). There are no marks or holes to tell the orientation of the
platters, so it would be very hard to take them both off one spindle, and
put them on to the new one and preserve this relationship exactly.

Does anyone know if I need to do this, or have any other advise?

Thanks,

Ben
 
S

Sam Goldwasser

Jan 1, 1970
0
Sorry, there is no way in H*** that you will be successful if you
open the drive in whatever you might call a cleanroom, let along
trying to swap the platters. And do check out that recent thread
referenced in another posting.

This might have worked with 20 MB harddrives in the early days of the
PC (and even that is very questionable), but no way, no how, with anything
recent.

If the data is very valuable, have a data recovery service make the
attempt.

Else, chalk it up to lessons learned (about backup).

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Sam Goldwasser said:
Sorry, there is no way in H*** that you will be successful if you
open the drive in whatever you might call a cleanroom, let along
trying to swap the platters. And do check out that recent thread
referenced in another posting.

However, the drive concerned here is only a 200MB drive, so no rocket
science. You might just make it work long enough to recover the data.
I'd guess some blowing of clean, canned air while closing the drive will
also help.
 
J

JM

Jan 1, 1970
0
Sam said:
However, the drive concerned here is only a 200MB drive, so no rocket
science. You might just make it work long enough to recover the data.
I'd guess some blowing of clean, canned air while closing the drive will
also help.

Actually he said 200Gb.. so it might be asking a bit much :) I did this
once on a 4 or 6 gig drive that had seized up, held it sideways to minimize
dust falling in and just broke the platters free by hand. It didn't have
anything I really needed on it, just some nice to have stuff, so I figured
I'd try it since it was on its last legs obviously... it actually worked
fine and continued to as a testing drive for a while before I turfed it,
although I'm sure if I had done a surface scan some errors would have been
found here and there...
 
A

Andy Cuffe

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk (WD2000JB).
A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then about 10
minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to backup the
contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard drive recovery
services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk
with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator and
the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I know
its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can do. I
opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that the
platters couldn't be moved around by hand.

The only chance you have is to try to free the stuck motor by hand.
It might spin up if you give it a push start. Sometimes the heads
stick to the platters and prevent the motor from starting, but once
broken free it will work. There's no chance a platter swap will work.
If you get the drive to spin up, copy the files quickly starting with
the important ones. It probably won't work long enough to copy the
whole drive. If you can't live without the data, then spend the
$2500. Anything you do will render the drive completely
unrecoverable.

Andy Cuffe

[email protected] <-- Use this address until 12/31/2005

[email protected] <-- Use this address after 12/31/2005
 
K

Ken Weitzel

Jan 1, 1970
0
Andy said:
The only chance you have is to try to free the stuck motor by hand.
It might spin up if you give it a push start. Sometimes the heads
stick to the platters and prevent the motor from starting, but once
broken free it will work. There's no chance a platter swap will work.
If you get the drive to spin up, copy the files quickly starting with
the important ones. It probably won't work long enough to copy the
whole drive. If you can't live without the data, then spend the
$2500. Anything you do will render the drive completely
unrecoverable.

Andy Cuffe

Hi...

Given that he's already opened it, I'd give him about the
same odds of getting data off it now as less than winning
every lottery this week. :)

If it were me and mine I'd have been inclined to try to
run it up by removing it from the machine, holding it
in one of my hands, and giving it a sharp bump or two on
the side with the heel of my hand while power was applied.

Used to work back in the old mfm and rle stiction days.

Take care.

Ken
 
J

Jim Adney

Jan 1, 1970
0
My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically like 2
CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I don't
know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I moved them
to the new spindle or not

My impression is that the relative position of the platters on a hard
drive is critical to their operation. I think your chance of success
here is zero.

You would have better luck seeing if you could do anything about
whatever is locking up the old bearings. Even then your odds are slim,
just because of the almost certainty of introducing dirt into the
drive, but slim odds are better than zero odds.

-
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ben Galvin said:
Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk (WD2000JB).
A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then about 10
minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to backup the
contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard drive recovery
services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk
with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator and
the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I know
its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can do. I
opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that the
platters couldn't be moved around by hand. I opened another similar hard
drive (with no data on it) and was able to move the platters easily, so I'm
assuming there must be something wrong with the bearings in the hard disk.
I've managed to get hold of another (almost) identical motor/bearing
assembly, and I'm going to have a go at swapping them over.

My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically like 2
CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I don't
know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I moved them
to the new spindle or not (imagine rotating the top cd around a vertical
axis by 10 degrees - the data would no longer be sychronised between the 2
platters). There are no marks or holes to tell the orientation of the
platters, so it would be very hard to take them both off one spindle, and
put them on to the new one and preserve this relationship exactly.

Does anyone know if I need to do this, or have any other advise?

Thanks,

Ben


I've never seen one where the spindle motor actually locked up, that's
interesting. Once you've opened the drive though there's little chance of
being able to recover the data and if you swap the platters into another
drive it most certainly won't work. I really doubt you'll be able to align
the platters with anywhere near the extreme precision that would be required
even if you do somehow manage to put them in without destroying the heads
and at that point even in the cleanest room of your house you've still got a
drive full of dust.
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
JM said:
Actually he said 200Gb.. so it might be asking a bit much :) I did this
once on a 4 or 6 gig drive that had seized up, held it sideways to minimize
dust falling in and just broke the platters free by hand. It didn't have
anything I really needed on it, just some nice to have stuff, so I figured
I'd try it since it was on its last legs obviously... it actually worked
fine and continued to as a testing drive for a while before I turfed it,
although I'm sure if I had done a surface scan some errors would have been
found here and there...

An easier way to fix "stiction" which I haven't seen since the days of 20mb
MFM drives is to briskly spin the drive itself along the axis of the
spindle, that'll usually break it free without having to open it up. Some
old drives even had an exposed rotor on the bottom that you could spin by
hand.
 
J

JM

Jan 1, 1970
0
An easier way to fix "stiction" which I haven't seen since the days of 20mb
MFM drives is to briskly spin the drive itself along the axis of the
spindle, that'll usually break it free without having to open it up. Some
old drives even had an exposed rotor on the bottom that you could spin by
hand.

I'd actually tried that, but this drive was a little too well stuck for that
to work I guess. I had another drive (an old 80 meg laptop Seagate) whose
heads would stick in the power-off position. I usually had to give it a
good smack with the handle of a screwdriver (to the SIDE of the drive) to
get it going if it hadn't been running in a while. They don't make 'em like
that any more!
 
J

JM

Jan 1, 1970
0
I guess this isn't likely to work now that the drive's been opened, but I've
had surprisingly good luck with dead drives by putting them into a static
bag, sealed up with tape, and leaving them in the freezer overnight! This
has worked for 2 out of 3 drives I've tried it on, whether it was just
coincidence or dumb luck (or combinations of the two!). Anyway, when
there's nothing to lose, you get all kinds interesting thoughts on how to
revive that drive one last time ;)
 
B

bz

Jan 1, 1970
0
I guess this isn't likely to work now that the drive's been opened, but
I've had surprisingly good luck with dead drives by putting them into a
static bag, sealed up with tape, and leaving them in the freezer
overnight! This has worked for 2 out of 3 drives I've tried it on,
whether it was just coincidence or dumb luck (or combinations of the
two!). Anyway, when there's nothing to lose, you get all kinds
interesting thoughts on how to revive that drive one last time ;)

Did you spin them up cold or keep them in the bag, allow them to warm up,
before spinning them up?

I would think that spinning them up cold would [at least in Louisiana]
guarantee condensing water inside and making a real mess of everything.




--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

[email protected] remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
 
C

Chris Jones

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ben said:
Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk
(WD2000JB). A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then
about 10 minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to
backup the contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard
drive recovery services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery
of a hard disk with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator
and the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I
know its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can
do. I opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that
the platters couldn't be moved around by hand. I opened another similar
hard drive (with no data on it) and was able to move the platters easily,
so I'm assuming there must be something wrong with the bearings in the
hard disk. I've managed to get hold of another (almost) identical
motor/bearing assembly, and I'm going to have a go at swapping them over.

My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically like
2 CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I
don't know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I
moved them to the new spindle or not (imagine rotating the top cd around a
vertical axis by 10 degrees - the data would no longer be sychronised
between the 2 platters). There are no marks or holes to tell the
orientation of the platters, so it would be very hard to take them both
off one spindle, and put them on to the new one and preserve this
relationship exactly.

Does anyone know if I need to do this, or have any other advise?

Thanks,

Ben

I think the heads might be stuck, I consider this more likely than the
bearings failing in a way that would stop the motor.

I discovered that on some drives (~2GB), the platters have a slight texture
near the middle where the heads land, whereas they are shiny and flat
elsewhere. I found that the friction of the heads on the platters is much
greater when the heads are not on the textured bit. Are your drive's heads
at the inner region of the platter? If not, perhaps that is why it won't
start. The question would then be whether you can get the heads to the
middle without causing catastrophic damage.

I found that even with the lid off, the drive worked for a while, maybe
enough to copy a few files.

Good Luck!

Chris
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Did you spin them up cold or keep them in the bag, allow them to warm up,
before spinning them up?

I would think that spinning them up cold would [at least in Louisiana]
guarantee condensing water inside and making a real mess of everything.


You have to spin them up cold, that's the whole point. I haven't had trouble
with condensation yet but then I don't live in a particularly humid place.
Still even when it works you usually only get a few minutes before it conks
out again so you have to copy off the important stuff ASAP.
 
E

Eric

Jan 1, 1970
0
If the hard drive works at cold temperature, it looks like the circuit board
has cold solder joints. I will try to re-solder all solder joints on the
circuit before put it into fridge.


James Sweet said:
Did you spin them up cold or keep them in the bag, allow them to warm up,
before spinning them up?

I would think that spinning them up cold would [at least in Louisiana]
guarantee condensing water inside and making a real mess of everything.


You have to spin them up cold, that's the whole point. I haven't had trouble
with condensation yet but then I don't live in a particularly humid place.
Still even when it works you usually only get a few minutes before it conks
out again so you have to copy off the important stuff ASAP.
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Eric said:
If the hard drive works at cold temperature, it looks like the circuit board
has cold solder joints. I will try to re-solder all solder joints on the
circuit before put it into fridge.


That's not what the freezer does, getting the drive cold affects the
properties of the IC's themselves as well as it can change the physical
alignment of the mechanical portion of the drive slightly. I've had some
luck with the freezer trick but I've never found cold solder joints on a
drive.
 
B

bz

Jan 1, 1970
0
That's not what the freezer does, getting the drive cold affects the
properties of the IC's themselves as well as it can change the physical
alignment of the mechanical portion of the drive slightly. I've had some
luck with the freezer trick but I've never found cold solder joints on a
drive.

It also causes differential shrinkage of bearings, etc., and could unbind
something that was stuck.



--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

[email protected] remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
 
A

Asimov

Jan 1, 1970
0
"Ben Galvin" bravely wrote to "All" (14 Aug 05 11:13:24)
--- on the heady topic of "hard drive repair"

BG> Subject: hard drive repair
BG> Xref: core-easynews sci.electronics.repair:339614


BG> I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk
BG> (WD2000JB). A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise,
BG> then about 10 minutes later died completely.

Perhaps the bearing seized or the motor driver IC fried.


BG> Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I
BG> setup up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion
BG> generator and the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the
BG> dust down). I know its nothing compared to a professional one, but
BG> it's the best I can do. I opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds,
BG> enough to determine that the platters couldn't be moved around by
BG> hand. I opened another similar hard drive (with no data on it) and was
BG> able to move the platters easily, so I'm assuming there must be
BG> something wrong with the bearings in the hard disk.

Drives often have a locking mechanism to keep the platters from
spinning when the heads are parked, so not being able to move it by
hand may be normal and doesn't necessarily mean the bearing is seized.


BG> I've managed to
BG> get hold of another (almost) identical motor/bearing assembly, and I'm
BG> going to have a go at swapping them over.
BG> My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically
BG> like 2 CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them),
BG> but I don't know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned
BG> when I moved them to the new spindle or not (imagine rotating the top
BG> cd around a vertical axis by 10 degrees - the data would no longer be
BG> sychronised between the 2 platters). There are no marks or holes to
BG> tell the orientation of the platters, so it would be very hard to take
BG> them both off one spindle, and put them on to the new one and preserve
BG> this relationship exactly.
BG> Does anyone know if I need to do this, or have any other advise?

One of the platters has clock pulses written it at the factory which
allows the servos to detect the position. Unfortunately the other
platter is mechanically attached so it would be remotely next to
impossible to realign the positions of the 2 platters correctly again.
One would need to align them radially with pico-degree precision or
about 1,000,000,000,000 times smaller than the width of a hair. As one
might guess swapping 2 platters is not a kitchen table top experiment.
Even a data recovery service wouldn't attempt what you propose!

Cough up the big bucks for the recovery service or kiss your data
goodbye.

A*s*i*m*o*v

.... Well I defragged my TV and went all the way back to basic cable!
 
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