Slashdot Mirror
Reviving A Dead Hard Drive The Hard Way
An anonymous reader writes "This guy went to the trouble of swapping logic boards on a dead hard drive to get his NeverWinter Nights save games back and took photos." I would have just used a character editor to get my stuff back, but clearly, I lack the dedication this gentleman has. Regardless of reason, nice work!
It should be done early and often. Hard drives do fail and can do so without warning. Therefore it is very important to back up that valuable data.
My mom, a teacher, made a banner with this quote and posted it in a faculty lounge:
Blessed are the pessemists, for they have made backups.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I don't think it's dishonest; they're just improving their product over time, same as most other electronic gear.
Obviously anyone with any sense would rather buy the Quaddro997XTurbo-XP drive which was made last week than the one made in June. Why? 'Cause the newer one might have some slight improvements somewhere. Might not have, but just in case, you get the newer one.
This is how it is with motherboards, routers, CD burners etc. so I don't see why it's a problem with hard drives. better than having to wait a whole product generation for even the smallest improvement.
btw, can you flash the firmware on hard drives?
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Rule 1. Always have a backup.
Rule 2. If you changed data, see rule 1.
But, what people forget is to test their backup to see if it can be restored from.
Fight Spammers!
I think that this kind of hardware swashbuckling is pretty neat. I think I would probably just have accepted defeat and called it a day.
But what's even cooler is that the guy went and got his own domain for his dead hard drive. Nice.
An improvement can be designed to make the product better.
It can also be designed to make the product cheaper to produce, even if there is some kind of trade off.
At the end of the day, some executive is going to look at a suggested change and think: "will this help us make more money?"
So the latest version is always the best for the company, but is it the best for you? You can't be sure of that.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
I can't belive this guy spent money registering "deadharddrive.com" for one page on how he got his saved games back.
I would have thought that name would have been snapped up by a data recovery service years ago!
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
I beg to differ. I have two of the same Seagate drives mentioned in the article. One of them has been running over 2 years. The Barracuda IV series are some of the most reliable I've seen.
This guy's logic board was fried. It was not a mechanical failure like most HD failures are. He could have gotten a power surge and fried the electronics.
BTW, this is the easy way of reviving a HD, not "The Hard Way". Boards are designed to be easily replaced in most HD's. Now, if he had opened the other side. It would have been a total loss, unless he was in a clean room free of any dust or debris in the air.
Well it is cheaper. Unless your on a domain why bother with Pro?
w tobuy/ch oosing2.asp
Look at the comparison guide.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/ho
Really most people don't even bother with the stuff listed. And the few things you might need you can get aftermarket. Plus Home probably came with his computer.(not eveyone bulds there own)
Sorry but I'm just not a big fan of making fun people because of the OS they run. Now if he said "linus suckz and MS is God" they you'd be in the right, but alas he didn't and you just look stupid.
This just goes to show you how far technical skills have atrophied over the years. I always assumed that this trick was obvious, and that any self respecting geek could do it. Especially since I repaired my first drive (MFM 13 Meg) at 14 years old. I've done it and seen it done numerous times over the years.
I can understand the average geek not knowing how to do board level repairs, though again, my friends and I taught ourselves to do that too at a young age.
Simple subsystem replacement should be something that anyone of average intelligence can do. I am concerned that as I see more of this sort of attitude, "Wow. He swapped a board out on his HDD. That's really cleaver.", it signals the decline of curiosity and experiment. And the rise of Asimov's "calculator people." (They can't do simple mathmatics without a caculating device of some sort.)
The mind, like the body, can be developed and improved, with enough work. But also, like the body, it will atrophy if not exercised.
Backing up is like voting--most people don't do it but they still think they have the right to complain about the results of their laziness.
Try doing it at 3:00am on a detacenter floor with a leatherman on a pair of quantum atlas 10k u3 160 drives. Somehow 2 drives in a raid5 array failed within 6 hours of each other and the customer needed to get back data from changes they made that day.
I did it, it worked, but I never expected to see a headline about someone doing it.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
First:
....(this drive doesnt fix it)....
I look at some businesses that do hard drive recovery - the prices are exhorbitant! I could buy 2 replacement drives for those prices.
then...
So I go get a replacement hard drive
So I ring around some places and besides having to deal with some hopelessly non-tech sales people I actually find a shop that goes to the effort of looking on the drive for me and it's the right firmware! Cool! I go and buy this one.
So he doesn't want to have the data recovered cuz it costs the same as 2 new drives...
but he buys 2 new drives to recover this hard drive?
no comment
and clearly so does this guy, given his Google Text Ads conviently placed at the bottom of the article....