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Resurrecting Dead Harddrives?
Broue Master asks: "The main harddrive of a friend's computer stopped working. He described to me that the computer began by emitting strange 'scratching sounds', and after a while, it made a 'loud *tock* sound' and stopped. He tried to reboot it but soon realized that the harddrive wasn't spinning anymore. He asked me if I could revive it, at least long enough so that he could retrieve at least his "my documents" folder. The computer was running XP. I did a little googling(tm) of my own to find out that the most recommended solution out there seems to be 'freezing' the harddrive for a day in a ziplock bag. I'd like to know what fellow Slashdot readers have done in the past to try and resurrect dead harddrives and if the freezing method would still be a good idea, today. The harddrive is a Samsung 30Gb." A good 95% of the time, once an HD is gone, break out the shovel, because it's time to bury it. Still, it would be interesting to note, if only from an anecdotal standpoint, if any of you have managed to perform such miracle hardware resurrections. Have you managed to revive a dead and decaying drive from the dead long enough to pull data off of it? If so, what did you do?
try finding an identical drive and swap the electronics.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Heh,
My main drive died yesterday, turned on the computer.. wirrr, click.... wirrr, click. so i took it out of the computer and turned it upside down, gave it a little shake, and walah it spun up. I've managed to back up my data off of it now, and hopefully it'll last till the replacement drive shows up tommarow.
Back in the days of 1GB SCSI drives ...
Sometimes they'd get 'stuck' if they were left on for a long time (like a year or two), then turned off. At this point they wouldn't spin up, or make a half-hearted attempt to.
If they couldn't be coaxed into moving, taking it out the enclosure and letting it drop four centimetres or so flat onto a wooden table often got them unstuck enough to grab the data and back it up.
That said, have had some success with the same trick with newer drives with different modes of failure. Of course try the least invasive approaches first and work up, but if the drive is otherwise dead, then there's little left to lose. Unless you want to spend big dollars with a professional data recovery mob.
I had to get data off a dead drives a few times before. The drives didn't make much noise, except for not spinning up.
To bandaid it I un-screwed the cover, and gave the platters a quick spin (make sure to only touch the SIDE of the platter, not the surface).
I put the drive back in the PC, and it started up just fine. I then quickly copied the most important data off of that drive, and then made a copy of the entire drive to another known good one.
Well if it's dead, and the data isn't very important, time for drastic measures.
It sounds like a mechnical problem, a head crash that went as far as pulling the head right off the arm, and wedging it between the platters, or the bearings died.
Freezing it won't hurt anything, but beware condensation when you take it out of the freezer.
I'd recommend getting in the cleanest room you can, preferably with high humidity to reduce dust.
Take off the cover and look for metal shavings in the inside. If there are no metal shavings visible, then the bearings have gone, and you might as well give up.
If there are metal shavings, then there's a chance you can recover data. Try to move the platters/heads, if the heads aren't in the landing zone, then this WILL damage the platters (a little).
If the top head is the bad one, you are lucky. Try to rig it in a way so the platters can turn again. If it's a head between other platters, you are going to have to pull the platters out, which is not easy at all.
Anyway, if the data is worth more than $1000 to you, then send it to a professional recovery service. I don't think an electronics board swap will help anything in your case. It would only waste time and money.
Doing any and all of the above things may damage the disk more than it already is. You've been warned.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
From the sound of it it was a nasty head crash.
If the value is high enough send it to a qualified recovery company. If your willing to risk it and you have the tools, swap the platters from the bad drive to an identical known good drive.
Odds of getting it running with cold or hot is low considering the reported noises.
Qualified recovery company figure 100% they get data and probably about 90% of it. Odds of switching platters yourself and getting most of your data figure 60%, odds of using cold (freezer) or heat (it can work...) 30% or so.
BTW if you do the freezer make sure and bag it. You don't want a lot of nice humid air on your drive when it's nice and chilly.
Now back to my Thorazine...mmmm thooraaaszzzzzhhhh....
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
Take the drive out and have cables long enough to set the drive flat on a smooth non conductive surface, like a bench or table top. Turn the system on and give the drive a quick spin about a quarter turn around the axis of the platter, then listen to see if it spins up. If it was just a sticky spin motor it might let go, if it does, try and get your stuff asap. I've recovered data on a few drives like that. I've had a couple were this worked once but not twice, so you shouldn't press your luck. It's a long shot, but it gives quick easy results if it works.
www.drivesavers.com
Gabriel Ricard
Wrong on both counts. Cooling it and then reheating it back to room temperature causes small mechanical movements which could make the mechanism work a little longer (though it is not very likely).
The electronics, of all things, won't give a flying crap -- every IC I have seen, including delicate DSPs and such, is rated to at least -40 degrees Celsius (datasheet for a TI DSP, commonly used in HDDs, look at page 130). Unless you immerse it in liquid nitrogen, it won't be a problem. I'd be more worried about water condensing on internal surfaces and such.
I had a dead drive that I kept around for a year just in case some miracle recovery cure came up. Sure enough I heard about the freezing thing and six months ago broke out the HD, stuck it in a plastic bag (in hopes of tricking any condensation into adhering to the other surface) and threw it in the freezer while I went and "prepped my system" for getting a drive in and fired up asap.
On the first attempt I had put the drive in the freezer for only about 20 minutes (hey, I was anxious) and it fired up. I browsed to the drive's directory before it crapped out on me, but I knew I was close. So the drive went back in the freezer while I thought of plan B.
On the Second attempt I left the drive chill for 45 minutes and this time when I took it out, I brought it out on a frozen gel pack. I was able to get all my data w/o condensation or other complications.
I'd like to say that my data was fine, but somewhere along the line my poetry and stories really started to really suck. It must have been corrupted at some point because I swear it was better when I wrote it. Hopefully your data will retain it's value...
This can be a (very) temporary fix with a drive that's having problems with the electronics. Often if components are flaking out but haven't actually fried, they'll run when they're cold but die when they heat up. Get it cold and then power it up and work fast. You'll probably only have a few minutes at a time though. The same applies to motherboards, chips, and memory. To give you more time, you should probably set everything to as low speed and low voltage as you can get away with. I actually did this with a machine outdoors in 15 degree weather once. The machine had been crashing during boot and I couldn't get another machine to recognize the drive's data format ( it was a strange integrated controller on the motherboard ). Outside it booted and ran for two hours while I copied all the data over a long ethernet cable I'd ran out a window. Turned out to be the motherboard. After a replacement with something a little more generic and a reformat, I copied everything back to the drive and it was fine.
Granted this probably has nothing to do with your current drive problems. It sounds like it blew chunks with physical problems. Even if you could get it working again I'd bet you've got significant platter and/or head damage and any data you could get off it would have serious corruption issues. Scratching noises and loud thumps coming from hard drives are never good things.
no, no: "voila" is the *metric* spelling. in america it is "walah".
it's people like you who cause spacecraft to fail.
Since it's standalone, it can clone a non-bootable drive. It also seems to be able to clone drives that are too damaged to spin up in a PC.
Recent rescues:
60GB 2.5-inch drive would spin up intermittently. Attached it to the external box, where it had the same problem. So I removed the lid, and got the drive to spin up with a thumb twist on the central boss. I got the drive cloned in 20 minutes, and the drive continued to work for another 40 minutes.
Fujitsu with the (in)famous circuit board problem: Got a replacement drive. Cloned an identical functional drive from another machine in the office onto it. Swapped the circuit board on the functional drive to the non-functional one. Drive started, so cloned it to the original functional drive.
The Century unit has been worth its weight in gold to me over the years. The newest one is smaller & lighter. Around $150.
If an old drive has been running for a long time and is switched of, we've known the bearings to stick (drive wont spin up at all)
The fix is to hold the drive between the palms of your hands (like praying... good analogy :-)) with the axis of the drive between the heals of your hands. Then violently flick your wrists downwards untill your fingertips point to the ground.
The idea is to spin the hard drive casing whilst causing the platters to stay still, so giving the bearings plenty of torque to free them off. It would often be enough to get this thing going again long enough to get the data off it.
But in this case, it sounds like drive mechanics.
Yes this does sound like heads hitting the disk. I've known people physicsly open the drive and poke at the heads (they had skipped off the disk somehow) and get it going long enough to recover data.
Anyway, if the dude has important stuff on this disk I suggest he takes it to a profesional companny who knows what they are doing. You do have backups, dont you?
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.