travelstar went nova
November 13, 2010 8:28 PM Subscribe
i need advice from someone familiar with hard drive mechanics. my laptop hard drive is dead, but i'd really prefer if it weren't. i would like to DIY-repair it, if possible. but i don't understand the root of the problem. here, this video will explain (10 seconds).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2VjcQolDdU
hard drive powers up. the platters spin. no egregious noise (any longer; see below). heads swing out over the platters briefly, then return to a parked position and .. that's all, forever. the computer does not recognize the drive.
drive is an ibm travelstar from 2001. 40 gigs. the first sign of trouble was the computer (macbook pro) suddenly acting strange, then freezing. on reboot, the drive was audibly unhappy (grind-y/clacky). i could not use it long enough to recover any data before it stopped working entirely.
just a general direction where to go would be appreciated. is this behaviour typical of a bad circuit board? damaged platters? heads? i'm willing to buy a duplicate drive and swap out parts, up to $100. beyond that, i'll just pretend like my vacation and all my pictures never happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2VjcQolDdU
hard drive powers up. the platters spin. no egregious noise (any longer; see below). heads swing out over the platters briefly, then return to a parked position and .. that's all, forever. the computer does not recognize the drive.
drive is an ibm travelstar from 2001. 40 gigs. the first sign of trouble was the computer (macbook pro) suddenly acting strange, then freezing. on reboot, the drive was audibly unhappy (grind-y/clacky). i could not use it long enough to recover any data before it stopped working entirely.
just a general direction where to go would be appreciated. is this behaviour typical of a bad circuit board? damaged platters? heads? i'm willing to buy a duplicate drive and swap out parts, up to $100. beyond that, i'll just pretend like my vacation and all my pictures never happened.
You opened it? Kiss that drive goodbye my friend.
posted by msbutah at 8:43 PM on November 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by msbutah at 8:43 PM on November 13, 2010 [3 favorites]
It's extremely, extremely , unlikley that you can resolve this problem for less than 100 dollars.
posted by oblio_one at 8:52 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by oblio_one at 8:52 PM on November 13, 2010
Yeah, that drive is gone. You can't open them unless you're in a cleanroom. Dust is the enemy.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 8:54 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by Threeway Handshake at 8:54 PM on November 13, 2010
Just to be crystal clear in case you decide to cherry-pick oblio_one's answer ...
Once you open the drive, it becomes a doorstop. I have a pile of them on my desk at work. Sorry man, it does suck to lose important information like that.
If you hadn't opened it, there would have been all sorts of drive recovery options. Last time I did it, about 10 years ago, it cost me $500 to get my data off of it.
posted by intermod at 9:32 PM on November 13, 2010
Once you open the drive, it becomes a doorstop. I have a pile of them on my desk at work. Sorry man, it does suck to lose important information like that.
If you hadn't opened it, there would have been all sorts of drive recovery options. Last time I did it, about 10 years ago, it cost me $500 to get my data off of it.
posted by intermod at 9:32 PM on November 13, 2010
But look on the bright side: you have some really neat magnets now.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:53 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:53 PM on November 13, 2010
Have you tried the hard drive freezer trick? Or failing that, hitting it very hard a few times. You might be able to coax out a little more life out of it.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:09 PM on November 13, 2010
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:09 PM on November 13, 2010
The only thing I can suggest is the freezer trick. Put the cover back on, pop it in a ziplock into the freezer for a while, then power it up.
Note...this works much better if you hadn't taken the cover off. I'm sorry to say, but that's about the dumbest thing you could have done. Also, hard drives last 3 years. That's it. Yes, they last longer. But you don't know when they will die. Your data is not your data unless you have 2 copies of it.
Sorry.
posted by defcom1 at 11:09 PM on November 13, 2010
Note...this works much better if you hadn't taken the cover off. I'm sorry to say, but that's about the dumbest thing you could have done. Also, hard drives last 3 years. That's it. Yes, they last longer. But you don't know when they will die. Your data is not your data unless you have 2 copies of it.
Sorry.
posted by defcom1 at 11:09 PM on November 13, 2010
For future reference, the hard drive in a freezer trick is really only good with older (pre-2000) drives. The freezing helps deal with 'sticktion' that can occur. Steps that have worked for me are:
1) secure drive in two layers of plastic wrap, ideally ESD-safe material, then saran-wrap, then ziplock with the air bled out.
2) put in freezer. wait several hours.
3) remove from packaging, connect & power on.
4) listen for the spindles to spin up, maybe giving a single sharp THWACK to the drive.
5) at this point, you've exhausted all cheap possibilities.
Nth-ing everyone else that said you shouldn't have taken the drive apart.
Though from the video (and what experience tells me it would sound like), it appears the issue is with the read head or controller arm.
DriveSavers for a free, no commitment 2nd opinion.
posted by now i'm piste at 12:03 AM on November 14, 2010
1) secure drive in two layers of plastic wrap, ideally ESD-safe material, then saran-wrap, then ziplock with the air bled out.
2) put in freezer. wait several hours.
3) remove from packaging, connect & power on.
4) listen for the spindles to spin up, maybe giving a single sharp THWACK to the drive.
5) at this point, you've exhausted all cheap possibilities.
Nth-ing everyone else that said you shouldn't have taken the drive apart.
Though from the video (and what experience tells me it would sound like), it appears the issue is with the read head or controller arm.
DriveSavers for a free, no commitment 2nd opinion.
posted by now i'm piste at 12:03 AM on November 14, 2010
Yeah, opening it sealed the (shitty, for you) deal. Sorry. For 100USD, your pictures are gone, gone, gone.
posted by amery at 12:30 AM on November 14, 2010
posted by amery at 12:30 AM on November 14, 2010
To add a little more detail to the comments; hard-drive internals are not user-serviceable. At all. The parts are incredibly precisely engineered components, and the drive head flies very, very close to the surface of the disk. Opening it in a non clean room allows dust to get between the head and surface - as soon as it's turned on after opening, you'll have almost certainly screwed the head alignment, and any chance of that drive working again without significant repair, though by the sounds of it, it was already dead on arrival so it's not like you've really made the situation any worse than it already was. Once they start grinding and become non-responsive, they're generally good for a scrapheap, warranty replacement or getting some cool magnets and shiny platters.
On the plus side, your platters appear unscratched, so no major head crash. If you're prepared to up your price committment, you can go to a data recovery company; they will fit the platters to a reading setup in a clean room, and most likely will be able to recover most or all of the data directly off the platters.
Costs have dropped somewhat, but you're probably still looking in the several hundred dollar range - most places will do a test first and quote you the price, with no recovery, no fee. These guys can recover data from drives that have been in fires, underwater, so a little mechanical breakdown and dust is not necessarily terminal for your data, at least.
As others have advised though - backups, backups, backups. I've been where you are when filesystem corruption (and the repair) destroyed a decade of archives - and my backup copy was also corrupt. I nearly cried. Check your camera for copies? Did you give copies of your photos to family, friends? Put stuff on facebook or flickr?
Failing that, raise a glass to your lost data, celebrate the memories you still have, and go out with the people from the photos still around, and make new ones :)
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:59 AM on November 14, 2010 [4 favorites]
On the plus side, your platters appear unscratched, so no major head crash. If you're prepared to up your price committment, you can go to a data recovery company; they will fit the platters to a reading setup in a clean room, and most likely will be able to recover most or all of the data directly off the platters.
Costs have dropped somewhat, but you're probably still looking in the several hundred dollar range - most places will do a test first and quote you the price, with no recovery, no fee. These guys can recover data from drives that have been in fires, underwater, so a little mechanical breakdown and dust is not necessarily terminal for your data, at least.
As others have advised though - backups, backups, backups. I've been where you are when filesystem corruption (and the repair) destroyed a decade of archives - and my backup copy was also corrupt. I nearly cried. Check your camera for copies? Did you give copies of your photos to family, friends? Put stuff on facebook or flickr?
Failing that, raise a glass to your lost data, celebrate the memories you still have, and go out with the people from the photos still around, and make new ones :)
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:59 AM on November 14, 2010 [4 favorites]
(psst - that twitch and 'click' noise in the video as the head went out over the platter? I think that was a head crash - If you did that a bunch of times before/after filming this, you've probably greatly reduced the chance that it's recoverable, even if you do want to shell out the bucks.)
posted by Orb2069 at 9:47 AM on November 14, 2010
posted by Orb2069 at 9:47 AM on November 14, 2010
Response by poster: i feel like i started the schadenfreude thread for anyone who has ever had a hard drive crash. :)
this drive stopped working 6 years ago. since then i've looked into data-recovery services several times, and they remain too expensive for this situation. i have tried freezing, smacking, tapping and praying. the drive was already on its way to the trash bin.
replacing the circuit board is an easy swap-out which does not disturb the holy inner sanctum. a duplicate drive, used for parts, costs $50. not a bad idea for desperate folks. but my board shows no physical damage, and the drive powers up, so i don't know... hence the question. i guess, to me, a failed board also wouldn't have caused the progressive, grindy sounds before death.
daredevils can find videos of at-home head-swapping on youtube. no one disagrees that it is a hail mary shot. at worst it costs $50 and a little time. at best, it's a scattershot recovery that saves some small amount of data before the entire operation bursts into flames. however i still haven't heard an answer to my original question, which was, what is the likely culprit here. the heads? circuit board? platters? admittedly it's a long shot that someone could tell from the information provided.
what's really sad is that i actually have a clean room, but we just got through installing carpeting in there so my bench wasn't set up yet. dang. :(
posted by phoeniciansailor at 9:55 AM on November 14, 2010
this drive stopped working 6 years ago. since then i've looked into data-recovery services several times, and they remain too expensive for this situation. i have tried freezing, smacking, tapping and praying. the drive was already on its way to the trash bin.
replacing the circuit board is an easy swap-out which does not disturb the holy inner sanctum. a duplicate drive, used for parts, costs $50. not a bad idea for desperate folks. but my board shows no physical damage, and the drive powers up, so i don't know... hence the question. i guess, to me, a failed board also wouldn't have caused the progressive, grindy sounds before death.
daredevils can find videos of at-home head-swapping on youtube. no one disagrees that it is a hail mary shot. at worst it costs $50 and a little time. at best, it's a scattershot recovery that saves some small amount of data before the entire operation bursts into flames. however i still haven't heard an answer to my original question, which was, what is the likely culprit here. the heads? circuit board? platters? admittedly it's a long shot that someone could tell from the information provided.
what's really sad is that i actually have a clean room, but we just got through installing carpeting in there so my bench wasn't set up yet. dang. :(
posted by phoeniciansailor at 9:55 AM on November 14, 2010
Yeah... I just want to commend you on your engineering instinct - opening up things to see what's wrong inside. However, in this case, you should have done more research before acting on that instinct. Hard drive technology is beyond DIY.
Google around to learn more about how to recognize hard-drive failure (disc scan fail, increase error rate, clicking), what to do when it happens and what to do to prepare for the inevitable recovery. Usually, at the first sign of hard drive failure, you should stop immediately and unplug the drive. Hard drive, when they start failing, will have very limited number of successful accesses remained because physical deterioration increases exponentially. You will want to maximize your recovery in these limited time remained. Research your options (DIY, pay money, etc..) and proceed from there.
posted by curiousZ at 10:13 AM on November 14, 2010
Google around to learn more about how to recognize hard-drive failure (disc scan fail, increase error rate, clicking), what to do when it happens and what to do to prepare for the inevitable recovery. Usually, at the first sign of hard drive failure, you should stop immediately and unplug the drive. Hard drive, when they start failing, will have very limited number of successful accesses remained because physical deterioration increases exponentially. You will want to maximize your recovery in these limited time remained. Research your options (DIY, pay money, etc..) and proceed from there.
posted by curiousZ at 10:13 AM on November 14, 2010
i actually have a clean room, but we just got through installing carpeting in there...
You can have a carpet in a clean room? By clean room I mean one that would have a high success rate with opening up harddrives as mentioned by others in this question.
I'm no expert but I don't see carpeting as being an option in a place like this.
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:52 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
You can have a carpet in a clean room? By clean room I mean one that would have a high success rate with opening up harddrives as mentioned by others in this question.
I'm no expert but I don't see carpeting as being an option in a place like this.
posted by RolandOfEld at 10:52 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]
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posted by phoeniciansailor at 8:30 PM on November 13, 2010