Hints on diagnosing HD failure

April 29, 2008 3:43 PM

SATA Hard disk , suddendly not spinning up. No click of death, no sign of expected failure.

As sending the HD to a lab is out of question, I was wondering if there is some other procedure to try. I remember hearing that consumer HD have a quite long "recovery time" which is an amount of time in which the HD tries to recover corrupted data, a feature that isn't found on some RAID hd who handle the processing to RAID logic.

I was wondering how long this time is, if the disk is supposed to spin up (which would make sense) and what is the most frequent known cause of "sudden" hd death.

posted by elpapacito to computers & internet (12 comments total)

I am not sure what you are talking about when you mention "recovery time." If the drive is not spinning, that indicates a hardware failure, not corrupted data.

Your best DIY chance is to buy an exactly identical drive and switch the boards on the bottom. This is a long shot.
posted by odinsdream at 4:12 PM on April 29, 2008

The most frequent cause of "sudden" hd death, in my experience^*, is when somebody gets in the habit of putting vital data on one and not backing it up.

In any case, no spin up at all = completely dead drive, not drive performing "recovery". I agree with odinsdream's suggestion and assessment of its chances of success.

^*May have some selection bias.
posted by flabdablet at 4:37 PM on April 29, 2008

Not sure about "recovery time." How old is the HD?

I've heard some stuff about recovering drives that involve freezing it or dropping it. But sometimes HDs just die.
posted by jabberjaw at 4:38 PM on April 29, 2008

flabdablet writes "when somebody gets in the habit of putting vital data on one and not backing it up."

Ehehe true enough, not this time tough.

From Western Digital Site

Q: What is time-limited error recovery and why do I need it?
A: Desktop drives are designed to protect and recover data, at times pausing for as much as a few minutes to make sure that data is recovered. Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online.

posted by elpapacito at 4:52 PM on April 29, 2008

Have you tried plugging it into another computer?

Before giving up, you might try removing the drive from the computer, placing it in a freezer for a few hours or overnight, removing it and quickly plugging it back in to the computer. Success not guaranteed, but hey, it's fun, and it might work.
posted by exphysicist345 at 6:35 PM on April 29, 2008

You've checked the cables, right? I thought a SATA drive failed until I realized one of the cables had come loose. Apparently the little retaining tab broke off, so if I kick my tower too hard it'll wiggle itself loose.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 6:49 PM on April 29, 2008

Sounds like it might be stiction. That's pretty rare these days but it does happen.

If that's what i is, usually if you can get in and manually turn the spindle just a bit, that'll break it free and it'll work normally.
posted by Class Goat at 7:07 PM on April 29, 2008

Came to say mostly what Class Goat said. There's a chance that it's bearings locking up...

A couple of hours in the freezer, and/or peeling off any little sticker around the axel and using a paperclip to manually spin the platters around might get it to spin up "one more time"... be prepared for immediate data recovery, you might not get a second chance.
posted by zengargoyle at 11:00 PM on April 29, 2008

The other way to possibly get it to spin up again is to remove it from the computer, and tap it on a hard surface. For example, hold it 6" above a hard floor and drop it. I've seen this technique get an old, crusty hard drive going again. On the other hand, there's the risk that doing this could do more damage, so it's kind of a last resort.
posted by knave at 12:05 AM on April 30, 2008

And do be sure that the enclosure/computer/whatever that you're mounting the drive in actually does work and is giving power.
posted by lostburner at 12:49 AM on April 30, 2008

Yah. Bearings don't generally freeze up without a lot of weird noise and performance issues to herald its coming. I'd suggest looking at the other components the drive needs to do its thing.

- swap out the SATA power connector for another, or use a "legacy" power connector (if you're using both the SATA and legacy connectors at once... stop doing that.)

- take a multimeter to the drive power connectors, to make sure the PSU is giving the right amount of juice.

- try swapping out the SATA cable, and then try switching to another SATA bus on the mobo.

- try connecting it to another PC entirely, or putting it into an external enclosure.
posted by Slap*Happy at 3:26 AM on April 30, 2008

elpapacito; this time-recovery stuff is not at all related to what you've described. If the drive isn't spinning, it isn't doing anything. You aren't using a RAID array, so that's irrelevant. The site is talking about some strategies that the drive firmware uses in normal circumstances that are below the operating system level, but it's not at all related to what you've described.
posted by odinsdream at 6:02 AM on April 30, 2008