[NLRS] FW: OT: Hard Drive recovery?

[KB0NLY]

I have heard of that also!

I know some guys that would put a drive with this problem out in the hot sun 
for a while to get it warmed up good and then get the data off it once it 
started working.

I have had even 300gb drives with the seized bearing, the freezer trick 
worked on one, the other was just plain thrashed and wouldn't even turn 
anymore.

73,

Scott



--------------------------------------------------
From: "Dr. Gerald N. Johnson" <g369n849j at weather.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 10:17 PM
To: <nlrs at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [NLRS] FW:  OT:  Hard Drive recovery?

>
>
> Back when 40 mb was a big drive, there was tendency for drives that ran
> a long time to not start spinning when powered up from cold. I think it
> came from the heads being parked at the outside edge of the platters and
> the combination of heat and billions of revolutions had moved the disk
> surface wax lubricant to the edge and the head out there would stick the
> drive. The temporary solution there was at power up to shake the drive
> with a twisting motion approximating the platter spin axis. Usually that
> would wiggle the heads and break the wax stickiness and the drive would
> run until left to cool.
>
> 73, Jerry, K0CQ
>
> On 6/29/2010 10:10 PM, Bruce Richardson wrote:
>>
>>
>> Here's the interesting reply from Scott KB0NLY with his
>> permission.
>> Bruce W9FZ
>>
>> "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S.
>> Thompson
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: KBØNLY [mailto:kb0nly at mchsi.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 7:17 PM
>> To: Bruce Richardson
>> Subject: Re: [NLRS] OT: Hard Drive recovery?
>>
>> Does the HD spin up though?  Many times the failure is mechanical,
>> bearing
>> or motor failure, head crash on the platters, scored platters,
>> etc..  If it's
>> a mechanical failure your SOL trying to do anything yourself
>> unless, and
>> this is a big unless, you have an exact model drive that works and
>> are
>> willing to do some really down home recovery work.
>>
>> A few years back a failed 40gb hard drive was brought to me, after
>> I
>> preached the necessity of backup they asked what could be done
>> since a
>> couple shops quoted them hundreds of dollars.  I checked the drive
>> and it
>> turns out it wouldn't spin up, click whirr, click whirr, something
>> wrong in
>> the electronics or drive motor.  I obtained another drive of the
>> same make
>> and model off ebay, swapped the control board from the bottom of
>> the drive
>> and it still did the same thing, at this point I figured it was
>> the motor.
>> Got permission to try one last ditch thing and I pulled apart both
>> drives
>> and wearing gloves and taking my time I swapped the platters, I
>> realize I
>> don't have a clean room, and this isn't recommended to make a
>> working drive,
>> but I was able to get it to run long enough to do a copy to
>> another hard
>> drive, then discarded both drives.  Total cost of recovery was
>> about $50
>> with the donor drive.
>>
>> The biggest thing is what the actual problem is, as others have
>> mentioned a
>> corrupt boot sector would cause a non-boot failure as well, but
>> considering
>> they wanted to send it out to a recovery place I assume it's a
>> mechanical
>> failure as any tech worth his name badge would be able to get data
>> off a
>> corrupt drive by connecting it to another computer.
>>
>> Another trick I have used over the years is to put the drive in
>> the freezer
>> in a plastic bag for a while, let it get good and cold, this will
>> sometimes
>> free up seized drives long enough to read some data off them,
>> provided they
>> then spin up again.  At one time I had a setup where I put the
>> drive in the
>> freezer with a power and USB cable coming out of the freezer, I
>> would set a
>> laptop on the lid of the freezer and keep turning power on to the
>> drive
>> until it would spin up and start to run, then get off as much data
>> as
>> possible, as the drive warms up it would seize again.  So I would
>> shut off
>> power and let the drive get cold once again.  I was lucky enough
>> to get most
>> of the data off a few drives doing this.
>>
>> She now knows the importance of data backup!  And tell her to
>> spend the
>> bucks and get a SSD drive for her laptop, well worth the
>> investment.
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Scott
>>
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