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General discussion

CRASHED Hard drive

Oct 1, 2004 2:54PM PDT

The 40 meg Maxtor hard drive in my wife's computer suddenly crashed. she had not backed up her business (accounting) program for three months. The platter will not spin. We bought a similar Maxtor and exchanged control boards - no luck). On the advice of a law enforcement computer forensics expert we froze the hard drive then plugged it in - no luck. Does anyone have any suggestions escept for professional data recovery - too expensive?

Discussion is locked

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Re: CRASHED Hard drive
Oct 1, 2004 7:14PM PDT

Does your fan turn on when you turn the PC? Looks like a power supply problem. Maybe you could have sombeody look again into it. Or you could use Bart's PE Builder to recover your files. Have somebody install the pebuilder into his computer and burn the pebuilder.iso image in a CD. Reboot the computer with the CD and you could copy your files in a diskette. You could even burn them in a CD if you have Nero Burning ROM plugged into the CD. And the PE Builder is for free. Here is the address: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder.

Swisse

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Re: CRASHED Hard drive
Oct 4, 2004 10:51AM PDT

If the drive doesn't spin, you don't have any other alternatives, than professional recovery.

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Stuck Drive
Dec 14, 2004 2:59PM PST

In the old days us techs called this stickshin.
I don't know what these so called pc techs
call it today.

Since you have swapped the control board
you have eliminated the circutry that sends
the start signal to the motor to spin up
as the problem so only 3 other things could
cause this.
1- The motor has failed. (unlikely)
2- The silicone lubricrant used on the axis
the drive spins on has dried out.
This is a very common problem and 15 years
ago was epedimic.
3 You have a power supply problem and not enough
juice is getting to the drive. This can be tested
easily by seeing if your new drive powers up
but is not a conclusive test because if the
drive is suffering from stickshin then
it is a multiple parameter problem.
You can eliminate this problem by unplugging
Floppy and CD etc...drives. I remember once I
had to hook up 2 drives to a system not designed
for it and could only power them up one at a time.
by just waiting for the first one to power up then
plugging in the second and then doing a soft reboot
to go into setup.

In most cases stickshin is the problem so try that
first.

I have 17 years experience "slapping drives"
to get them to spin up. Several things have to
be considered before you try this.

First slapping a drive too hard can cause further damage so if the the data is critical then take it
to a data recovery service. I removed the
platters for Rod Canion, then CEO of Compaq
right there in his office so he could catch
his ride to NY for a presentation which was
on these platters. Ordinarily you need to do
this in a "clean room" but when I did this
we had no time for it so he said go for it.
Now days it is much harder to swap the platters
out and you run the risk of damaging the new
drive once they are swapped and you are almost
certian to be at risk of contamination.

15 years ago I had to slam an old 130MB
server hard drive against a desk while with
a lengthened power connection attached to
get a 1 million dollar profit per hour factory
back up and running before Rod Canion, CEO of
Compaq showed up with a tour for some Japanes
businessmen. It worked with about 2 minute to
spare. We had to plug the data cable in while
the drive was running. Risky stuff.

A light slap on the back does the trick for most
drives. It must be attempting to spin up, in other
words the bios is sending a signal to the drive controller to spin the drive up at this time. It
will give up after a certain amount of time so timing
is important. Do not slap it any harder with your
hand than you would, lets say your own face, to
give you an idea how hard to slap it. Do this with
the data cable attached since some drives will not
spin up without it. Also be prepared with your new
drive in a master/slave configuration so when/if
it does spin up you can move your data over as this
may be the last time it will spin up.
I would get your new drive prepared by installing
the OS and Program files and set it up as the
master and the bad drive as the slave.
Of course the drives will need to be hanging
out of thier bays when you do this so you can get
your hands on it. Do not slap the drive against
a hard surface. These new drives are not as sturdy
as the old ones. Holding the drive on the sides
with one hand and then power up and slap the drive
till you can put your ear up to it and hear it spin
up. Then your set. I am not sure who told you to
freeze the drive because that is the opposite
action. Warming it up would make the silicone
more pliable, thus easier to free up.
Freezing is only usefull in rare cases these
days and only on curcuit boards.

Do not forget to static-discharge yourself by having the computer plugged in and off and just touch some
metal on the cpu case.

Also, if your unit is on the floor lay some plastic
down to prevent static in the carpet from damaging
the drives and be carefull not to touch the
drive controller board escpecilly if it is
power up.

I have done this for I can only guess at least
several hundred drives and I would guess it worked
about 90% of the time.

I had one drive long aga that just would not
spin up and I was having a bad day so I slammed it
on the concrete floor and kicked it so hard
I hurt my foot. I then plugged it in and it
worked. If you did this to these new drives
you would probably destroy and hurt your foot!

Good luck...I hope this helps. I know how frustrating
it is to loose your work.

In any case buy another drive to mirror your
good one if you get it all back again to protect
it in the future. I do this on my Dell. I just
use batch files to copy every thing over and have an
exact duplicate. If Drive 0 fails I can go into the
bios and tell it to boot drive 1 and I am back up
and running in less than 2 minutes.

Good Luck!!!