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General discussion

Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?

Sep 11, 2004 5:35AM PDT

Hi-
my 3 year-old Samsung 30Gb HardDisk was pronounced
"dead" by my IT Supplier. I would like to have a go and open it up, and see what is making the clicking noises.
Any guides from technically minded people how to do this and what to expect would be very welcome. I am particulary looking for sites with diagrams and views of the "innards" of hard disk.
Thanks
---------------------------------------------------
System P-III Windows XP Pro on another Drive
The faulty drive is no longer recognized in the BOIS.

Thanks - just hopeful

Discussion is locked

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Get ready for a disappointment. . .
Sep 11, 2004 6:22AM PDT

The "innards" look like a record player. There is one or more "platters" or disks made of metal oxide coated aluminum. There is/are a read head(s) attached to a swing arm that moves back and forth across the disks exactly like a record player.

That's it other than a circuit board on the bottom and probably a small one inside. After your diagnosis the drives make good door stops.

On a side note. Almost twenty years ago I came into possession of two IBM commercial disk drive units. About the size of lawn chairs with five 18" disks. The arm was an in and out linear motor driven by a forty pound AlNiCo magnet. I still have one of the magnets. It'll screw up a TV picture twenty feet away, and almost pick up an engine block.

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 11, 2004 7:30AM PDT

If you wanta play, go ahead and play. You *might* get it back up and running. Two possible cause sof problems, either the electronics got shot or the heads crashed on the platters. Either way, just replace the effected parts, but practically it a moot point for recovering data, its really touch and go. Then even if you got it running and really didn't care about the data, more than likely the HD will crash again
as attention to dust free enviroment, etc. will come into play. it really not worth it other than tech poop.

good luck -----Willy Happy

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 11, 2004 3:17PM PDT

Thanks "Coryphaeus" and "Willy" - I appreciate
your input. Yes, dust-free environment will be
a problem, especially in the Maltese Summer!
Will see how it goes.

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 12, 2004 3:11AM PDT

There is no way you can even begin to fix this. You have what is called a head crash, that is what causes the clicking, a head gets detached from the arm and this almost always causes damage to the platters when it happens. You can't fix something like this.

If your data is important you can pay a recovery service to get it back, but it will be at least $1000 to do that, if you touch it yourself you can almost guarantee you can never get the data back.

A recovery service will remove the platters in a clean room and put them in another drive to get the data off.

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 12, 2004 6:16PM PDT

Thanks for the additional info - it was most useful. What you explained made sense. Fortunately, my data is backed-up regularly. I am just trying to salvage a component of only 3 years service (apart from the cost of a new HDD)!

Do you have any idea on what might have happened ( a hasty shutdown? power spikes?... or is built-in absolescence the cause?)

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 12, 2004 10:51PM PDT

Hardware failure in a hard drive is inevitable, but head crashes are unusual, though I have seen a couple in the last 6 months in client's systems.

When a drive fails you either start getting errors on the platters or the heads crash. This has nothing to do with the user in the majority of cases. Sure you can damage data on a drive by powering a system off while the drive is writing, but you can always reformat in that situation.

There is nothing you can do to cause or rescue a drive with a head crash, just be grateful you have a backup and that prices of drives are so low (many of us have paid $500 and up for hard drive in the distant past).

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Re: Dead HDD-Kiss of Life?
Sep 13, 2004 10:22PM PDT

Just a note about the construction of harddrives, I read an article in a pc magazine that described the mechanism like this. If your drive was enlarged to the scale where the read/write arm was the size of the Sears tower it would ride only 5 cm above the disks surface. Air pressure is the only thing that lifts the heads off the platters and they are only a few hudredths of an inch thick. Needless to say working on one takes labratory conditions and microscopic tolerences. Good luck