diy hard drive repair secret guild knowledge

[Iram Hernandez]

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

I have looked all over the web trying to find information about do it
yourself hard drive repair and have found little tidbits of
information here and there. For example, I know that a clicking sound
is probably a hard crash and that sometimes replacing the board inside
the hard drive with an identical one can sometimes fix problems. I
know that hard drive manipulations should be done in a 'clean room'
type of environment.

The problem is that I can't find any good comprehensive info about
doing this type of procedure. It seems to me that this type of info
should be more available but alas, it is not.

So I know this post is a little long winded but I wanted to put out
all this info so that I can get some help.

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?
does anybody know of any books/magazine articles/etc that I can refer
to?
does anybody know what the hell the wheezing/squeeling noise is?

Hope someone can help.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

The HDs are dead and not returnable and your data is gone unless you want to
spend 1000s.

 

[Bob Willard]

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

I have looked all over the web trying to find information about do it
yourself hard drive repair and have found little tidbits of
information here and there. For example, I know that a clicking sound
is probably a hard crash and that sometimes replacing the board inside
the hard drive with an identical one can sometimes fix problems. I
know that hard drive manipulations should be done in a 'clean room'
type of environment.

The problem is that I can't find any good comprehensive info about
doing this type of procedure. It seems to me that this type of info
should be more available but alas, it is not.

So I know this post is a little long winded but I wanted to put out
all this info so that I can get some help.

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?
does anybody know of any books/magazine articles/etc that I can refer
to?
does anybody know what the hell the wheezing/squeeling noise is?

Hope someone can help.

You just received a non-free lesson on the value of backup.

As B. Franklin said (long before B. Gates was born):
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

 

[someone]

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

I have looked all over the web trying to find information about do it
yourself hard drive repair and have found little tidbits of
information here and there. For example, I know that a clicking sound
is probably a hard crash and that sometimes replacing the board inside
the hard drive with an identical one can sometimes fix problems. I
know that hard drive manipulations should be done in a 'clean room'
type of environment.

The problem is that I can't find any good comprehensive info about
doing this type of procedure. It seems to me that this type of info
should be more available but alas, it is not.

So I know this post is a little long winded but I wanted to put out
all this info so that I can get some help.

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?
does anybody know of any books/magazine articles/etc that I can refer
to?
does anybody know what the hell the wheezing/squeeling noise is?

Hope someone can help.

www.howtorecoverdata.com

But you won't find the answers you need there.
Not really a DIY project when you have data you value.
Experimentation on junk drives would be a different issue.

 

[Peder]

(e-mail address removed) (Iram Hernandez) wrote in

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

I have looked all over the web trying to find information about do it
yourself hard drive repair and have found little tidbits of
information here and there. For example, I know that a clicking sound
is probably a hard crash and that sometimes replacing the board inside
the hard drive with an identical one can sometimes fix problems. I
know that hard drive manipulations should be done in a 'clean room'
type of environment.

The problem is that I can't find any good comprehensive info about
doing this type of procedure. It seems to me that this type of info
should be more available but alas, it is not.

So I know this post is a little long winded but I wanted to put out
all this info so that I can get some help.

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?
does anybody know of any books/magazine articles/etc that I can refer
to?
does anybody know what the hell the wheezing/squeeling noise is?

Hope someone can help.

Try a diferent power supply plug and data cable? You could try freezing
the drive to recover the data. Worked for me, but I had to go to dry
ice...

 

[someone]

Hello all, I am a pretty accomplished pc tech but now I am facing a
new problem that I can't figure out. About six months I put three
hard drives in my backpack and took them to a friends house. One of
them was an 80 gig hard drive from my personal computer, another was a
brand new 80 gig hard drive and the last was an old 20 gig'er. When I
got to my friend's place I put the new hard drive in his computer and
discovered that it was no longer working. Next I put my personal hard
drive in and was shocked that my hard drive was no longer working
either. I tested the third one and realized that was broken too.

The hard drives all have the same problem. The maked a high pitched
squeeling noise. Also the hard drives are not recognized by BIOS,
although one of them was recognized for a few hours after I discoverd
the problem but it is now dead too.

So here is my dilema: I have three hard drives but only one of them is
important. On that hard drive I have 60 gigs of music (ripped from my
personal CD's before I gave them all away) as well as ten+ years worth
of writing that I had done. I already took the oldest one of the
drives apart to see how it works but I only managed to break it as I
tried to move the arms manually. Both of the other hard drive are
still under warranty so i could return them and get new ones but I
don't want to lose my data so I don't necessarily just return it.

I have looked all over the web trying to find information about do it
yourself hard drive repair and have found little tidbits of
information here and there. For example, I know that a clicking sound
is probably a hard crash and that sometimes replacing the board inside
the hard drive with an identical one can sometimes fix problems. I
know that hard drive manipulations should be done in a 'clean room'
type of environment.

The problem is that I can't find any good comprehensive info about
doing this type of procedure. It seems to me that this type of info
should be more available but alas, it is not.

So I know this post is a little long winded but I wanted to put out
all this info so that I can get some help.

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?
does anybody know of any books/magazine articles/etc that I can refer
to?
does anybody know what the hell the wheezing/squeeling noise is?

Hope someone can help.

Another great link re DIY DR
http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank/0,4885,88082,00.html

 

[chrisv]

The HDs are dead and not returnable and your data is gone unless you want to
spend 1000s.

Speaking of dead harddrives, Ron, did you ever change your mind about
the last generations of IBM harddrives? As I recall, you did not
agree with the popular opinion that IBM had some serious quality
problems.

 

[Iram Hernandez]

Iram Hernandez wrote:

So.... does anybody have any links for diy hard drive repairs?

You just received a non-free lesson on the value of backup.

I know the value of backups and realize that I should have had better
backups. The situation is complicated and it really is a long story
but the jist of the situation is that I accumalated the data very
quickly and did not have a chance to back it up before this happened.
I had bought the second 80 gig hard drive for the explicit purpose of
mirroring the hard drive. In fact, it was less than 24 hours old.

Anyway.... what I am looking for is for tips and links on how to
perform data recovery or on how to repair a hard drives. In other
words, I want to _learn_ how to fix this. I have three hard drives
with the exact same problem so I can afford to experiment.

So... does anyone have any tips? I was forwarded a document earlier
today that suggested freezing the hard drive. Has anybody tried it
that?

 

[Iram Hernandez]

I know the value of backups and realize that I should have had better
backups. The situation is complicated and it really is a long story
but the jist of the situation is that I accumalated the data very
quickly and did not have a chance to back it up before this happened.
I had bought the second 80 gig hard drive for the explicit purpose of
mirroring the hard drive. In fact, it was less than 24 hours old.

Anyway.... what I am looking for is for tips and links on how to
perform data recovery or on how to repair a hard drives. In other
words, I want to _learn_ how to fix this. I have three hard drives
with the exact same problem so I can afford to experiment.

So... does anyone have any tips? I was forwarded a document earlier
today that suggested freezing the hard drive. Has anybody tried it
that?

UPDATE:

I tried freezing the hard drive that has no data on it and plugged it
back into my computer. It did have some sucess in that the bios now
recognizes the hard drive. I tried booting off a linux cd to see if I
could access the hard drive from inside and OS but the boot up process
crashed. I'm going to try to freeze the drive with data on it and see
if I can have better luck with that one. Wish me luck.

 

[Michael Hawes]

The HDs are dead and not returnable and your data is gone unless you want to
spend 1000s.

Sounds like your backpack had a 6 foot drop onto a concrete surface.

Mike.

 

[someone]

want
Sounds like your backpack had a 6 foot drop onto a concrete surface.

Mike.

Odd, I had the same thought. Were the hdd's transported without proper care
(ie. wrapped in foam in the backpack).
But, we have this statement by the OP "I am a pretty accomplished pc tech "