Dead Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ben Williams
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Ben Williams

This isn't the first time I've been here... It certainly won't be the last.
Less than 90 days ago, my Western Digital IDE 160GB hard drive bit the dust.
Thankfully, it didn't take the OS with it, as this drive was used for
storage only. I had a lot of data on there, most of it sentimental, but
important to me nonetheless.Western Digital has all but officially voided
the warranty, stating that a small piece of plastic (no more than 1/2")
found missing near the molex power connector appears to void the warranty.
To avoid logistical, technical, and legal wrangling with them, I have
decided not to send the drive back to them. I fear that once that they void
the warranty on the drive that it will be discarded before I could instruct
them to return it to me. After looking about on the Internet, I've
determined that hiring a professional data recovery consultant to recover
the data contents of the drive would be cost prohibitive. I am currently
looking for a repair shop that could manage to get the drive started and
send it back to me. I would recover the data on my own once it starts. The
drive does not spin up and becomes warm to the touch after a few minutes. My
suspicion is that a fuse has blown inside the drive or that the motor itself
has shorted out. Can anyone refer me to a business of some sort that might
be able to get the drive running. All that I need to know really is whether
or not the drive can be restarted and if there is data of any sort left on
it for me to grab. Thanks for the help.
 
If you're in the US - look in the back of "PC Magazine" or "Computer
Shopper" for companies that repair hard drives.
 
Ben Williams said:
This isn't the first time I've been here... It certainly won't be the
last. Less than 90 days ago, my Western Digital IDE 160GB hard drive bit
the dust. Thankfully, it didn't take the OS with it, as this drive was
used for storage only. I had a lot of data on there, most of it
sentimental, but important to me nonetheless.Western Digital has all but
officially voided the warranty, stating that a small piece of plastic (no
more than 1/2") found missing near the molex power connector appears to
void the warranty. To avoid logistical, technical, and legal wrangling
with them, I have decided not to send the drive back to them. I fear that
once that they void the warranty on the drive that it will be discarded
before I could instruct them to return it to me. After looking about on
the Internet, I've determined that hiring a professional data recovery
consultant to recover the data contents of the drive would be cost
prohibitive. I am currently looking for a repair shop that could manage to
get the drive started and send it back to me. I would recover the data on
my own once it starts. The drive does not spin up and becomes warm to the
touch after a few minutes. My suspicion is that a fuse has blown inside
the drive or that the motor itself has shorted out. Can anyone refer me to
a business of some sort that might be able to get the drive running. All
that I need to know really is whether or not the drive can be restarted
and if there is data of any sort left on it for me to grab. Thanks for the
help.
Click to expand...
I'd be quite surprised if you found a repair shop that works on hard drives
that isn't also a data recovery company. It's a pretty specialized sort of
business. And it's costly to maintain a clean room and have the parts,
testing equipment, and quality employees you need to work on hard drives and
data recovery.

It might be the controller on the hard drive is shot, and I've known some
people who've repaired that sort of thing by getting an IDENTICAL drive and
putting the controller from the new drive onto the dead one.

You run the risk of killing the new drive in the process if you screw up or
if something in the dead drive fries the new controller. So at that point
you're out the cost of the new drive and you haven't recovered anything. And
if the controller isn't easily accessible, you might not be able to swap it
yourself without causing more problems.

I'd be surprised if a computer shop would want to tackle something like that
because the chance of success is slim and the cost of doing the repair is
high. They don't want to run the risk that they kill their hard drive, can't
fix yours, and then you don't want to pay because nothing is fixed. I'm not
saying you, personally, wouldn't pay, but it's the sort of thing that
happens.

And then who'd want a hard drive that's had the controller removed and
replaced? I'd consider both the old and the new ones as a bit suspect after
all of that. So the cost of the drive really is wasted unless you want to
risk using it.

You could also have an internal problem that's keeping the drive from
spinning, and if that's the case, it's going to take someone with a
cleanroom to get the drive functioning again.

About the only repairs a normal shop might attempt is putting the drive in a
freezer (which sometimes works if a platter is stuck, which doesn't seem to
be your problem) or some other brute-force methods. But in those cases, the
drive isn't going to be functional for long, so if you don't let them do the
recovery, it's likely that when you get the drive back, it's going to be
dead again.

I'd be interested if you do find someone who's willing to work on the drive,
and how it works out for you. I'd actually be pleased if I'm wrong and
someone wants to do the work and they actually get it fixed.
 
D.Currie said:
I'd be quite surprised if you found a repair shop that works on hard
drives that isn't also a data recovery company. It's a pretty specialized
sort of business. And it's costly to maintain a clean room and have the
parts, testing equipment, and quality employees you need to work on hard
drives and data recovery.

It might be the controller on the hard drive is shot, and I've known some
people who've repaired that sort of thing by getting an IDENTICAL drive
and putting the controller from the new drive onto the dead one.

You run the risk of killing the new drive in the process if you screw up
or if something in the dead drive fries the new controller. So at that
point you're out the cost of the new drive and you haven't recovered
anything. And if the controller isn't easily accessible, you might not be
able to swap it yourself without causing more problems.

I'd be surprised if a computer shop would want to tackle something like
that because the chance of success is slim and the cost of doing the
repair is high. They don't want to run the risk that they kill their hard
drive, can't fix yours, and then you don't want to pay because nothing is
fixed. I'm not saying you, personally, wouldn't pay, but it's the sort of
thing that happens.

And then who'd want a hard drive that's had the controller removed and
replaced? I'd consider both the old and the new ones as a bit suspect
after all of that. So the cost of the drive really is wasted unless you
want to risk using it.

You could also have an internal problem that's keeping the drive from
spinning, and if that's the case, it's going to take someone with a
cleanroom to get the drive functioning again.

About the only repairs a normal shop might attempt is putting the drive in
a freezer (which sometimes works if a platter is stuck, which doesn't seem
to be your problem) or some other brute-force methods. But in those cases,
the drive isn't going to be functional for long, so if you don't let them
do the recovery, it's likely that when you get the drive back, it's going
to be dead again.

I'd be interested if you do find someone who's willing to work on the
drive, and how it works out for you. I'd actually be pleased if I'm wrong
and someone wants to do the work and they actually get it fixed.
Click to expand...

I am not totally opposed to doing business with a data recovery company, so
long as it is firmly understood that the aim is and will continue to be
restoring the drive to a functional state. Again, the purpose here is for me
to recover the data myself, not to sit here and pay out the wazoo for them
to do it for me. I am convinced that the data on the drive is largely
intact, just I have no way to access it at this stage. Can you or anyone
think of even a data recovery company that will repair the drive to a
functional state? I just don't want to pay $400-$500 to get back maybe
30-45gb of stuff. It's a ripoff.
 
Ben said:
I am not totally opposed to doing business with a data recovery company, so
long as it is firmly understood that the aim is and will continue to be
restoring the drive to a functional state. Again, the purpose here is for me
to recover the data myself, not to sit here and pay out the wazoo for them
to do it for me. I am convinced that the data on the drive is largely
intact, just I have no way to access it at this stage. Can you or anyone
think of even a data recovery company that will repair the drive to a
functional state? I just don't want to pay $400-$500 to get back maybe
30-45gb of stuff. It's a ripoff.
Click to expand...
I don't think the data recovery companies are a ripoff. It is all a
matter of proportion. How valuable is the data to you? Our company
used one several years ago to recover a tape with less than 10 GB of
data on it and it cost over $18,000. Since this was the last backup of
our system it was worth it to us. In our case the old tape drive had
got out of alignment and the backup tapes were written out of alignment.
I found this out when the tape drive died in the middle of restoring
the system. The new drive could not read the tapes and the data
recovery service we used had to buy a new drive deliberately misalign
the heads and copy the data to another drive and tape. Definitely not a
cheap or simple operation.
From what you have said it sounds like what happened to me when I had a
controller die on a hard drive. Replacing the electronics may be
something you could do yourself or something requiring specialized
equipment. And even if you did repair the drive to operational status
with a new controller it does not mean that it could read the data as
the alignment might not be the same or the old controller could have
trashed the data when it went.
 
Iomega recovery, if I recall correctly, is no-data, no-charge. When I used
them last, they sent me a list of all the files they could recover and asked
me if I wanted to proceed. If they were not able to recover the files that I
needed off the drive, there would have been no charge. Once I agreed to the
recovery, I paid the fee and the data was transferred to a new drive and
everything returned to me.
 
Snipped this from a thread from the 26th

What ever you do, don't open the drive, there's nothing a layman can service
in there. Not only that, the drive might be fine! The circuit board on the
bottom of the drive may be shot and just need replacing.

Last year, my computer fell victim to a huge power surge - toasted all the
stuff inside - MB, CD Rom, video card, etc...

I had two drives in the system. I pulled them out and stuck them in another
computer. They would spin up, but I could not access the drives. I pulled
the circuit board off and sure enough, parts of them were melted. I had one
spare drive identical to one of the damaged drives, swapped the boards and
retrieved the data. The other one, unfortunately, had to go to a data
recovery center.(I used Iomega, and I highly recommend them.) It cost $
800.00 to get the data back - 25 GB of stuff. They transferred the contents
to an external drive and returned everything. After I received the data and
the damaged drive, I returned it for replacement.

So, what can you do?

1. Try to freeze the drive - see if that works. That works!!!!
I did that to a drive 60 GB that failed; it had 40 GB of videos. Got it
running long enough to recover 20 GB, froze it again, and got the other 20.

2. Buy an identical drive and swap the circuit boards - see if that works -
you can do that without voiding the warranty, I think. You may need a
special 'star' type screwdriver depending on how the circuit board is
attached.

3. Shop around for the best price for recovery. (Iomega was the cheapest,
and again, great service. Not to mention a discount on the drive I bought to
recover the data.

4. After you get your data and drive back, send the drive back for repair
replacement.

5. Back up all your important files on CD or DVD.
 
Ben Williams said:
I am not totally opposed to doing business with a data recovery company,
so long as it is firmly understood that the aim is and will continue to be
restoring the drive to a functional state. Again, the purpose here is for
me to recover the data myself, not to sit here and pay out the wazoo for
them to do it for me. I am convinced that the data on the drive is largely
intact, just I have no way to access it at this stage. Can you or anyone
think of even a data recovery company that will repair the drive to a
functional state? I just don't want to pay $400-$500 to get back maybe
30-45gb of stuff. It's a ripoff.
Click to expand...

Whether it's too expensive or not is up to you, but I don't know of any that
start at less than $500 and it rises pretty quickly to the thousands. There
was a local company that was offering free estimates and $200 minimums, but
that changed pretty quickly.

Even if you could find one that would "repair" the drive and return it to
you to copy the data, I can't see that they'd charge you that much less, as
they would have done all the critical, expensive work, and you'd just be
doing the mop-up. And if they had to open the drive in a clean room, it
would probably be more expensive to return it to you in working order, as
they'd have to reassemble the drive so that it would work in the environment
instead of simply copying the data while the drive was open. And I don't
know if they'd even be set up to do that. It's one thing to open the drive
and work on it, and another to seal it up and expect it survive shipping and
to work for any length of time.

And depending on what's wrong with the drive, sometimes they don't repair
your drive at all. Sometimes what they do is take the platters out of your
dead drive, and read them on their equipment. After that, your old drive is
just scrap.

But if you do find someone, let us know.

Good luck.
 
Freezing the drive sounds like the best idea to me for the time being. How
long did you freeze your drive for and should I leave it in an anti-static
bag? Also, when you say "freeze" what initially comes to mind is leaving it
in my common household freezer with TV dinners and the whole bit.
 
wrapped it in a towel - put it in the freezer overnight. pulled it out of
the freezer. left it sitting outside the case, hooked it up and booted up.
got half the data, froze it again, and got the rest.
 
Based upon what was reported, data may be easily recovered.
Implied is that drive motor does not spin. That is either one
of two problems: the drive motor has locked in a dead spot or
one of three driver transistors on PC board have failed.
Making things a little more complex is that the drive motor
and drive transistors are in a closed loop system - meaning
anything in that loop could be causing a problem. Measuring
with the oscilloscope to discover which is the problem would
be futile.

So pick which of two possible solutions to start. For
example, a PC board from an identical drive (and it must be
exact same model number) can replace the existing (burned out)
motor driver transistors. Most of the worry about alignment
differences is nonsense - but only if firmware on the new
board is same as old board.

This solution has one danger. If motor is locked, then
excessive current through that locked motor could burn out
same drive transistor on new (replacement) PC board. Now you
would have two defective drives.

Most all drives have an access hole covered in silver tape.
Get some duct tape and a soft probe - wood or plastic less
than 1/8 inch diameter. Use the probe to punch through that
metallic tape and partially spin the disk platter. A moved
disk platter will no long be in the dead spot. Immediately
cover that hole with the duct tape, connect drive, and see if
it spins. Do this a few times as necessary. If the drive
still does not spin, then install the replacement PC board -
because stuck drive may have also burned out the drive
transistor. IOW best to first do probe surgery before
replacing PC board.

Again, this assumes your problem is no spinning disk drive.
Other solutions such as the freezer solution are for other
type of failures.

There is no fuse on disk drives. Especially if this is a
FAT drive, do not let that probe touch the disk surface. Only
spin disk platter by pushing its narrow edge. Probe touching
surface on FAT drives could destroy critically important
allocation tables. Also perform this surgery in a clean room
meaning no open windows and a long time since the vacuum
cleaner filled the room with dust storms.
 
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