Repair fried IDE drive?

[lwauters]

If you want to respond to the below. PLEASE use:

(e-mail address removed)

Order of events:

The ATXower supply in the PC self destructed for reasons not fully
understood. Sparks and smoke were seen!!!!

The PC had two almost identical hardrives. Both were Western Digital
Caviar 40 GB drives. One was 7200 rpm model, the other a 5400 rpm
model. The one of interest is the 7200 rpm model.
Both hard drives in the pc, the main and of course the "backup" drive
suffered identical damage in the form of a chip on the PC board
exploded.
After this neither hard drive would spin up or show any sign of life
in a functioning PC.

A replacement hard drive of exactly the same type was acquired. Date
of manufacture of the replacement drive was less than 3 weeks apart
from the defective drive. The electronics were removed from the "good"
drive and assembled onto the defective drive. The defective drive now
in fact does spin up and the head can be heard searching, making the
typical "whacking" noise often heard from defective Western Digital
drives. The bios cannot recognize the drive. The electronics ARE GOOD
because when moved to the drive they came from the drive is
recognized. I have tried this several times now and verified beyond
any doubt that the electronics used to attempt a recover are
functional.. They work PERFECT on the drive they came from!!!

So the questions are:

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
disks and heads in the drive and is this possibly why the drive wont
run with the "new" electronics. Does it have something to do with the
electronics not finding a specific sector on the actual disk?

2] Why does the bios of the PC not see the hard drive at all? I
thought that hard drive information is hard coded into the
electronics. Is it because of the above and the electronics are not
searching for the boot sector or sector zero or what ever in the
correct place.? Does this sector contain the drive information and NOT
the electronics?

3] Is there a way to make the electronics calibrate to the heads/disks
without loosing any data by booting with special jumper settings on
the electronics board? It stands to reason that professional data
recovery firms my employ such techniques on exactly this type of
failure. How could I find out what jumpers would have to be set which
way.

4] Considering the noise from the head it may be possible that this
was damaged as well. Would it be possible to remove the actual disks
from the defective drive and install them into the good drive in hopes
of having the "good" electronics and head successfully read the data
on the disk? I do know that doing this is actually quite easy.
Realizing that this is normally done in a clean room, and for good
reason I say that: Tthe drive only has to run one more time and only
long enough for me to get some of the data off.

5] Is it possible to identify the chip on the electronics board that
stores the information on boot sector etc. As there is only 1 chip
blown up on the board, if this chip is NOT the one holding this data
it might be possible to remove the chip in question from the good
electronics board and place it onto the one that had the blown chip.
The boot sector or whatever data should then be be availabe for that
disk/head assuming no other electronics are damaged. The chip in
question is the closest one to the contacts that go to the motor. It
may just be a motor drive controller and head controller chip?

6] Are there any "tricks" even if ultimately destructive that can be
used to recover the data. Considering the cost of having a 40 GB hard
drive recovered by a professional company it would still be vastly
cheaper to buy several new hard drives to use for parts......if a
technique for recovery can be found.

7] IS there any company that will recover maybe only specific data
from a crashed drive at a lower price. Considering the very fast
turnaround time offered by most of these companies it seems that the
task is not really that difficult. How about some private people who
may offer this service at prices a father of 4 can afford?

Any help, URLS or further info on repairing the driver etc would be
greatly appreciated. PLEASE respond to:

(e-mail address removed)

if you have any advice.

Thanks

Marc

 

[Eric Gisin]

There is a chip inside the case, the head amps. Without a signal from the
heads the servoes don't work and the drive spins down.


| The ATXower supply in the PC self destructed for reasons not fully
| understood. Sparks and smoke were seen!!!!
|
| The PC had two almost identical hardrives. Both were Western Digital
| Caviar 40 GB drives. One was 7200 rpm model, the other a 5400 rpm
| model. The one of interest is the 7200 rpm model.
| Both hard drives in the pc, the main and of course the "backup" drive
| suffered identical damage in the form of a chip on the PC board
| exploded.
| After this neither hard drive would spin up or show any sign of life
| in a functioning PC.
|
| A replacement hard drive of exactly the same type was acquired. Date
| of manufacture of the replacement drive was less than 3 weeks apart
| from the defective drive. The electronics were removed from the "good"
| drive and assembled onto the defective drive. The defective drive now
| in fact does spin up and the head can be heard searching, making the
| typical "whacking" noise often heard from defective Western Digital
| drives. The bios cannot recognize the drive. The electronics ARE GOOD
| because when moved to the drive they came from the drive is
| recognized. I have tried this several times now and verified beyond
| any doubt that the electronics used to attempt a recover are
| functional.. They work PERFECT on the drive they came from!!!
|
| So the questions are:
|
| 1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
| disks and heads in the drive and is this possibly why the drive wont
| run with the "new" electronics. Does it have something to do with the
| electronics not finding a specific sector on the actual disk?
|
| 2] Why does the bios of the PC not see the hard drive at all? I
| thought that hard drive information is hard coded into the
| electronics. Is it because of the above and the electronics are not
| searching for the boot sector or sector zero or what ever in the
| correct place.? Does this sector contain the drive information and NOT
| the electronics?
|
| 3] Is there a way to make the electronics calibrate to the heads/disks
| without loosing any data by booting with special jumper settings on
| the electronics board? It stands to reason that professional data
| recovery firms my employ such techniques on exactly this type of
| failure. How could I find out what jumpers would have to be set which
| way.
|
| 4] Considering the noise from the head it may be possible that this
| was damaged as well. Would it be possible to remove the actual disks
| from the defective drive and install them into the good drive in hopes
| of having the "good" electronics and head successfully read the data
| on the disk? I do know that doing this is actually quite easy.
| Realizing that this is normally done in a clean room, and for good
| reason I say that: Tthe drive only has to run one more time and only
| long enough for me to get some of the data off.
|
| 5] Is it possible to identify the chip on the electronics board that
| stores the information on boot sector etc. As there is only 1 chip
| blown up on the board, if this chip is NOT the one holding this data
| it might be possible to remove the chip in question from the good
| electronics board and place it onto the one that had the blown chip.
| The boot sector or whatever data should then be be availabe for that
| disk/head assuming no other electronics are damaged. The chip in
| question is the closest one to the contacts that go to the motor. It
| may just be a motor drive controller and head controller chip?
|
| 6] Are there any "tricks" even if ultimately destructive that can be
| used to recover the data. Considering the cost of having a 40 GB hard
| drive recovered by a professional company it would still be vastly
| cheaper to buy several new hard drives to use for parts......if a
| technique for recovery can be found.
|
| 7] IS there any company that will recover maybe only specific data
| from a crashed drive at a lower price. Considering the very fast
| turnaround time offered by most of these companies it seems that the
| task is not really that difficult. How about some private people who
| may offer this service at prices a father of 4 can afford?
|

 

[Walt]

"Almost" doesn't count. Sorry.

If they aren't identical, they aren't identical and that means they
are not interchangeable.

For what you say to be true, then anyone could buy a 5400 rpm drive, and
"upgrade" it to 7200 rpm with no modifications. Instead, I am sure
one will find different speed-rated chips (read channel, etc), and
very different firmware code tables (register settings, etc).

What you are asking is kind of like "I wrapped my car around a telephone
pole last night. Where can I buy insurance today to cover it?"

 

[Eric Gisin]

Read the post again. All the words.

| "Almost" doesn't count. Sorry.
|
| If they aren't identical, they aren't identical and that means they
| are not interchangeable.
|

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

If you want to respond to the below. PLEASE use:

(e-mail address removed)

Order of events:

The ATXower supply in the PC self destructed for reasons not fully
understood. Sparks and smoke were seen!!!!

The PC had two almost identical hardrives. Both were Western Digital
Caviar 40 GB drives. One was 7200 rpm model, the other a 5400 rpm
model. The one of interest is the 7200 rpm model.
Both hard drives in the pc, the main and of course the "backup" drive
suffered identical damage in the form of a chip on the PC board exploded.

PCB presumably.

After this neither hard drive would spin up or show any sign of life
in a functioning PC.

A replacement hard drive of exactly the same type was acquired. Date
of manufacture of the replacement drive was less than 3 weeks apart
from the defective drive. The electronics were removed from the "good"
drive and assembled onto the defective drive. The defective drive now
in fact does spin up and the head can be heard searching, making the
typical "whacking" noise often heard from defective Western Digital
drives. The bios cannot recognize the drive. The electronics ARE GOOD
because when moved to the drive they came from the drive is
recognized. I have tried this several times now and verified beyond
any doubt that the electronics used to attempt a recover are
functional.. They work PERFECT on the drive they came from!!!

So the questions are:

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
disks and heads in the drive and is this possibly why the drive wont
run with the "new" electronics. Does it have something to do with the
electronics not finding a specific sector on the actual disk?

Answered by Eric.

2] Why does the bios of the PC not see the hard drive at all?

Because it is dead and there is no point in the bios giving access to a
drive that is dead, so it doesn't. This may be different for drives that support spinup on command where not being spunup is a valid
mode.

I thought that hard drive information is hard coded into the electronics.

Those that support spinup by command do have some, others may not.
The information (name) supplied in that case is usually that of the hardware design common to the drive series.

Is it because of the above and the electronics are not searching for
the boot sector or sector zero or what ever in the correct place.?

Does this sector contain the drive information and NOT the electronics?

The information normally comes from the identification sector (which
may not actually be a sector at all but is nonetheless 512 bytes)

3] Is there a way to make the electronics calibrate to the heads/disks
without loosing any data by booting with special jumper settings on
the electronics board?

It stands to reason that professional data recovery firms
may employ such techniques on exactly this type of failure.

Your imagination is working overtime.

How could I find out what jumpers would have to be set which way.

4] Considering the noise from the head it may be possible that this
was damaged as well. Would it be possible to remove the actual disks
from the defective drive and install them into the good drive in hopes
of having the "good" electronics and head successfully read the data
on the disk?

I do know that doing this is actually quite easy.

Your imagination is still working overtime, big.

Realizing that this is normally done in a clean room, and for good
reason I say that: the drive only has to run one more time and only
long enough for me to get some of the data off.

5] Is it possible to identify the chip on the electronics board that
stores the information on boot sector etc. As there is only 1 chip
blown up on the board, if this chip is NOT the one holding this data
it might be possible to remove the chip in question from the good
electronics board and place it onto the one that had the blown chip.
The boot sector or whatever data should then be be available for that
disk/head assuming no other electronics are damaged. The chip in
question is the closest one to the contacts that go to the motor.

It may just be a motor drive controller and head controller chip?

That blew up the preamp on the headactuator beam in that case.

6] Are there any "tricks" even if ultimately destructive that can be
used to recover the data. Considering the cost of having a 40 GB hard
drive recovered by a professional company it would still be vastly
cheaper to buy several new hard drives to use for parts......if a
technique for recovery can be found.

7] IS there any company that will recover maybe only specific data
from a crashed drive at a lower price.

They still have to repair it first and that is basically all that is required,
probably.
It is unlikely that they repair it, give you your data and then unrepair it.

 

[Joep]

www.hddrecovery.com.au/downloads/200ways.pdf

--
Joep

If you want to respond to the below. PLEASE use:

(e-mail address removed)

Order of events:

The ATXower supply in the PC self destructed for reasons not fully
understood. Sparks and smoke were seen!!!!

The PC had two almost identical hardrives. Both were Western Digital
Caviar 40 GB drives. One was 7200 rpm model, the other a 5400 rpm
model. The one of interest is the 7200 rpm model.
Both hard drives in the pc, the main and of course the "backup" drive
suffered identical damage in the form of a chip on the PC board
exploded.
After this neither hard drive would spin up or show any sign of life
in a functioning PC.

A replacement hard drive of exactly the same type was acquired. Date
of manufacture of the replacement drive was less than 3 weeks apart
from the defective drive. The electronics were removed from the "good"
drive and assembled onto the defective drive. The defective drive now
in fact does spin up and the head can be heard searching, making the
typical "whacking" noise often heard from defective Western Digital
drives. The bios cannot recognize the drive. The electronics ARE GOOD
because when moved to the drive they came from the drive is
recognized. I have tried this several times now and verified beyond
any doubt that the electronics used to attempt a recover are
functional.. They work PERFECT on the drive they came from!!!

So the questions are:

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
disks and heads in the drive and is this possibly why the drive wont
run with the "new" electronics. Does it have something to do with the
electronics not finding a specific sector on the actual disk?

2] Why does the bios of the PC not see the hard drive at all? I
thought that hard drive information is hard coded into the
electronics. Is it because of the above and the electronics are not
searching for the boot sector or sector zero or what ever in the
correct place.? Does this sector contain the drive information and NOT
the electronics?

3] Is there a way to make the electronics calibrate to the heads/disks
without loosing any data by booting with special jumper settings on
the electronics board? It stands to reason that professional data
recovery firms my employ such techniques on exactly this type of
failure. How could I find out what jumpers would have to be set which
way.

4] Considering the noise from the head it may be possible that this
was damaged as well. Would it be possible to remove the actual disks
from the defective drive and install them into the good drive in hopes
of having the "good" electronics and head successfully read the data
on the disk? I do know that doing this is actually quite easy.
Realizing that this is normally done in a clean room, and for good
reason I say that: Tthe drive only has to run one more time and only
long enough for me to get some of the data off.

5] Is it possible to identify the chip on the electronics board that
stores the information on boot sector etc. As there is only 1 chip
blown up on the board, if this chip is NOT the one holding this data
it might be possible to remove the chip in question from the good
electronics board and place it onto the one that had the blown chip.
The boot sector or whatever data should then be be availabe for that
disk/head assuming no other electronics are damaged. The chip in
question is the closest one to the contacts that go to the motor. It
may just be a motor drive controller and head controller chip?

6] Are there any "tricks" even if ultimately destructive that can be
used to recover the data. Considering the cost of having a 40 GB hard
drive recovered by a professional company it would still be vastly
cheaper to buy several new hard drives to use for parts......if a
technique for recovery can be found.

7] IS there any company that will recover maybe only specific data
from a crashed drive at a lower price. Considering the very fast
turnaround time offered by most of these companies it seems that the
task is not really that difficult. How about some private people who
may offer this service at prices a father of 4 can afford?

Any help, URLS or further info on repairing the driver etc would be
greatly appreciated. PLEASE respond to:

(e-mail address removed)

if you have any advice.

Thanks

Marc

 

[lwauters]

www.hddrecovery.com.au/downloads/200ways.pdf

There are several references in the text to replacing the "logic
board", in other word the IDE board or "integrated drive electronics.
Seems this has resulted in a complete reovery for many!!!!

Now in my initial post I explained that I did in fact do this. I
obtained a drive made ony shortly after the one that failed and swaped
out the board. The drive now does spin up but the head bangs around
and it is not recognized by the bios.

So I guess the next step is try the "freezing" the drive trick with
new controller board.

If that doesn't work, I just may try and actually move the "bad" disks
themselves into the "good" drive under the assumption that the heads
went south as well.

Thanks for all the input.

Marc

 

[Rod Speed]

Joep (e-mail address removed) wrote

There are several references in the text to replacing the "logic
board", in other word the IDE board or "integrated drive electronics.
Seems this has resulted in a complete reovery for many!!!!

Yes, that often does work when the logic card fails, as opposed
to being killed by the power supply grossly over voltaging it.

Now in my initial post I explained that I did in fact do this.
I obtained a drive made ony shortly after the one that failed
and swaped out the board. The drive now does spin up but
the head bangs around and it is not recognized by the bios.

Most likely the electronics that arent on the logic card got
killed by the gross over voltage when the power supply
died. There's a head preamp inside the sealed enclosure
thats not on the logic card you swapped. Likely its dead too.

So I guess the next step is try the "freezing"
the drive trick with new controller board.

Its very unlikely indeed to work. Freezing can help in two situations.

One is where the heads stick to the platter surface so the drive cant
spin the platters up. You drive does spin up, so this isnt your problem.

The other situation where freezing can help is where there is a cracked
trace in a logic card or in the flexible connection to the heads. Those
can work adequately at some temperatures and not at others.

Thats very unlikely to be your situation either. Everything points to
the fact that the head preamp got fried by the gross overvoltage
that fried the logic card and freezing the drive isnt going to fix that.

If that doesn't work, I just may try and actually move
the "bad" disks themselves into the "good" drive under
the assumption that the heads went south as well.

And thats very difficult to do successfully, moving the platters to
the drive with the good head preamp. Ditto with moving the good
head preamp to the drive that got killed by the power supply.

The problem is the alignment precision required.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

There are several references in the text to replacing the "logic
board", in other word the IDE board or "integrated drive electronics.
Seems this has resulted in a complete reovery for many!!!!

Now in my initial post I explained that I did in fact do this. I
obtained a drive made ony shortly after the one that failed and swaped
out the board. The drive now does spin up but the head bangs around
and it is not recognized by the bios.

So I guess the next step is try the "freezing" the drive trick with
new controller board.

If that doesn't work, I just may try and actually move the "bad" disks
themselves into the "good" drive under the assumption that the heads
went south as well.

Yeah, do that.
Why do it easily when you can do it much more difficult, right?

 

[Papa]

I think you are beating a dead horse - er - hard drive. ;>)

 

[Leo]

The ATXower supply in the PC self destructed for reasons not fully
understood. Sparks and smoke were seen!!!!

It is a standart destruction for some ATX PS models. The reason in a
unsuccessful design of the +5v power supply of suspend mode.

The PC had two almost identical hardrives. Both were Western Digital
Caviar 40 GB drives. One was 7200 rpm model, the other a 5400 rpm
model. The one of interest is the 7200 rpm model.

What model? Look at MDL: string on HDD label. You need to replace PCB
with PCB from HDD with exactly identical MDL: string. If it is for
example WD400BB-00DEA0, you need PCB from WD400BB-00DEA0, not from
different.
If the replacement of PCB give no success, this means a heads
preamplifier is dead.

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
disks and heads

Not electronics, adaptive tables on disk are calibrated to the disk,
heads and elelectronics, but in this case it is not important.

3] Is there a way to make the electronics calibrate to the heads/disks
without loosing any data by booting with special jumper settings on
the electronics board?

There is not present such jumpers.

Would it be possible to remove the actual disks
from the defective drive and install them into the good drive

It will make recovery of the data impossible or very difficult even
for professionals. Centering of disks will be the big problem,
especially if them more than one.

6] Are there any "tricks" even if ultimately destructive that can be
used to recover the data. Considering the cost of having a 40 GB hard
drive recovered by a professional company it would still be vastly
cheaper to buy several new hard drives to use for parts......if a
technique for recovery can be found.

You can buy and disassemble as much as necessary HDD, but not become
successful. It is enough to damage only one disk, with your data, that
all other attempts became useless.

7] IS there any company that will recover maybe only specific data
from a crashed drive at a lower price.

The price does not depend on quantity of the data. In this case work
identical, both for 1Kb, and for 40Gb. It will be a replacement of
heads assembly. Work with exact mechanics demands a clear environment,
specific tools, qualified personnel, etc. Attempt to do something
inside HDA without a thing it will lead only to sad consequences. To
choose to you, the data is yours ;-).

Leonid

 

[J.Clarke]

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 15:30:10 GMT

Thanks fro the response.

What model? Look at MDL: string on HDD label. You need to replace PCB
with PCB from HDD with exactly identical MDL: string. If it is for
example WD400BB-00DEA0, you need PCB from WD400BB-00DEA0, not from
different.

I thought the drives were identical. I will check the numbers as you
suggest. At least this gives me some hope.

If the replacement of PCB give no success, this means a heads
preamplifier is dead.

As I said the heads can be heard whacking from one side to the other.
So the head servo's aren't bad. Now assuming the head amps are bad, is
it possible to just replace the entire head froma good drive and have
it work?

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to

the> disks and heads

Not electronics, adaptive tables on disk are calibrated to the disk,
heads and elelectronics, but in this case it is not important.

I'm not sure what this means but I hope it means that replacing the
electronics and maybe the heads will bring the drive to life long
enough to get some data off.

It will make recovery of the data impossible or very difficult even
for professionals. Centering of disks will be the big problem,
especially if them more than one.

OK so removing the disk is NOT a good idea. But again, is replacing
the head possible?
I have not actually gotten into the drive this far yet and have
intetion of removing the cover until there are are no further options.

Nearly anything is possible if you have the right tools, skills, and
knowledge. However the probability that you, the first time out, with no
training or experience in drive assembly and no coaching by someone who
does have that experience, using common hand tools and not assembly
fixtures purpose-made, tuned, and tested for that procedure, will
successfully exchange heads is vanishingly small. The probability that
you will damage the drive beyond any hope of recovery is conversely very
high.

If you want to do this for jollies or as a learning experience, by all
means go for it. If you really need to recover the data then don't dink
around with it, send it to a professional.

 

[lwauters]

Thanks fro the response.

What model? Look at MDL: string on HDD label. You need to replace PCB
with PCB from HDD with exactly identical MDL: string. If it is for
example WD400BB-00DEA0, you need PCB from WD400BB-00DEA0, not from
different.

I thought the drives were identical. I will check the numbers as you
suggest. At least this gives me some hope.

If the replacement of PCB give no success, this means a heads
preamplifier is dead.

As I said the heads can be heard whacking from one side to the other.
So the head servo's aren't bad. Now assuming the head amps are bad, is
it possible to just replace the entire head froma good drive and have
it work?

1] Are the onboard electronics on these hard drives calibrated to the
disks and heads

Not electronics, adaptive tables on disk are calibrated to the disk,
heads and elelectronics, but in this case it is not important.

I'm not sure what this means but I hope it means that replacing the
electronics and maybe the heads will bring the drive to life long
enough to get some data off.

It will make recovery of the data impossible or very difficult even
for professionals. Centering of disks will be the big problem,
especially if them more than one.

OK so removing the disk is NOT a good idea. But again, is replacing
the head possible?
I have not actually gotten into the drive this far yet and have
intetion of removing the cover until there are are no further options.

Thanks

Marc

 

[Leo]

Got anything more specific on this PS deisgn problem ?
Just which designs suffered from that ?

Suspend mode PS has low loading ability, overheating and breakdown of
isolation in the transformer of AC/DC converter is possible, and the
high voltage acts on an output of the power supply. It is typical for
cheap PS, like KME, etc. PS in cost less $20 are popular enough,
therefore fried HDD's come across on a regular basis.

Leonid

 

[Rod Speed]

Suspend mode PS has low loading ability, overheating and
breakdown of isolation in the transformer of AC/DC converter is
possible, and the high voltage acts on an output of the power supply.

What ? Thats comprensively garbled technically.

It is typical for cheap PS, like KME, etc.

It isnt a typical mode of failure at all. And has
been seen with some Macase supplys too.

PS in cost less $20 are popular enough, therefore
fried HDD's come across on a regular basis.

Clearly there must be a design problem to produce
that result, but there isnt a lot of evidence that its
got much to do with the price of the power supply.

 

[HddGuru]

Leo knows his stuff!!!! ;O)

Suspend mode PS has low loading ability, overheating and breakdown of
isolation in the transformer of AC/DC converter is possible, and the
high voltage acts on an output of the power supply. It is typical for
cheap PS, like KME, etc. PS in cost less $20 are popular enough,
therefore fried HDD's come across on a regular basis.

Leonid