WD Caviar Question...

[Merlin]

Alright, here's what I've got. A WD200 (20GB EIDE) drive that is out
of warranty that begun making nice loud clicking noises. I've got a
nice clean roow (without the bunny suit, though) that I pulled the top
off in. What's happening is that the arm just jumps across the
platter apparently without attempting to read the disk. Anything I
can to to try to get anything off it? It's for an elementary school
cafeteria, and it *used* to back up. Then the geniuses that developed
the MealTime program came out and screwed up all of the backup things.
She moved the backups to someplace else (she claims), but I can't
find them. She's not getting back to me, so I think I'm SOL with
here. A couple other people there tried to help me, but they didn't
know where she put them either. To make an even longer story
short(er), the automated backup she had setup to goto my main server
screwed up and it's a truncated (they use .zip for the bu) EOF error
when trying to open it. I guess I'm wondering if there's anything I
can do (replace the arms, but doubt that...change the board, lubs,
etc) to at least try to get something off of it.

~ David
dnhansen_at_lakeport_dot_k12_dot_ca_dot_us

 

[S.Heenan]

Alright, here's what I've got. A WD200 (20GB EIDE) drive that is out
of warranty that begun making nice loud clicking noises. I've got a
nice clean roow (without the bunny suit, though) that I pulled the top
off in. What's happening is that the arm just jumps across the
platter apparently without attempting to read the disk. Anything I
can to to try to get anything off it? It's for an elementary school
cafeteria, and it *used* to back up. Then the geniuses that developed
the MealTime program came out and screwed up all of the backup things.
She moved the backups to someplace else (she claims), but I can't
find them. She's not getting back to me, so I think I'm SOL with
here. A couple other people there tried to help me, but they didn't
know where she put them either. To make an even longer story
short(er), the automated backup she had setup to goto my main server
screwed up and it's a truncated (they use .zip for the bu) EOF error
when trying to open it. I guess I'm wondering if there's anything I
can do (replace the arms, but doubt that...change the board, lubs,
etc) to at least try to get something off of it.

Unless you have several grand kicking around for professional data recovery,
pitch the hard drive and do what you can with existing backups.

 

[Rod Speed]

You should have tried swapping the logic card from an
identical model hard drive before you tried opening it.

That is certainly worth trying.

If that doesnt fix it, I'd personally check the signals from
the heads using a CRO to see if the problem is obvious,
like a crack in the trace in the flexible connection. But you
need to know what you are doing to be able to do that.

If you do know what you are doing its likely
feasible to add a temporary connection
around the trace crack to get the data off.

If its developed a dry joint at an inner head its harder
and even harder if the head preamp has failed.