Resurrecting Dead Harddrives? 161
Broue Master asks: "The main harddrive of a friend's computer stopped working. He described to me that the computer began by emitting strange 'scratching sounds', and after a while, it made a 'loud *tock* sound' and stopped. He tried to reboot it but soon realized that the harddrive wasn't spinning anymore. He asked me if I could revive it, at least long enough so that he could retrieve at least his "my documents" folder. The computer was running XP. I did a little googling(tm) of my own to find out that the most recommended solution out there seems to be 'freezing' the harddrive for a day in a ziplock bag. I'd like to know what fellow Slashdot readers have done in the past to try and resurrect dead harddrives and if the freezing method would still be a good idea, today. The harddrive is a Samsung 30Gb." A good 95% of the time, once an HD is gone, break out the shovel, because it's time to bury it. Still, it would be interesting to note, if only from an anecdotal standpoint, if any of you have managed to perform such miracle hardware resurrections. Have you managed to revive a dead and decaying drive from the dead long enough to pull data off of it? If so, what did you do?
Freeze first, then (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:5, Informative)
I've never tried freezing one. I think I'd try a brain swap first, as it's unlikely to cause physical harm. I can't say the same for the freeze operation for sure. If you do freeze it, put a bunch of dessicant (silica gels) in with the drive for a few days beforehand. You don't want moisture in with the drive freezing, expanding and damaging something.
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to go for Data Recovery... (Score:2)
Re:If you're going to go for Data Recovery... (Score:2)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:5, Informative)
Success rate? 100% on the Barracudas, 100% on the MFM and RLL volumes, probably only 60% on the rest. A lot of the drives will not tolerate a logic board swap, but its always worth a shot if you're not going to warranty RMA the drive. (One of the successes was a recent vintage Western Digital 20G drive, which is why I was compelled to respond)
Of course, I've also de-stuck probably 50 drives with the old "power it up, tap it against the desk during POST" trick.. That nearly always works when it won't spin up.
PLEASE NOTE:
My success rate is tempered by having 15 years of experience. My first recovery efforts were on Seagate 10 meg drives WHEN THEY WERE NEW. Fully 20-30% of the drives I come across are UNRECOVERABLE by any means you or I can do. Send the damn drive to Ontrack if you value your data.
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, I've gotten an older laptop drive to work again by swapping boards. But the anecdotal evidence suggests your parent poster was correct about newer drives. I'd add that I did all of the above in the la
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
He said _newer_ drives.
You've only mentioned successes with older drives.
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
Not to challenge your "authority" but... swapping boards on newer drives does indeed work (maybe not always so YMMV).
I did this not too long ago with a Maxtor 6L040J2 40 Gig drive. Windows 2000 suddenly quit with a BSOD. Tried rebooting but the drive was toast - wasn't even recognized by the BIOS and in fact when the drive was plugged in the BIOS couldn't even recognize the CDROM (which seemed to indicate a board rather than a
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
Re:Freeze first, then (Score:2)
Freezing can work (Score:3, Interesting)
Or try heating in an oven at about 150 degrees.
Remember, it is dead, so anything goes. I've gotten one to live a little longer by banging it.
Re:Freezing can work (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure she enjoyed your banging her too.
Re:Freezing can work (Score:2)
Unlikely (Score:3, Informative)
But in this case, it sounds like drive mechanics. I'd be happy to be wrong - but I don't think you can recover a mecanical failure by just making it really cold. In fact, you'd think this would really screw with the electronics.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
The electronics, of all things, won't give a flying crap -- every IC I have seen, including delicate DSPs and such, is rated to at least -40 degrees Celsius (datasheet [ti.com] for a TI DSP, commonly used in HDDs, look at page 130). Unless you immerse it in liquid nitrogen, it won't be a problem. I'd be more worried about water condensing on internal surfaces and such.
Re:Unlikely (Score:2)
Re:Unlikely (Score:2)
Stuck bearings.... the cure (Score:5, Informative)
If an old drive has been running for a long time and is switched of, we've known the bearings to stick (drive wont spin up at all)
The fix is to hold the drive between the palms of your hands (like praying... good analogy :-)) with the axis of the drive between the heals of your hands. Then violently flick your wrists downwards untill your fingertips point to the ground.
The idea is to spin the hard drive casing whilst causing the platters to stay still, so giving the bearings plenty of torque to free them off. It would often be enough to get this thing going again long enough to get the data off it.
But in this case, it sounds like drive mechanics.
Yes this does sound like heads hitting the disk. I've known people physicsly open the drive and poke at the heads (they had skipped off the disk somehow) and get it going long enough to recover data.
Anyway, if the dude has important stuff on this disk I suggest he takes it to a profesional companny who knows what they are doing. You do have backups, dont you?
Re:Stuck bearings.... the cure (Score:2)
Doing it this way can give you a little more instantaneous torque (which is what unsticks the bearings.)
OP: If you get it started even once, get all your data off right then and there - don't think you are going to get another chance because you mig
Swap out the platters (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Swap out the platters (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Swap out the platters (Score:2)
Re:Swap out the platters (Score:2)
Re:Swap out the platters (Score:2, Informative)
I've done just this before myself and had hit-or-miss luck with it. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But this was 15-20 years ago. Dust was a problem, but if you did it in a really clean environment and were careful it would minimize the risk. I'd never try it with a modern hard drive unless I had some sort of clean-room with HEPA air
Re:Swap out the platters (Score:2)
I was amazed at first like some sort of magic trick, but in the offi
Mine is dead right now (Score:4, Informative)
My main drive died yesterday, turned on the computer.. wirrr, click.... wirrr, click. so i took it out of the computer and turned it upside down, gave it a little shake, and walah it spun up. I've managed to back up my data off of it now, and hopefully it'll last till the replacement drive shows up tommarow.
Re:Mine is dead right now (Score:2, Informative)
The word (crazy frenchy characters notwithstanding) is: voila
The next thing you know, you'll be writing "should of"....
fiery re-entry (Score:4, Funny)
it's people like you who cause spacecraft to fail.
Re:Mine is dead right now (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps the grandparent reference is to the "platterwallah," who spins up hard drives for the upper castes. Incidentally, while they may sound similar, the platterwallahs don't like being confused for dishwallahs, as they don't clean dishes.
Drop trick (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes they'd get 'stuck' if they were left on for a long time (like a year or two), then turned off. At this point they wouldn't spin up, or make a half-hearted attempt to.
If they couldn't be coaxed into moving, taking it out the enclosure and letting it drop four centimetres or so flat onto a wooden table often got them unstuck enough to grab the data and back it up.
That said, have had some success with the same trick with newer drives with different modes of failure. Of course try the least invasive approaches first and work up, but if the drive is otherwise dead, then there's little left to lose. Unless you want to spend big dollars with a professional data recovery mob.
Re:Drop trick (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Drop trick (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Drop trick (Score:2)
Incidentally, I think triplicate is the magic number for ensuring long-term data integrity. If you have two copies of something, and one flips a bit, which one is right? With a third, you'll only lose data if two of them flip the same bit, or if all of them simply lose the bit to unreadability, or some combination thereof I guess.
Re:Drop trick (Score:2)
Re:Drop trick (Score:2)
Re:Drop trick (Score:2)
Re:Drop trick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Drop trick (Score:3, Informative)
stiction (Score:3, Informative)
Re:stiction (Score:4, Funny)
Um, no. The heads never touch the platters. The stiction comes from the ball bearing grease solidifying over time, not heads sticking to the platters. Newer drives have female bearings (they're full of fluid with no balls) and don't have this problem.
Re:head parking & landing zone (Score:2)
Thanks for the clarification.
Re:stiction (Score:2)
Still works (Score:2)
I also had a machine that had been sitting idle at home for quite a while (even my wife doesn't turn on th
Re:Drop trick (Score:2)
Never tried it personally however I can imagine it would be fun.
if it's the Circuit board (Score:4, Interesting)
hard drives are so cheap these days it might be worthwhile to do a daily rsync to help save your data. This is what I do, rsync/tar over to another system for my backups. It's nice to have a backup copy on spinning media nearby.
Give it a whirl (Score:5, Informative)
To bandaid it I un-screwed the cover, and gave the platters a quick spin (make sure to only touch the SIDE of the platter, not the surface).
I put the drive back in the PC, and it started up just fine. I then quickly copied the most important data off of that drive, and then made a copy of the entire drive to another known good one.
Re:Give it a whirl (Score:4, Interesting)
NarratorDan
Re:Give it a whirl (Score:3, Interesting)
The nifty thing is, the drives spin fast enough that with some luck all this stuff will just fly outwards and get stuck in the filter before it comes into contact with the heads.
My Dad used to teach basic competency in word processing and spreadsheet use etc (back in the day... 80286 and wordperfect 5.1
Re:Give it a whirl (Score:2)
You might get lucky with an old 20GB drive, but try it on a 320GB unit and you're 99.9% certian to have a bad drive within an hour if not immediately.
Re:Give it a whirl (Score:2)
You might get lucky with an old 20GB drive, but try it on a 320GB unit and you're 99.9% certian to have a bad drive within an hour if not immediately.
Judging from the success rates for window modding of hard drives, you're 100% certain to have a bad drive if you try it on anything larger than a 10GB disk.
Dead eh. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like a mechnical problem, a head crash that went as far as pulling the head right off the arm, and wedging it between the platters, or the bearings died.
Freezing it won't hurt anything, but beware condensation when you take it out of the freezer.
I'd recommend getting in the cleanest room you can, preferably with high humidity to reduce dust.
Take off the cover and look for metal shavings in the inside. If there are no metal shavings visible, then the bearings have gone, and you might as well give up.
If there are metal shavings, then there's a chance you can recover data. Try to move the platters/heads, if the heads aren't in the landing zone, then this WILL damage the platters (a little).
If the top head is the bad one, you are lucky. Try to rig it in a way so the platters can turn again. If it's a head between other platters, you are going to have to pull the platters out, which is not easy at all.
Anyway, if the data is worth more than $1000 to you, then send it to a professional recovery service. I don't think an electronics board swap will help anything in your case. It would only waste time and money.
Doing any and all of the above things may damage the disk more than it already is. You've been warned.
Tick Tick Tick BOOOM Dead (Score:3, Informative)
Most big data recovery operations keep new units of every type and model of hard drives around for recovery. If you had an armature go, they pull your platters out of your drive, and put them in EXACTLY the same make and model HD in their clean room and try to recover the data with standard software. You could try and do this yourself but buying EXACTLY the same make model and series of drive. But opening up one of these units while not in a clean room is not a good idea.
For sector damage, non physical damage, there are tons of tools like this [data-recov...ftware.net] and this [uneraser.com] out there that might help. But sometimes the damage to the MBR and backup MBR are so bad that recovery tools might not be able to make sense of the bits. I have one sitting right here that is like that. Somehow the bits got shredded over the ENTIRE disk. I assume there was a physical malfunction that dragged the head across the platters and made Swiss cheese of it.
Re:Tick Tick Tick BOOOM Dead (Score:2)
They didn't vanish; the drive's knowledge of them vanished: the dd operation overwrote the drive's bad sector table.
I've frozen them before (Score:2, Informative)
I froze my HDDs when recovering data on a marginal drive, those drive had a heat expansion problem on their chips so freezing gave me a longer time to copy data to a new drive.
I use Slackware install CDs to copy the data off
1 Remove and chill HDD
2 Install new HDD and format
3 plug up old HDD on secondary Interface (sometime better as a slave does)
4 boot Slackware CD (CD-ROM on primary)
5 mkdir
if
Re:I've frozen them before (Score:2)
The advantage is that rsync will cheerfully resume where it left off if the drive is goofed to the point that you can't copy it in one pass. Just repeat the process as necessary, and each time rsync will copy a bit (well, hopefully more than one bit) more.
Identical drive and swap platters. (Score:5, Informative)
If the value is high enough send it to a qualified recovery company. If your willing to risk it and you have the tools, swap the platters from the bad drive to an identical known good drive.
Odds of getting it running with cold or hot is low considering the reported noises.
Qualified recovery company figure 100% they get data and probably about 90% of it. Odds of switching platters yourself and getting most of your data figure 60%, odds of using cold (freezer) or heat (it can work...) 30% or so.
BTW if you do the freezer make sure and bag it. You don't want a lot of nice humid air on your drive when it's nice and chilly.
Now back to my Thorazine...mmmm thooraaaszzzzzhhhh....
Try this. (Score:5, Informative)
He's right. Just jerk the drive sharply... (Score:2)
Re:He's right. Just jerk the drive sharply... (Score:2)
This is some of the idea behind the extreme changes in temperature... to try and reduce the force sticking the heads to the platter.
Good point. (Score:2)
Re:Try this. (Score:4, Interesting)
DriveSavers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DriveSavers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:DriveSavers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DriveSavers (Score:2, Informative)
don't freeze it... (Score:3, Informative)
-kyle
Re:don't freeze it... (Score:2)
This is most useful on drives that have died of stiction, where the drive motor doesn't have enough torque to overcome the gummed up lubricants and worn bearings.
Freezer Believer (Score:5, Funny)
On the first attempt I had put the drive in the freezer for only about 20 minutes (hey, I was anxious) and it fired up. I browsed to the drive's directory before it crapped out on me, but I knew I was close. So the drive went back in the freezer while I thought of plan B.
On the Second attempt I left the drive chill for 45 minutes and this time when I took it out, I brought it out on a frozen gel pack. I was able to get all my data w/o condensation or other complications.
I'd like to say that my data was fine, but somewhere along the line my poetry and stories really started to really suck. It must have been corrupted at some point because I swear it was better when I wrote it. Hopefully your data will retain it's value...
Re:Freezer Believer (Score:2)
I had the same behaviour as you: you get working data for a while, then you start getting errors and you need to put it in the freezer again. I was surprised at how well it worked, though.
No word from the guy whose drive it was; should've got him to check his c
Hard drive identity problems (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hard drive identity problems (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hard drive identity problems (Score:3, Funny)
it's dead jim... (Score:3, Informative)
So you can power it back on and clonk it into something but I wouldn't hold out a whole lot of hope.
A comment on freezing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted this probably has nothing to do with your current drive problems. It sounds like it blew chunks with physical problems. Even if you could get it working again I'd bet you've got significant platter and/or head damage and any data you could get off it would have serious corruption issues. Scratching noises and loud thumps coming from hard drives are never good things.
Onomatopoeic (Score:2, Funny)
Crashing HD: scratch-scratch scratch-scratch
Data recovery firm: *cha-ching!*
Revivals (Score:3, Interesting)
Norton DiskDoctor told me to take it out and shoot it because it was suffering. Partition Expert didn't even want to make a raw copy of it and Partition Magic just laughed at me.
If the drive isn't even spinning up and stopped after a *thonk*, the only options are to send it off for a wallet-cleaning, or open it up and see what happened. My guess is some kind of head crash or catastrophic bearing failure in which case your friend is pretty much SOL with regards to option #2. He should have made a backup immediately when it started making those noices. Live, learn.
Two choices (Score:2)
If you(r friend) really need the data and have no recent backup, call a professional data rescue company and pay them some 100 dollars to get the files back from the harddisk (that's how laptop "backups" are done at the company I work for - not very clever, but it avoids thinking about a backup strategy). Don't make the problem worse by fiddling with the drive, it will make the job harder for those people who know how to read from a broken drive.
If the data is not that important that you are willing to pay
Re:Two choices (Score:2)
Note that simple on-site backups are worth it. Data recovery can run up into the thousands of dollars, a backup hard drive (even just mirroring your crucial files) costs $100, and you are
Better look after your drive as long as it works.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Better than any method of data recovery is to have a look at your system log or the S.M.A.R.T. values of your drive as long as it's alive and to look out for signs of impending doom.
That way you can backup your important data (music, divx-videos,
It's quite strange when you hear someone complaining that his important data is lost, and "oh, yes, it made those funny noises for half a year!"
Re:Better look after your drive as long as it work (Score:2)
I've also had SCSI discs going bad and with bad cables with no warning in any visible logs.
Sam
Re:Better look after your drive as long as it work (Score:2, Informative)
Freeze works...sometimes (Score:2, Interesting)
I decided to try the freeze method (froze it for about 2 hours) and it worked, though I had to turn the drive up-side down aswell.
After the "treatment" the drive actually ran another few months, before it finally died completly.
Re:Freeze works...sometimes (Score:2)
dd_rescue is great for copying from flaky drive (Score:3, Insightful)
It is similar to dd, but it does not exit on I/O errors. So it is perfect for pulling as much data as possible from a bad drive. It also has a nifty optimization wherein it uses 16kB blocks to copy until it gets an error, then it goes down to 512 byte blocks so it can get as close to the corrupted sectors as possible.
I just used this to recover all but 500kB of data from a 120GB drive that went bad. The method was simple, albeit long:
Re:dd_rescue is great for copying from flaky drive (Score:2)
Try this... (Score:2)
2. Throw away everything but the platters
3. Dust off your electron microscope
External HD copier (Score:5, Informative)
Since it's standalone, it can clone a non-bootable drive. It also seems to be able to clone drives that are too damaged to spin up in a PC.
Recent rescues:
60GB 2.5-inch drive would spin up intermittently. Attached it to the external box, where it had the same problem. So I removed the lid, and got the drive to spin up with a thumb twist on the central boss. I got the drive cloned in 20 minutes, and the drive continued to work for another 40 minutes.
Fujitsu with the (in)famous circuit board problem: Got a replacement drive. Cloned an identical functional drive from another machine in the office onto it. Swapped the circuit board on the functional drive to the non-functional one. Drive started, so cloned it to the original functional drive.
The Century unit has been worth its weight in gold to me over the years. The newest one is smaller & lighter. Around $150.
I sent one off to be fixed, but.... (Score:2)
What was interesting was the noises it made after it came back were very different to those that it made before.
Does any one know what they really do in these labs? Is it worth me opening it to see if they have left disconnected cables?
Neil
The poor man's clean room? (Score:3, Interesting)
And somebody recommended that, if you felt it was necessary to open the drive, you could build yourself an impromptu clean room quite easily... They recommended that one put on one of those flashlights that strap to your head and put your head and torso in a brand new garbage bag. They argued that not only would it be clean and dust free in there, but that the slight static charge from opening the bag would attract all the dust that came in with us to the bag.
I dunno. I have thought about trying this. Never had an occasion. What about the static from the bag zapping the drive's electronics? If you hold the drive at all times can you be sure you and the drive will be mutually grounded?
Re:The poor man's clean room? (Score:2)
Recovering a dead hard drive (Score:2, Interesting)
Laptop hard drive (Score:2)
Power down, power up. It's a little bit like a crapshoot:
If you power up and hear 'the click of death', power down, try again.
If you hear a normal drive startup, you should be ok for a few files, the AUTOEXEC.BAT is going to pull out a few files-- maybe get stuck on a bad sector, mash the [I]gnore button repeatedly to skip over them.
When the drive freezes up again, s
Here is what you should try (Score:2, Informative)
If freezing it doesn't get it working, drop it onto a hard flat surface. Sometimes this will free up whatever is stuck.
As a last resort, try banging on the drive while the computer is running. You might be lucky and get it spinning again.
If none of the above work, you can either void t
Questionable Ethics Fix (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you jiggle the handle? (Score:2, Funny)
Swapped Controller Board (Score:2, Interesting)
This was completely unacceptable to the client. So we began to dig out the drive and popped it