[SEL] OT: Im Back/HDD recovery

[Jerry Evans]

At 07:00 PM 06/03/2009, you wrote:
>Message: 13
>Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:05:51 -0500
>From: Mark Shulaw <frappi at wcoil.com>
>Subject: [SEL] OT: Im Back
>
>I am starting to feel like the computer Gods are picking on me. I
>have lost two hard drives and all the data on them in the last two
>months. Both were mechanical failures of the drive, not any virus as
>far as what the repairman says.
>The first  drive only lost a weeks worth of data for me. This time I
>lost 2 months of data. I still have the old drive from my old
>computer that I supposedly upgraded from so I was able to at least
>get what I had up till the end of December 2008. But all of my emails
>and documents since then are locked on the dead drive.  One minute it
>was working fine the next minute the computer would just not
>recognize the drive and it was making a clicking noise.
>QUESTION, does anyone have the ability to swap the disks from one
>drive to the next? I am told that the companies that does this is way
>expensive. And from looking at the internals of another dead hard
>drive and seeing how they are asembled its definately a project
>beyond my knowledge, skills and tools.      Mark


Hi Mark,
         As you probably know, I only get the SEL digest version and it's 
just came in. I've read the other posts but will just answer all here.
         It's not a Maytag - do not attempt any internal stuff without the 
knowledge or correct equipment which includes a Class 100 Clean room.
         You are correct about the dust - it can scratch the platters. The 
heads turn at 7200 RPM in most drives today. The head skims over them and 
all that keeps it off the platters is the thin "film" of air or "air 
cushion" created between it and the platters by the speed of the spinning 
platters.
         The dust problem is that a bit of dust could get caught between 
the head and platter and scratch the platter destroying your data permanently.

         When you switch off your computer these heads automatically "park" 
in a safe area. (Remember how you had to "park" the hard drive on the old 
PC's and XT's if you planned to move the computer.)
         Also the density of todays magnetic media is much higher than in 
the old drives and "re-aligning" the heads is pretty specialised.

         I've been doing "data recovery" since 1998 and it is getting more 
difficult all the time. I do not have a clean room but have an arrangement 
with someone who does and send all my drives with head crashes there. He 
gets the thing sorted out for me and then I can do the recovery. If the 
problem is external ie. on the control board I can sometimes fix this 
provided spares are available but this often means buying a new hard drive 
that was made in the same batch and at the same factory as the damaged 
drive (head changes present similar problems).
         You can imagine how difficult it is to be that accurate - it's not 
like going to a spares shop for a new set of plugs!!

         Someone mentioned "freeze it" - been there done that and had some 
success with it but that was always on the older hard drives - specifically 
the Fujitsu drives that gave so much trouble a few years back. Nobody knew 
for definite why it worked but it did sometimes (not every time). there 
were 2 schools of thought:
         i) These drives had a faulty chip that was prone to "shorting out 
internally" (for want of a better description) and much like an overheated 
Maytag coil - it would work O.K. but only for a short while when cold. If 
we got the drive running we would recover everything off the disk as 
quickly as possible because it would fail again.
         ii) The second "school of thought" was that this freezing would 
loosen a stuck part somewhere but I never went with this one.

         Freezing will not work for your drive if it has clicking 
noises.The clicking noise you hear is the head trying to initialise and the 
more you allow this to happen the more difficult will it become to 
eventually recover the data. (Like an engine - a bearing knock is east to 
fix if done in time but when left until the rod has gone through the side 
of the block - not so easy.)

         My clean room guy charges me approx. ZAR 2000.00 to 2500.00 for 
these repairs (I can sometimes get him to give me a bit of discount as a 
personal favour but I cannot make any promises). With our exchange rate 
being as low as it is this may be a proposition for you as I imagine that 
similar work would cost a lot in the US. You would still need to courier or 
post the drive to me. (Our exchange rate is particularly low just now - 
check it out). I would not charge you for the actual Data recovery once the 
drive is working (apart from a bit of postage and a few DVD's to copy the 
data to.)

         Someone also mentioned software you can download - there is a lot 
and I could even supply some but this is all for drives that are working 
correctly - not for mechanically damaged drives. It works if your data on 
the drive (I'll not go into details here) has become corrupted and your 
"operating system" such as Windows can no longer read the data on the drive 
BUT the actual drive HAS to be working correctly for it to do this.

         Contact me "Off List" if you want to take this further. I must 
just warn you that I'm about to go to bed soon and will be out for most of 
the morning tomorrow so do not be alarmed if you do not get an immediate reply.

Keep the revs up (or down)
Jerry Evans
Near Johannesburg in Sunny South Africa.
Etched Brass Engine Plates made to order:
<www.oldengine.org/members/evans/plates/index.htm>