Bad news....

[Pitch]

For me atleast.

Lost my main hard drive yesterday. Real pain as there was a heck of alot of stuff I wanted saving.

My main backup of it was less than current too, so I'll be away for a bit while I try and find my feet again.

[danrok]

Bummer!

[cloasters]

Sorry to learn this, Pitch. May the recovery be as swift and painless as posible!

[surlyjoe]

Dood! your the one guy that I shouldn't have to tell to back up weekly and then back up the backup!!

have you tried changing the motor/drive card? that usually gets them up for me, if not swapping platters into a good drive is a pain in the @$$, but usually works if they arent all scored up or shattered. do you have access to an Identical drive?

[Gizmo]

If you've got a drive of the same type, then take Dr. SurlyJoe's advice. I've recovered data from more than one drive that way. Many times it doesn't even have to be the same exact model of drive, as long as it is from the same family.

[Pitch]

I'll give it a try, but I had the sense to back up impostant stuff as I go along.

"Repeat after me, two copies are better than one"

[Daniel ~]

Patti thinks I'm anal about this...until her HD takes a dive!
I didn't even know you were allowed to open a HD let alone that you could do some good for yourself by doing it! Are you sure God won't be mad!?

If so how about a step by step? I'm sure Pitch would appreciate it if he hasn't done this before?

[Aedan]

You can open a hard disk, but it will probably suffer a failure some point shortly afterwards. That way, you end up writing off two hard disks not one, but you might well get your data back, depending on where the fault is. It's a bit of a last ditch attempt really!

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Áedán

You can open a hard disk, but it will probably suffer a failure some point shortly afterwards. That way, you end up writing off two hard disks not one, but you might well get your data back, depending on where the fault is. It's a bit of a last ditch attempt really!

I've owned several drives that I ran for quite some time with no cover without any problems. Once they are spinning the Bernoulli effect serves quite well to keep dust and small particles off the platters, although larger bits of debris are obviously problematic. So, the main trick is to keep the platters clean enough to get them spinning. At the flying heights of todays heads, that can be a bit of a trick, but it is still doable. Make absolutely certain that you clean off any finger prints though! The best thing to do is to use cloth gloves while handling the platters.

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

If so how about a step by step? I'm sure Pitch would appreciate it if he hasn't done this before?

The whole thing is pretty straight-forward.

To change the control board, just remove the screws holding everything down. Be careful when separating the board from the housing, because they all use different connection methods for interfacing with the actual drive mechanisms. Some use wired cables; some use conductive rubber, some use printed mylar.

To change the platters, you'll need to remove the top cover of the drive shell. Again, just remove the screws (many times these will be a T-8 torx, which can be purchased from some automotive stores). Carefully separate the cover from the body. You have to be careful because there is an air seal around the edge of the shell, and you don't want to damage it; you'll need it when you put everything back together.

Once you've got the cover separated from the shell, you'll see the platter, spindle, and head actuator. The platters are held to the spindle by the spindle hub, with basicaly clamps the platters. Remove the screws holding the spindle hub (on the drives I've worked on, the spindle shaft had a center depression that an Allen-wrench would fit. You would hold the shaft using the Allen-wrench and then remove the individual hub screws using a Torx bit). Once you've got the screws loose, you should be able to pull the individual sections of the hub off, and remove each of the platters. You'll probably find that you also have to remove the head actuator stop, which prevents the heads from traveling too far to the outside edge of the disk, before you can remove the platters. This should be located somewhere near the actuator mechanism itself. The exact nature of the stop varies from drive to drive. Older drivers used a simple screw arrangment, but that is rather massive, as well as being, err, 'abrupt'. Newer drives I've seen use some kind of nylon spacer that simply pulls out. Whatever the mechanism, once you've got it out, you'll be able to swing the heads out of the way. You might want to find a piece of lint-free cloth to place between the heads as they come off the platters so that they don't slam into each other.

Reassembly is pretty much the reverse.

Note that this proceedure is only really useful on drives that embed the servo information with the data, or that don't depend on servo information at all (fairly new or really old drives). Although I have no personal experience of this, it is my understanding that there was a period of time (say around '96 - 2000?) where the sector spacing and track servo data were stored on one dedicated platter. Because of this, once you loosened the spindle hub and disturbed the relative alignments of the platters, you were pretty much screwed.

[Daniel ~]

Thanks G! Front page! ":O}

[captaincurran]

what were you doing pitch that screwed up your HDD?

[|I.H|]

Sorry to hear that Pitch

What happened to the harddrive? Just stopped working?

[Pitch]

No idea. Come down one morning, The PC had hung, screen all froze etc, with the tell tale clicking from the HDD.

[cloasters]

Do we have board certified surgeons on staff, or what?