Hard drive failure, tell me if you've heard this before

[Fraggable]

I have a hard drive that one of my customers gave me, it is a 3.5" drive, Maxtor model D540X-4K, 20GB. It came out of some kind of audio recording equipment in his sound booth.

When powered on, it spins up, then there's a sound that's best described as dropping a marble onto a table from about 1 inch, then the drive spins up higher, stays there for 2 seconds, then there's that same sound again, then it spins back down to the original speed and stays there indefinitely. Now I noticed on the label that it's rated at 500 - 800mA so the 2 different speeds may be normal - maybe it's designed to speed up under load and run in a silent mode the rest of the time.

The problem is the drive doesn't show up in BIOS and doesn't work when attached to a PC using a IDE > USB 2.0 adapter. The drive is essentially dead. I just want to know what to tell the guy when I give it back in more detail than 'It's a hardware failure'.

 

[ch33zw1z]

The drive is dead, plain and simple. plus it's a maxtor...what do you expect!

 

[Fraggable]

I'm not surprised the drive is dead and yes, Maxtors are crap but I would like to know what exactly it is when I bring it back.

 

[boomerang]

Tell him it's a mechanical failure.

 

[bendixG15]

Its a very old drive that is worn out and stopped working....
The warranty expired years ago.....
You are lucky it lasted this long....

Stop talking....

 

[ForumMaster]

bendix pretty much summed it up. Maxtor's suck. its and old drive and is worn out. if the data is important to him, he can send it too data recovery services. next time, don't buy a sh!ty maxtor. (maybe Seagate will make them ok.)

 

[Boyo]

It's a Maxtor so it's about par for the course....It's dead.

 

[Blain]

Two things you might try... Won't cost you a dime.
1. Back in the anti-static bag, pop into freezer for 2-3 hours, try it out.
2. Lay the drive on a hard smooth floor (no concrete), spin the drive around hard a couple of times (clockwise or counter, either way).

I've used the freezer with success.
A friend of mine told me about the "spin". His store had a PC down. The tech worked with it for a while and figured it was a HD problem. He removed the HD, spun it on the floor, reinstalled it working.

 

[zephyrprime]

There's no way to tell the exact problem without opening it up.

 

[Tegeril]

I've never heard the spin on the floor method, but freezing it for a couple hours can have some success if the issue (which it sounds like it is) involves the reader arms crashing or scuffing against the drive platter. Freezing the drive physically shrinks the platters and lessens the chance of the arm hitting the platters.

This is not a "fix" though. This is done to try to get data off of the drive as quickly as possible before it warms up and dies again.

Also, don't forget it in the freezer, wetness is bad for hard drives

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: Blain
Two things you might try... Won't cost you a dime.
1. Back in the anti-static bag, pop into freezer for 2-3 hours, try it out.
2. Lay the drive on a hard smooth floor (no concrete), spin the drive around hard a couple of times (clockwise or counter, either way).

I've used the freezer with success.
A friend of mine told me about the "spin". His store had a PC down. The tech worked with it for a while and figured it was a HD problem. He removed the HD, spun it on the floor, reinstalled it working.

I've heard of the first one and was considering trying it, but the second is new to me. I guess it might bump the heads back into place?

Hmmm. I just noticed the top plate is screwed on using philips head screws, normally they use Torx screws. Maybe I'll pop it open and take a look.

 

[Fraggable]

It's in the freezer now. We'll see how that goes.

 

[Slowlearner]

I had a Maxtor hd fail recently, and only Maxblast 4 iso was able to run diagnostics on it giving me an error code de69aa79 - that didnt tell me anything. Opening the hd is not a good idea, if and only if there is valuable data on it you are better off sending it for an evaluation. There are at least two shops who will evaluate it for 50$. Replacing the circuit board also may not be feasible as the drive is old and it may be difficult to find one from the same batch.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
I've never heard the spin on the floor method, but freezing it for a couple hours can have some success

This is not a "fix" though. This is done to try to get data off of the drive as quickly as possible before it warms up and dies again.

I had a 120GB WD JB drive that developed issues with warmth. It started locking up after it would warm up.
I did the freezer trick then re-installed the HD.
It never gave me anymore problems after that. It's operated just fine ever since.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
The drive is dead, plain and simple. plus it's a maxtor...what do you expect!

errrr, I hear a lot of trash towards maxtor , WD, Seagate, etc....

but yeah, its dead, no more then that.

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: Slowlearner
I had a Maxtor hd fail recently, and only Maxblast 4 iso was able to run diagnostics on it giving me an error code de69aa79 - that didnt tell me anything. Opening the hd is not a good idea, if and only if there is valuable data on it you are better off sending it for an evaluation. There are at least two shops who will evaluate it for 50$. Replacing the circuit board also may not be feasible as the drive is old and it may be difficult to find one from the same batch.

I ran MaxBlast 3 because I had the CD sitting there but it wasn't able to detect it at all. BIOS didn't see it so I don't see how MaxBlast would or I would make an effort to get the newest version.

EDIT: I froze the drive but it doesn't seem to be helping. I'm getting the exact same sounds from it and it still doesn't show up in BIOS.

 

[AMCRambler]

Originally posted by: Fraggable

Originally posted by: Slowlearner
I had a Maxtor hd fail recently, and only Maxblast 4 iso was able to run diagnostics on it giving me an error code de69aa79 - that didnt tell me anything. Opening the hd is not a good idea, if and only if there is valuable data on it you are better off sending it for an evaluation. There are at least two shops who will evaluate it for 50$. Replacing the circuit board also may not be feasible as the drive is old and it may be difficult to find one from the same batch.

I ran MaxBlast 3 because I had the CD sitting there but it wasn't able to detect it at all. BIOS didn't see it so I don't see how MaxBlast would or I would make an effort to get the newest version.

EDIT: I froze the drive but it doesn't seem to be helping. I'm getting the exact same sounds from it and it still doesn't show up in BIOS.

The marble dropping on the table is definitely the sound of the heads hitting either the platters or the stop for the park position. Freezing this one isn't going to work(which you already found out) since the heads can't slip into place between the platters. At this point, the best ebt to recover any data is a data recovery service. They will probably disassemble the disk and swap the platters into a working one of the same type. At this point continually booting the drive with the heads bouncing off the platters is only going to damage it further. If you want to see a picture of what I'm talking about, wikipedia has some nice images under hard drive. Heads

When the drive turns off, the heads will be pulled out from between the platters into what's known as the park position. On old pc's you used to have to park the head with a command before you shut down, if you were going to move the machine, so that if it received any shocks, the heads would not contact the platter's surface. Now adays, it's done automatically when the computer is shut down.

 

[Fraggable]

Thanks for those suggestions Rambler, that's exactly what I was looking for when I posted this thread. I wanted to know what was wrong in there.

My customer wants to give up on it, I guess the data isn't worth much to him. I may try to open it up and take a look but I discovered there are 3 Torx bit screws holding the plate on. I'm not sure I can get them out without destroying it.