HDD died, tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps.

[Epsil0n00]

A laptop HDD owned by a staff member at my business had a catastrophic failure last week. There were no symptoms (at least none reported to us)--it just stoped working in the middle of normal operation and now it is inaccessible. Here is what I tried/symptoms I have observed.

- HDD not recognized in POST or mounted as a secondary drive in Windows
- HDD not recognized in Disk Manager in Windows
- HDD is not recognized by OnTrack data recovery software
- HDD does not make loud clicking noises
- HDD makes a very quiet clicking noise right when it receives power, but nothing else.
- I tried freezing it over the weekend and tested it this morning, but no luck on that front.

Is there anything else I can do? I am thinking at this point that the mechanics of the drive must be messed up. I am considering one of those data recovery places that cost like $2000, but I want to make sure I do everything in my power before taking that step. How crazy would it be to try to move these platters to a new drive? Is a clean room environment really necessary?

Any other advice?
Thanks!

 

[Bozo Galora]

you could -
slave it to known good drive in a desktop, assuming IDE chip on laptop mobo went bad
then try getdataback software from good master drive - that failing, use a bootable XP PE disk like Avast Bart PE or Hirens Boot CD or ERD and use (install) Servant Salamander to find and copy files
buy an exact copy HDD and splice in the circuit board from purchased drive to see if HDD controller chip is bad

 

[MiniDoom]

put it in the freezer. opps see you tried that.

 

[birdpup]

You could try slaving the hard drive to a different workstation. The different bios may recognize the hard drive long enough for the transfer of your files. It is possible that a bios by a different company may possess different or better drive recognition systems.

Switching to a different operating system, such as Linux or BSD will not help since they each require the bios drive recognition. Additionally, there was an instance when my Windows machine with Runtime.org's GetDataBack was able to transfer some data from a damaged laptop hard drive to a desktop system when a separate Linux system would recognize the drive but not be able to read any data. This could have been due to the different bios's for all I know ... or possibly due to a damaged NTFS partition that a non-windows system would have great difficulty reading.

Laptop hard drives are fragile and it is difficult to recover files once they break.

Have you attempted to recognize the drive using the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utilities? The manufacturer (Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, ...) should possess downloadable diagnostic utilities that do not rely on the bios.

If nothing works and the data is worth more than the cost of the hard drive, you may wish to attempt replacing the circuit board on the bottom of the hard drive with a good one from the same hard drive model. It can be difficult to determine whether the problem is due to mechanical issues or the circuit board. This should work in theory but I have never tried it.

A clean room environment is absolutely necessary for physically opening a hard drive case and expecting the inside parts to work again afterwards. There is a large amount of dust and dirt in the air around us. A piece of airborn dust or something the width of a human hair is large enough to significantly damage the read/write head and disc. Working in such an environment is extremely tedious since precautions must be taken for things we normally do not think about and everything must be perfectly cleaned and prepared.

I have a hard drive that I dropped about two feet and it then failed diagnostic testing. It has sat on a shelf for 6-8 months now and I put it in a system last week to see what would happen. It passed the diagnostic tests cleanly. I cannot understand this but you may be able to recover files in the future, so do not dispose of the hard drive if you only meet with failure now.

For future, external hard drives with backup utilities work excellent for laptops. This assumes that (corporate) network storage is not available. If this is in a corporate environment, making regular backups is an important training issue.

It is possible the data is worth far more than the recovery fee.

I wish you luck.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Thank you all for the advice, tips, etc.

I neglected to mention earlier that a lot of the troubleshooting I was doing was with the dead drive mounted in another system as a secondary device.

Also, since my first post, I tried Fujitsu's drive test utility and it didn't even recognize that the drive was connected. To double-check this I also tried IBM's drive test utility and it didn't recognize the drive either.

I had not remembered the possibility of switching out the HDD controller board. I think I have a couple spare drives of this same model in stock... I think I will try switching the controller boards and see what happens. Thanks for the tip! I'll let you know how that goes....

 

[Epsil0n00]

Nope, I don't have any drives of that same model in stock... but I will when the replacement drive arrives!

 

[birdpup]

Just a thought if you really want to take the chance. You could probably rig a temporary clean room in a clean room with no dust and little to no airflow. You could lay a clean towel on a desktop and have someone stand next to you operating a vacuum. This person would have to hold the vacuum suction hose just over your hard drive to make sure no dust gets into the hard drive area. Precautions to take would be a brand new bag in the vacuum cleaner and a recently cleaned or replaced air outlet filter from the vacuum cleaner.

 

[Woody419]

You can read about Spinrite Steve Gibson's site and see if this might be worth investing in.

Spinrite enables direct, low level access to hard drives.

 

[birdpup]

I just remembered something. The GetDataBack recovery program from Runtime.org is able to recognize a hard drive even when the bios does not. I do not know if it does this everytime but it happened for me once.

 

[birdpup]

Take a look at Wandere's suggestion. Basically, Wandere recommends opening the hard drive in a humid environment, such as a bathroom with a hot shower running. The water in the air would catch and remove the dust particles. Very nice and I think it may be a better idea than mine above.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Originally posted by: rdubbz420
put it in the freezer. opps see you tried that.

Out of curiosity, what the hell is that gonna do?

 

[birdpup]

In case a mechanical component is stuck, the cold could possibly reverse thermal expansion from an overheated hard drive and further possibly return mechanical components back to their original positions. Thereby possibly allowing moving parts to move again. Just have to make sure to put the drive in a tightly packed ziplock bag first, to keep moisture out of the drive.

 

[Epsil0n00]

It's been a while... I finally got the replacement drive in stock. I tried switching the controller boards, but that didn't help at all.

I was prepared to send the drive back for RMA, but the owner of the HDD insisted that I allow him to take it to his local computer shop, owned by a friend of a friend...... I said, "What the hell. I can wait a few more days to send it back."

Then guess what! The owner of the drive called me like 3 hours later and told me that this neighborhood computer shop was able to recover all of his data and it only took them like 40 minutes from the time he gave them the drive! I am happy that he got his data.... but I need to F*cking know what the people at that store did to access that drive! OMG, I tried everything I know of and they recovered his data with ease! WTF is that about!!?!!!?

I am totally calling this guy tomorrow and asking them what the hell they did to recover the data! I bet he'll say that they just mounted it as a secondary drive and it worked fine. Ooooohh... That would piss me off if it worked fine for them but I couldn't get it to work! They didn't have it long enough to freeze it so that's out of the question...

I'll report back and let ya'll know how they did it.
(If you couldn't tell, my pride is a little hurt.)

Eps.

 

[birdpup]

I have been wondering about how time affects a hard drive and am not able to reach any conclusions. I have a drive that failed diagnostic testing so I set it on the shelf. A few months later I reran the diagnostic testing and the drive passed with no errors. This is hard to understand but maybe something similar happened with your friend's drive. And yes, I agree with you and am equally curious what they did to that drive to successfully recover the data.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Epsil0n00
It's been a while... I finally got the replacement drive in stock. I tried switching the controller boards, but that didn't help at all.

I was prepared to send the drive back for RMA, but the owner of the HDD insisted that I allow him to take it to his local computer shop, owned by a friend of a friend...... I said, "What the hell. I can wait a few more days to send it back."

Then guess what! The owner of the drive called me like 3 hours later and told me that this neighborhood computer shop was able to recover all of his data and it only took them like 40 minutes from the time he gave them the drive! I am happy that he got his data.... but I need to F*cking know what the people at that store did to access that drive! OMG, I tried everything I know of and they recovered his data with ease! WTF is that about!!?!!!?

I am totally calling this guy tomorrow and asking them what the hell they did to recover the data! I bet he'll say that they just mounted it as a secondary drive and it worked fine. Ooooohh... That would piss me off if it worked fine for them but I couldn't get it to work! They didn't have it long enough to freeze it so that's out of the question...

I'll report back and let ya'll know how they did it.
(If you couldn't tell, my pride is a little hurt.)

Eps.

hehe, dont feel bad. Before I send a bad hard drive (with simular symptoms as yours) I connect it as a secondary, power the system up and give it a real hard SMACK. Sometimes it works long enough for me to copy the data off of it.

 

[w00t]

just get a new hd and moving the platters is very hard any dirt and dust could completely mess it up. i know i did 2 mods on hd were i made a window on a some low capacity hd with some plexy glass i had to put them in a plastic bag after i removed the cover. 1st time it didnt work 2nd time it did

 

[imported_Kensai]

They might've ran a diagnostics on the drive. I know that PowMax from Maxtor does fix software errors on the drive, I just did it.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Okay, i just talked to the guy and tried to get him to tell me what he did to recover the data... however, he got very defensive of his business secrets and didn't want to tell me any details. I assured him that I work for a school and I am just looking to help our faculty and students... but I respect his desire to protect his business--I would feel the same way if it were my livelihood.

However, I did get the following information from him:
He said that they had to identify the exact controller chip that was on the drive. Then they went to Fujitsu's website and downloaded a fresh BIOS for the integrated on-drive controller chipset. Then they flashed the controller BIOS on the drive and it started functioning again. They said that the data in the controller that informs the drive how to move the read heads in order to find the correct data was damaged and they had to flash the controller to reset that information.

Does this make any sense? How difficult is it to do what he described? I am ready to investigate this next step in HDD diagnosis and repair... flashing the HDD controller BIOS... never heard of that one.

What do you guys think!?
Eps.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Epsil0n00
Okay, i just talked to the guy and tried to get him to tell me what he did to recover the data... however, he got very defensive of his business secrets and didn't want to tell me any details. I assured him that I work for a school and I am just looking to help our faculty and students... but I respect his desire to protect his business--I would feel the same way if it were my livelihood.

However, I did get the following information from him:
He said that they had to identify the exact controller chip that was on the drive. Then they went to Fujitsu's website and downloaded a fresh BIOS for the integrated on-drive controller chipset. Then they flashed the controller BIOS on the drive and it started functioning again. They said that the data in the controller that informs the drive how to move the read heads in order to find the correct data was damaged and they had to flash the controller to reset that information.

Does this make any sense? How difficult is it to do what he described? I am ready to investigate this next step in HDD diagnosis and repair... flashing the HDD controller BIOS... never heard of that one.

What do you guys think!?
Eps.

It makes sense, although i've only flashed SCSI drives and not laptop IDE ones. I bet he whacked it though!

 

[pcgeek11]

It makes sense, although i've only flashed SCSI drives and not laptop IDE ones. I bet he whacked it though!

I'd vote for the sharp whacking also I have used this method when all else failed. Although you have to remember ther is a VERY REAL possibility you will cause more damage to an already damaged drive.

pcgeek11

 

[Epsil0n00]

Okay, I have another drive now with very similar symptoms... tried everything else. Does anyone know how to go about resetting the BIOS on Hitachi HDDs? I know they have a "Drive Feature Utility" that can change some of the low-level settings on the drive like acoustic controls, DMA mode, etc... but is there a way to flash the BIOS back to defaults?

Thanks!

 

[birdpup]

Are these hard drives from the same case? If so, there could be a problem with the power supply or the drives may be overheating. You may wish to move the drives so there is more space between them and rig a fan in the case to direct air at the hard drives for cooling. You may also wish to replace the power supply.

I do not know anything about a bios for hard drives. This is a new thing for me.

 

[Epsil0n00]

Originally posted by: birdpup
Are these hard drives from the same case? If so, there could be a problem with the power supply or the drives may be overheating. You may wish to move the drives so there is more space between them and rig a fan in the case to direct air at the hard drives for cooling. You may also wish to replace the power supply.

I do not know anything about a bios for hard drives. This is a new thing for me.

Nope, they are from two totally different computers.

 

[JDCentral]

Note: Never open your hard-drives. For the love of everything that is(n't) holy. Please?!
I'm pretty sure if you brought it to a data recovery place AFTER opening it, they would probably just look at you in terror ("you did WHAT?!")