Head crash in a 2.5" HDD, small fragments inside, what could they be?

[mikeymikec]

A disk I was taking a look at today was doing the classic beepy/clicky noise that people here are probably familiar with when hard drives have gone to heaven or have undergone a near-death experience

The head was stuck on the platter, and I used the technique I've mentioned previously to retrieve the stuck head from the platter and park it manually, however I also noticed some loose fragments.

The fragments are paper-thin, both are about 1mm square and are highly reflective but dark in colour. I doubt that I could get a decent picture of them to post.

As one might expect after finding visible debris inside the drive, of course the drive hasn't worked. Sometimes the heads would have a little fit when the drive was powered, sometimes not. The platter has spun on every occasion when powering it up.

I can move the heads without any problem across the platter (when the drive is off).

Unless anyone has any bright ideas for recovering data from this drive (the data isn't worth enough to justify the big-name data recovery companies), I'm inclined to pronounce it dead and move on, I was just curious about what these fragments might be in case anyone here is intimately familiar with the innards of hard drives.

 

[KingFatty]

Are there any places inside the drive that seem to be missing those fragments? Surely they fell off of something, but pictures would help.

 

[Compman55]

If the heads park on a ramp, you can park the heads, remove the platters, transplant into the same model drive and try again. This would need done in a clean box. You can make a clean box out of plexiglass, and stuff from harbor freight. If you have moved the heads over the platter without them spinning, the platters are already damaged.

 

[Burpo]

The 2 pieces are likely some Heads.. Scrap it & go on..

 

[mikeymikec]

I can't see anything damaged in the drive that would account for the pieces, but I only started opening iffy drives a few months ago, I can't say I know my way around them.

 

[hal2kilo]

The 2 pieces are likely some Heads.. Scrap it & go on..

My thoughts too. Thin film technology comes to mind.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, I'm junior-league with this one. I thought opening up a sealed HDD would introduce impurities to the works. I think the drives were filled with nitrogen -- not just "clean air." But I suppose the OP had first rendered the drive unusable, and then -- subsequently opened up the works.

I must have been impressed by visuals of clean-rooms over the last couple decades, and decided there would be nothing I could do to impose such a standard on my own living environs.

 

[alzan]

Reminds me of an incident that happened ~25 years ago with a head crash on a unit like the one I use for my avatar: a tech was out at our company to do a preventative maintenance on the drive; the proper procedure after doing the PM was to let the drive pack spin for 30 minutes to remove any particles from the platter surfaces before loading the read/write heads.

He felt that that wouldn't be necessary and loaded the heads immediately; I was 30' away and could hear the heads screeching across the platters. Out if the 24 heads on the unit 22 needed to be replaced at $75 apiece, we didn't see that particular tech anymore after that incident. The drive unit was chock full of mangled head components and platter surface remnants.

Fortunately for us the disk pack he ruined was not filled with critical data but a blank pack was $600, the company that sent the tech out replaced the disk pack and the drive unit itself.

 

[mikeymikec]

Well, I'm junior-league with this one. I thought opening up a sealed HDD would introduce impurities to the works. I think the drives were filled with nitrogen -- not just "clean air." But I suppose the OP had first rendered the drive unusable, and then -- subsequently opened up the works.

I must have been impressed by visuals of clean-rooms over the last couple decades, and decided there would be nothing I could do to impose such a standard on my own living environs.

Opening a drive can potentially introduce elements to the surface(s) of the platter(s), but from what I've read, assuming that the 'undesirable elements' on the platter surface is just dust, then the act of spinning up the platter forces off such contaminants from the surface. Obviously it's a good idea not to open a drive without good reason, and even then to limit the drive's exposure to the surrounding environment as much as possible, but if the head has got stuck on the platter, a quick op to remove the head and close the drive back up (in my experience) has previously made it possible to retrieve data before binning the drive.

 

[Compman55]

And with higher capacity's this is becoming less and less.

On SSD's there will be no user servicable parts unfortunatly.