open a hard drive?

[dbarton]

I have a drive with data on it that has failed.
I have a working drive just like it.

I'd like to swap the platters into the working case/controller, but of course I know i'm not *supposed* to open a drive..

What will happen if I do, and get a tiny bit of dust inside? Will it def NOT work at all even enough to get some data off it if I get any airbourne dust in it?

I just would like the data back, but recovery services are way out of my price range.

 

[bolomite]

um, no. they are sealed for a reason. Even if they were OK to open, there's no way you could touch/move the platters and expect it to come out alright

 

[0roo0roo]

well supposedly some people have swapped the controller board at the bottom of the drive with identical replacement from a doner to fix drives. assuming your pblem is there its possible. if its mechanical ur fuxored.

 

[dfuze]

You would most likely have two broken drives if you tried.

 

[Mark R]

There is a reason why recovery services will charge around $1000 just to attempt this type of repair.

This is extremely difficult, and requires highly specialist equipment and a clean room. As it is, getting a little dust in the drive won't kill it immediately - I've had an open drive run for many hours. The problem is that as soon as you start moving things about, you'll push things out of alignment or get grease or metal fragments onto the platters - and that will kill things quickly.

If you attempt to remove the platter assembly at home, you will destroy the drive - guaranteed.

Best you can do is transplant the electronics from one drive of the exact same model to the old one - and hope that the fault was electronic.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: dph1077
You would most likely have two broken drives if you tried.

:shocked: :laugh: :shocked: :laugh: :shocked:

 

[dbarton]

I have swapped the electronics already with no luck, so it must be the spindle motor or the heads. Nothing else left really, no?

Is it *ever* the case where the motor may have a dead spot and i can just open it up, give a quick push and get the data off?

The drive is bad, so opening it seems like its worth a shot if there's ANY hope.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Those aren't normal DC motors in the drives, they are servo motors in hard drives and if the little control chip inside died it won't run. I doubt giving it a push would do anything.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Those aren't normal DC motors in the drives, they are servo motors in hard drives and if the little control chip inside died it won't run. I doubt giving it a push would do anything.

The ones that spin the spindle are DC

The ones that control the read/write head are servo

 

[Blain]

Stick it in the freezer for a few hours and see what happens.
It's worth a shot before you gut the thing. :roll:

 

[dbarton]

what are these little round holes covered by a sticker? theres about 3 of em.

(tried the freezer for an hour, but cant imagine how that'd do anything really)

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Those aren't normal DC motors in the drives, they are servo motors in hard drives and if the little control chip inside died it won't run. I doubt giving it a push would do anything.

The ones that spin the spindle are DC

The ones that control the read/write head are servo

OK DC servo motor for the spindle A standard DC motor can't regulate speed accurately enough, and if it was a regular DC motor, why 4 contacts to it? Also if you take one apart and spin it it has a slight "notch" feel to it.

There is no motor for the read/write heads. It is all done by an actuator arm that is controlled by electrical pulses in a coil placed in a magnetic field. Similar to a motor design but definitely not servo.

Take a HD apart sometime, you'll see what I mean. It's kinda cool.

Originally posted by: Blain
Stick it in the freezer for a few hours and see what happens.
It's worth a shot before you gut the thing. :roll:

Good idea :thumbsup:

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Those aren't normal DC motors in the drives, they are servo motors in hard drives and if the little control chip inside died it won't run. I doubt giving it a push would do anything.

The ones that spin the spindle are DC

The ones that control the read/write head are servo

OK DC servo motor for the spindle A standard DC motor can't regulate speed accurately enough, and if it was a regular DC motor, why 4 contacts to it? Also if you take one apart and spin it it has a slight "notch" feel to it.

There is no motor for the read/write heads. It is all done by an actuator arm that is controlled by electrical pulses in a coil placed in a magnetic field. Similar to a motor design but definitely not servo.

Take a HD apart sometime, you'll see what I mean. It's kinda cool.

Originally posted by: Blain
Stick it in the freezer for a few hours and see what happens.
It's worth a shot before you gut the thing. :roll:

Good idea :thumbsup:

hm, guess I had the wrong idea. Oh well, thanks for setting me straight. Much appreciated

 

[PianoMan]

Someone on this forum has done a successful internal mechanical transplant ("It's alive..! It's AALLLIIIIIVVVEEE!!! ), but he went thru great lengths to achieve clean conditions at home (homemade glovebox, HEPA filts, etc.).

It could work w/o all that, but there's no telling when it would suffer a head crash from dust or contaminants. You could get the data off before it goes - definite possibility.

In the end, the call is yours - but if it's data you absolutely, 100%, no sheeyat need to keep -> don't open the case and send it to a data recovery center.

PM

 

[bwnv]

One thing you could try since you already swapped the board out. On the drive you can tell where the disks are. On one side of the drive there is a sticker covering a hole, this is used for putting the initial servo pattern on. Take off the sticker, set the drive down, power it up and give the platter a little flick with a small flat blade screwdriver. Make sure you only touch the edge of the disk though. If that makes it start than the heads were stuck to the disk stopping the motor from starting (see "stiction")

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: bolomite
um, no. they are sealed for a reason. Even if they were OK to open, there's no way you could touch/move the platters and expect it to come out alright

obviously. if you're even posting this, Op, then you probably have no idea that without advanced equipment, you'd already have ruined the hard drive if you touched the interal rotary mechanisms 'n discs and internal parts with bare fingers?

edit:

[p.s.] if you have a script for like a movie you are writing and you know that thousands of dollars must be spent on recovering the unbacked up files, then you need to seal the hard drive, and do a priority class ship to a vendor that specializes in recovering data from defective/failed/dmg'd hard disk media.

I doubt this is the case, but you get the point...

in case you are looking for a company that recovers media from dysfunctional hardware, Western Digital offers some trusted vendors. You'll be breaking the bank if you don't have thousands of dollars of spare credit.

 

[dbarton]

It was just some email and music so not worth a $$$ data recovery...

Still a good wakeup call to have better backups.

Had em, but three weeks old. You do an awful lot in 3 weeks.