Open heart surgery on hard drives

[ihtagik]

Does anyone have any experience woking on hard drive internals? The reason I need to do this is my Fujitsu hard drive (MPC3104AT, 10.2GB) just failed and when it did it took my whole Linux install along with a lot of important stuff I've been woking on (2 1/2 years worth! yeah I know back up...back up...back up).
Anyway, I'm considering buying another mpc3104at ($50) and swapping the pcb from it to the failed drive. I think that's what failed because the drive was not dropped or manhandled in anyway.

Any ideas, anecdotes, warnings etc or should I ship my drive to some company to recover my stuff (how much does it cost anyway???)

 

[pcmodem]

STOP!!!

DO NOT OPEN THE HARD DRIVE!!!

Hard drives are built in clean room environments. If you open it up you will not only void the warranty (if it's still under warranty) but also likely kill the drive. There are thousands of little particles afloat in the air around you, which some of will land on the platters if your hard drive is opened. These micron size particles will kill your data when the platters start spinning at 5400-7200 RPM.

-PCM

 

[rudder]

The place I used to work had intergraph pc's and I think seagate drives. We had one guy who never saved stuff to the server and of course his 8 gig drive died. I was able to take the PCB off the bottom of a good drive and plugged it onto the bad drive and it worked no problem. I imagine these drives were designed this way becasue there were just four small screws to undo and it popped off very easy. The bad drive was still spinning up but the scsi card would not detect it, so I knew it had to be the board on the drive that was bad.

I am not familiar with the fujitsu unfortunately.

 

[Ben50]

Any ideas, anecdotes, warnings etc or should I ship my drive to some company to recover my stuff (how much does it cost anyway???)

Sending the drive to a data recovery company can cost upwards of a thousand dollars so it is only a last resort option. Switching the pcb is a good idea and a lot cheaper too. I assume you have tried using the drive in another computer to see if it works. That is the first thing I would do.

 

[WebDude]

I once worked for a Cabinet Secretary, and we put all his archived speeches on a new PC, and of course deleted all other copies of them. The hard drive on the new PC failed in the second week. We had to get the information back. The tech support person first tried replacing the pcb. It was a good shot, and worth a try. However that wasn't where the problem lay in our case, so we ended up sending the drive to Ontrack Data Recovery and paying mega bucks to get the data recovered. Doesn't hurt to try replacing the pcb though. Even if that doesn't work, you can still send the unit off. But of course don't ever open up the sealed part and let dust into the platters and heads.

WebDude

 

[Sunner]

Switching the PCB between harddrives isn't too bad.

But if you're thiking about actually opening the drive up, forget about it, you will kill it, along with any warranty.

 

[jcmkk]

Opening up a HD isn't that bad. I've opened up a few to put windows in the lids. Just make sure you keep the room as clean as possible. All of my HD's still work.

 

[LostHiWay]

There is not point in opening the drive...there's nothing in it you could fix even if you knew what was wrong.

 

[LostHiWay]

Originally posted by: jcmkk
Opening up a HD isn't that bad. I've opened up a few to put windows in the lids. Just make sure you keep the room as clean as possible. All of my HD's still work.

wow...that's the first time I've ever heard of someone doing this.

 

[Superwormy]

Yeah I've seen photos of drives where people took the cover off, cut a hole in it and made windows on the drives, very cool to see them working, the head moving and platters spinning.

But I wouldn't try it, and theres nothing inside you can fix, but def. try replacing the PCB if you have exhasuted other options. Also, drives can fail even if you don't drop them or handle them bad, things just get old and break sometimes.

 

[Czar]

DO NOT OPEN IT

you can replace the pcb though, just try to remove the pcb from your old hd before you buy a new one to see if you can do it and if you can put it back in.

 

[Yobbo]

Just in case that last guy didn't say it well enough:

DO NOT OPEN IT!!!

 

[Dreadogg]

I would have to try and open it, I could not just let it go! LOL So you must open it!

 

[dkozloski]

I had a Seagate IDE drive quit working so I took it apart to find out what happened. It looked to me like a minute spot of grease escaped from a platter bearing and was spun put across the disk. I powered up the drive with the lid off and squirted it with some trichlorethane from an aerosol can. The drive started working again and was finally discarded later as part of an upgrade. No Guts! No Glory!

 

[Yohhan]

What is the PCB?

 

[dkozloski]

Printed Circuit Board!

 

[Colt45]

ive opened hardrives before.

i opened a old 500mb samsung, left it on my desk with no cover for a few days. then i blew off the dust and slapped the cover back on. still worked

i even had it running with no cover on. that was cool. (didnt run it too long tho.)

 

[linster]

I thought the newer hard drives are hermetically sealed so opening may not be a good idea.

 

[Bozz]

I've got a 4.3Gb Seagate HD that I've put a perspex window onto as well. Took the lid off and put a freezer bag around the HD, pulled it tight and secured it with rubber bands. A few days later when the glue holding the perspex window had cured, I carefully washed and cleaned the top panel then sprayed compressed air at it to remove any final large particles then quickly put it back on the HD. Has been working for about 6 months now, it is only for favorite MP3s that are all backed up anyway. Next mission is to put a few LEDs into the HD assembly and have them wired to flash according to data on the IDE bus

 

[ihtagik]

Thanks all. Just to clarify, I do not plan to open the encased platters unless all else fails (in which case I'd be discarding the drive anyway. Instead I want to replace the PCB.