HDD GURU FORUMS

Hitachi K9 and L9 mobile drives failing big time - in the neatest way.

Thanks Hitachi, without you Maxtor, Seagate and WD (Blue and Green
and the others) life would be quite boring. & Fuji 2002 & Sungsam.

All you hdd makers, our best friends

Hahahaha... LOOOL!!

So are the Hitachi's 'easily' fixable ?

No, they die like flies in October, instead.

The one's that are fixable, yes, they are easily fixable.

The one's where client and the IT keyboard clickerman have tampered, they almost impossible.

Fortunately, the most common fault is immune (almost) to the IT keyboard clickerman,
thanks Hitachi, thanks again, you found the neatest way for a drive to fail.

We have received many K9's lately. Unfortunately the one we received yesterday was run over by a car. The entire drive was twisted/bent.
The other one had Head 1 dead. Imaged w/3 heads (head 1 is completely gone), now going to do head transplant...guess I've been getting the fun cases lately...seems like mostly stuck spindle, and head crashes and burnt (fire) and soaked (Fire dept) Maxtor...sure would like some logical work about now...

pcrecovery,

Hitachi, stuck spindle ? (OK, run over by car, sure, can happen to any)

What do mean head1 completely gone ? missing, stolen ?

Dead Head, Hitachi ?

I think that in the hitachi ran over by a car, maybe there's some more damage beside the spindle... Did you recover it anyway? Some pics? It's really a great case!

Actually, I remember a similar case, but Toshiba mobile,
actual alu casting was bent in one corner by, I would say, about 3mm.
Car accident, head on and laptop was completely destroyed, in pieces.
Platter move & new heads - 100% data.

Also desktop, robbery, and gunshot missed client's head by about 2mm,
(scratched a little though, head that is, human head I mean)
and landed and ended up inside the case, missed the drive in this instance.

I worked on the bent one until late yesterday evening and very early this morning. I had heads stuck in middle of platter, but was able to correct and free motor. Drive was bent in 45-degree from opposing corners. After some adjustments and discovery of location of some defects, I recovered "My Documents" folder immediately. I had impossible time trying to image drive forward direction from any starting point. in reverse, however, I am having no problems and I am at 122M out of 195M LBA already.

Wow. Sometimes I wonder how tough platters are, and how easily the disks in their whole fail.

Sadly, the unrecoverable drives are usually the ones that another company tried to access. Sometimes we get drives with cases of stiction or stuck spindle, that aren't that bad really, but some data is lost and recovery made difficult, simply because of another company trying their software and adapters, etc.
Cases where drives have experienced fire, water, dropped, etc. AND contain valuable data need to be examined in clean room ,repaired, and powered last.

We had one large case last year with several large (40 liter) plastic bags of melted computers and enclosures from oil company. luckily, the IT department sent to us immediately. we were able to get all data from Maxtor 100gb (have pics and letter from CEO) and main computer system (water/fire both).

Obviously these scenarios require a physical examination and work PRIOR to any power being applied. We give local IT companies a discount and information to educate and help minimize such problems as well as encourage proper methods and allow them to profit as well.

I always said that we should be the FIRST AID, not the LAST (data recovery, not funeral service).

water damage is never a very big problem unless it's been 65 meters down and laying under the Mary Rose