Hi,

My dead hard drive suddenly started to work again and I was able to recover the most critical information on it. Since I have access to a clean room and the highly critical information is now safe, I decided to recover the rest of the data myself. It will be the first time I open a hard drive. I'm therefor looking for any advices.

The drive of concern is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 of 750gb. The initial problem seems to have been related to the head. But after few month of rest, the problem moved to what seems to be a seized spindle that started to spin again just enough time to recover some data. Now, the platter refuse to start spinning again.

What I'm looking for by posting on this forum is some information on how to prepare for the job. I want to have a efficient time in the clean room, hence I want to prepare all the tooling that I will eventually require.

I used so far a sata to usb module from a powered external enclosure to connect the disk to a laptop where I have enough space to copy the files. Is there any software that can be useful (Linux) ? What is usually the procedure to fix a seized spindle ? Does this usually involve transplant ? Is it possible to make the disk work long enough to recover the data without any donor parts ?

Any tips will be appreciated

Jeff

1. You said you got back your most critical data on this one.
2. You say now your spindle motor and platters are refusing to spin again on this one
3. You say you have access to clean room

Advise

1. Seagate is not easy drive to work on and especially with a spindle motor or head problem on this one
2. Nobody here is going to tell you how to do this one for free sorry to say this one to you on it
3. People here will not assist in this operation due to the fact they do it for a living and hate to see what a mess DIY make on this one. We have seen results of this just look at some posts here on this one.
4. If you got back your most critical data on this one and it is safe and you are happy with it. Stop and dump this drive.
5. No software in the world will fix this spindle motor problem. Parts a lot of time if you think they are good and matched still do not work on this drive.
6. If you want to play around on this one read some posts here and see what others have done on this one. Free advise on how to transplant platters, heads, and what not is not given for first time DIY that come here.
7. You are lucky you got what you did off this drive. Buy a new one and go on with out the rest of the stuff on this drive. Claiming your most critical data is safe should be enough for you to continue on and be happy with what you have done.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

beside clean room access, you need a lot of tooling...and know how !

I was expecting that kind of reply, but I had to take the chance. I'm more familiar to camera repair forum, where tips are generally given. But, I understand your statement.



I got what I call the most critical. However, there is still important stuff that I would like to recover. But when it comes to evaluate between paying for a data recovery and swallowing the lost, the important data still to be recovered are not valuable enough to justify the high cost (sorry for whom it's a business). The data is still valuable for me to put some effort and to try the recovery process. In case of failure (which seems quite high), I will consider the time invested as learning experience. I'm therefore looking for information on the pitfall that need to be avoided and for any guideline direction to investigate to solve the issue.

regards,

You want to go on this is your choice on this one. See some or one results of what happens when you try to change heads on a drive and you do not have the experience or know how to do this one. more-consequence-diy-t16971.html The rest is up to you. Everyone seems to think this is an easy task. I wish you lots of luck on this one. Post some photos of the end results when you are done. They would be interesting to view on this one.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

IF you have a spindle problem you have serious problems. Transferring heads can be tricky- but transferring the platters- you have no chance! You will need more tools than just a screw driver with interchangeable T bits and pliers.
The fact that it spun up a few months later is strange? what happened - did it seize up while copying data? did it over heat- was the spindle pin hot? smelling of burn. Maybe its not even heads or spindle!

Just very curious though. How do you access to clean room? for free..

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

Yeah, I was surprise that the drive woke up suddenly. I therefore jump on the occasion and quickly copied stuff. The original problem was (from the search I made) probably some coating that was on the head. When I went around asking for quotes, this is what I received as feedback on the sound it was making. In fact, on website of Datacent, the symptom of my drive was clearly what they describes a "clicking, knocking, sweeping sounds" <http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/seagate>. With the quote they sent me, I had to start saving money. Then, month passed during the time I was saving to cover the cost of the repair. Then, I retried the hard drive, just to see, and the sound was then different. The platter were not spinning anymore. The hard drive was in a free-agent case. I decided to get rid of the external casing. Probably the vibration induce while removing the casing dislocated something and the platter were then spinning again.

During the copying phase of the recovery, the hard drive started to become quite hot. But, I don't have reference on what hot is. So, I was kinda crossing finger there as the drive was copying. Head was doing strange sound bouncing back and forth once and a while. Until, the platter stop. Not sure how the seizure happen, sequence is a bit fuzzy.

As for the clean room, I have good connection with the micro and nano fabrication research center of my university.

Regards,

Yes but you don't know nothing about how these drives work and their internals...

Your drive is even more damaged now than it was before. So your quotes will be doubled or trippled. You wont be lucky to start it up in a month again.
You did a good thing going for your most important data- but it time to count losses and bin the hdd or get a loan for recovery.
Sequence is normal of what happened, sorry mate but if you open the HDD it wont help you anything now. It will make things even more worse believe it or not. So think about it.

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..