Hi to all

I have a friend that has truck repair shop. On one of laptops that they are using (Panasonic Toughbook) hdd has failed. As far as I can tell disk does not spin up. It tries 2 times and then stops, then tries 2 times more.

Should I bother to try to swap electronics? What can be done with this one?

On most modern hard drives you can't simply swap the PCB board and expect it to work, unless you really get lucky. Most often you need to match very closely and then transfer the ROM either through soldering the chip off and back on (risky) or using a tool like PC-3000.

Though my bet in your case is that the drive's heads have failed and it'll need professional data recovery.

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MK4021GAS.... Tries 2 times and then stops.

Definitely (well, 99.9%) not PCB.

Almost certainly bearing issue, common on this drive.

NOT DIY

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Try warming up the bearing with a hair dryer.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Not suggested as it can cause the heads to get stuck on the platters when the motor seizes again.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

That's what the DR professionals have suggested and it has worked for them.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I notice that the drive incorporates "Ramp-Load" Technology. Perhaps the OP could stick a business card between the PCB and the HDA, then warm up the drive and allow it to spin for a while. This should warm up the lubricant without loading the heads.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Your interpretation of a "Professional" is a little diluted if you believe that all we do is take hair dryers to hard drives. If I told to you walk off a cliff would you do it?


Ah, Duhhhhh.....Any pro knows that these use ramps and always fail from bering issues. I think your game is a bit off today.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

I have experience with bearing issues in drives with 1/2HP 240VAC motors. When such drives have been sitting for a while, their bearings scream like banshees until the lubricant warms up. To prevent any issues while the lubricant was stabilising, I used to disable the voice coil. This prevented the heads from loading. In the OP's case, isolating the HDA contacts would achieve the same end. No load, no stiction.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

hi.

thx for info.

I might try to warm up hdd... I need to make an image of this disk since license files for software are on disk... damn it. I was hoping for problem that is relatively easy to solve.

Oh well no pain no gain. I will try to warm up hdd and I will post the end result.

THX again

If, by chance, the heads are stuck in the middle of the platters, there is a very good chance that if you successfully get the drive to spin, it could rip the sliders off, making a huge mess to clean up. It is also not uncommon for heads to get jammed between parking ramp and platter.

Should this be a good old fashioned Toshiba seized spindle, the platter transplant is very simple for a pro and shouldn't cost more than $1000 to recover with very high chance of success. (assuming that further damage isn't caused by DIY efforts).

If your data isn't worth a free quote by a professional lab and at least a few hundred bucks, then go crazy knowing that everything done from here on in is likely to make things worse...with a small chance of luck being on your side.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

Years ago we did experiments with heat, cold, etc. on these drives with bearing failure (we still have a drawer full of them!)

We never got good, repeatable results with a hair dryer or any other hot air system. Ditto with cold. In fact, heating these drives can force some of the lubricant from the bearings which will then cause contamination.

You also need an imager if you are trying to get the original bearing to work, because the drive will error and time out as it gets going and slows down. It's not stable enough to copy files off with your operating system in this condition.

The best practice on this drive with this problem is a platter swap, which is certainly not a recommended DIY procedure.

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@jono-ats @lcoughey thx for info. closest dr professionals to me are 500km away. I will contact them. since this hdd contains license files for special software i do not wish to destroy information

Whereabouts are you? Europe?

We are in UK, if you wanna ship it over?

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PC Image Data Recovery
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