I'm trying to recover a 4GB USB drive for a friend. It's got a Seagate ST640211CF inside. I took it out of the USB enclosure and put it in a CF-IDE adapter. When trying to access it, it spins up and clicks. I'm guessing either a FW problem or the heads. I'm a bit over my head with this one, as I've never worked on one. Has anyone worked on these? Is a Head Swap possible with these? Are these supported by PC3000, Salvation, or something else?

Are you sure it actually spins up?

Stiction is pretty common on these.

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I needed a stethescope to hear it, but it does spin up. Very similar to a regular hard drive... Spins up, waits a second, then click, click, click.... Only difference I noticed so far is that it doesn't spin up unitl I actually access the drive, I'm guessing for power savings.

I wanted to add a few things...

1) Salvation doesn't support these, and never will according to Tech Support.

2) I bought a bunch of broken drives to experiment on. All have the same model and FW

3) Most have what I call the 'Fast Clicking'. Even though I hear it spin up, it might be stiction or something mechanical, as I took one making the fast click, gently banged it, and got it working.

And a few questions...

1) These are held together with a tiny Tri-Wing screw. Anyone know where to get a bit or screwdriver for this?

2) Assuming there aren't any firmware repair tools for these, any chance a hot swap would work?

3) I took one apart, and it looks like it's going to be a whole lot of fun to swap heads. Anyone ever do this? Any advice?

It's really common to get bad heads on these microdrives, I've seen several recently, one of which was a Seagate ST640211CF. Decent triwing screwdrivers are hard to find, they are often cheaply made and not fine enough for microdrives. I ended up getting a Wiha T1 torx driver and filing down three of the wings. The screws are never very tight and come out easily.
When it comes to swapping the heads, it is quicker to swap the platter! Fine nosed tweezers to hold the motor still, newly modified triwing driver to loosen the screw, hold the platter with a lint free cloth by the edges and swap to the parts drive. Sometimes you don't even need to swap the PCB. Try removing the parts platter first and replacing it to get used to the process.

Good luck.

_________________
Timothy Ayers
Clean Room Engineer

http://www.palmerdata.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 7015 5380

Thanks for the help. I was wondering about the platter swap, but the two 'holes' on either side of the screw didn't look too defined, more like indentations, and I could just see my tweezers scratching across the platter. I did find a triwing, but I think I need a #000, which I never found. I have a #00 on order, and I'm just counting on filing it down to size. I tried filing a new point on a regular cheap screwdriver, but it looked like the metal was soft in the middle, and my homemade triwing bent easily. It was barely enough to take most of a junk drive apart.

True they are not very deep but with a good pointed pair of tweezers, it's enough. If you are worried about it, you can take the heads out without too much bother. Again, a good pair of tweezers are handy to remove the heads - I have a fine nosed pair with the last 1/2 mm bent towards each other to help grip what ever you are lifting. Also makes it easier to pick up small screws.

_________________
Timothy Ayers
Clean Room Engineer

http://www.palmerdata.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 7015 5380