my first recovery (raid0)

CopyPasta from another forum (3rd time lucky i hope)

Post 1:

Hi guys/gals

My name is Brendan from Sydney Australia.

I'm hoping you might be able to give me some guidance/advice for a raid0 recovery I am trying to do.

Probably what was very silly of me, (not sure if this is my cause) but I had a drive failure about a month ago (maybe from over heating - not letting the HDD go to sleep over about 12 hours) first thing I tried was the freezer method... which lead to some grinding noises (for a second or three) as apposed to the normal clicking sound.

I have a matching parts drive so I can do a head swap, however I have inspected the platters and there is a large gouge in the SA area (2.5" drive) on both sides I assume of the top platter (2 platters, 4 heads) there also appears to be a score on about 1mm by ~3mm long on the inner area of the platter on both raid0 disks... however only one is not being recognised... so I'm not sure if the latter is an issue or not.

I was of course worried that if I was to change the heads over, the new heads will be destroyed when it passes over the SA area if I can even get it to work using the live board swap method... and there appears to be a little bit of very fine metallic dust around the scoring... So I'm guessing it would be nice to try to image the drive from the outside of the platter ==> and then in towards the SA area... However I am not sure of ZARs capabilities.

I was just wondering what would be the best course of action would be? Is the platter surface cleanable with some sort of technique/electrical contact cleaner spray? Or just try to rip the images directly without trying to clean using ddrescue or some other software? though I am a little unsure what I can do with imaging drives in raid0 as I have been told by symantec ghost cant even image a raid0 array without both drives operational ( a little useless it seems)... but I was wondering if you guys could point me in the right direction with what software I should try to use.

I have uploaded some photos online to a website i frequent.

http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/show...guru-s-on-here

Best Regards

Brendan

Post 2:

Thanks for the reply guys

I was reading on the net last night that there are machines that can pull apart a platter and repair the scratches by spraying a micro sized material... and that allows the surface to allow a new head to glide right over the top without crashing on the rough surface. These machines cost about 5k approx.

Would you guys know where I could send my drive to repair the scratch where I can complete my data recovery?

I was thinking about using ddrescue, but there is another program called dd_rescue... and I'm a little unsure what one I should use. As far as I know, its only for linux platforms, and I've never actualy downloaded or even used linux before... could someone maybe point me in the right direction regarding this?

What I was planning to do, to get the drive online, is I'd try a live board swap. I'd let my raid0 disk 1 (good) go to sleep then I would change the boards over to the damaged drive while its sleeping... apparently this allows the SA area to be loaded into memory, so this should allow me to scan the drive... or so I believe... though I'm not too sure if thats bogus or not.

I made an image of my good raid0 disk and saved it to a 2TB drive using zlon, but I'm unsure if i need to use zar or dd rescue on either of the drives after I do the board swap.

Is it possible to repair a raid0 array when its loaded as an image or does it have to be hardware only?

Best Regards

Brendan

Post 3:

question about boards and live board swaps

raid0 drive (2x 500gb 2.5" drives) [diskA=good,diskB=scratched SA area + dead head] i also have a seperate parts drive

after new head install~

if I was to swap the boards over and get diskB board live and load diskA SA area, then put to sleep, then replace diskB (now diskB is matching with boardB) in order to do an image recovery... using ddrecovery or zar?

is this far fetched?

regards

Brendan

Post 4:

Is it possible to repair the damaged surface finish on the platter to allow a new head to glide over it (i've read there is a machine that can seperate the platters and spray a film of material in the locations of the scratches)

are there no other solutions to this?

is it all just a pipe dream? is it just a really well kept secret?

if all above answers are 'yes' then is there a company who can just do that job? how much would they be charging? I wouldn't imagine it would be very labour intensive...

Super Thanks in advance

Brendan

NC can't tell me how to stop the head crashing on the scratches... trade secret apparently.

though i'm not sure if it would even cause the head to crash as I've read that its common for platter coatings vary from about 100 to 200nm thickness to the substrate where the head will float a few 1~2 microns above the surface of the platter.

now i'm no genius at maths... but 1 micron is 1000x bigger than 1nm

if thats the case, if the coatings where stripped back to substrate (i doubt the glass would be stripped back much due to its hardness) how would the head crash on this? could the drive perhaps be put in a pressure chamber to make the clearance greater? Maybe something like 100psi?

wikipedia construction of a platter:

In post-processing a nanometer thin polymeric lubricant layer gets deposited on top of the sputtered structure by dipping the disk into a solvent solution, after which the disk is buffed by various processes

Even if it needs to be 1000000% smooth, surely someone can do this process again, right?

bump

So it looks like i will try turning off the top 2 heads to get the drive ready, then re-enable them when I want to do my recovery.

but how do i clean up the platters before use?

Best Regards

Brendan

If you noticed, no one answered this topic.....

because there is no need to comment on ....... ideas.

why not?

Because the answer is so simple- that is too hard to come up with.. Nobody want to share the methods and secrets. Maybe time to get out credit card?

Good Luck

credit card? keep dreaming buddy. you can maybe cough up a few grand from a soccor mum, but not from me.

I'm detirmined to learn, just like the rest of you guys. You guys must of learned from someone, so i think you guys should pass down the knowledge to the next apprentice.

humbug wrote:credit card? keep dreaming buddy. you can maybe cough up a few grand from a soccor mum, but not from me.

I'm detirmined to learn, just like the rest of you guys. You guys must of learned from someone, so i think you guys should pass down the knowledge to the next apprentice.

Listen...
The most dr guys have learned A LOT from our experience and this costs a lot of drives and data wich is wasted! (somebody playing with customer's hdd, i neved does that)
Personally there was a period when i am bough hundreds of drives in box (by weight or pcs not important) and tried to diagnose as much as i can, and try to repair those without any important data.
And of course in the beginning this was almost nothing success, but i have got more and more damages and totally unrecoverable /destroyed platters....
This is what waiting for you too....
There is no other way only pay for someone for something....
Otherwise you need to buy a lot of drive, spend month/years for learning before you will get skill to "only tryout" what you have learned on your drive.
And if i am right, this will cost for you much more than simply sit down to your butt, collect up money and order a professiona service wich have no too many chanche as well....

Think about this...
Janos

credit card? keep dreaming buddy. you can maybe cough up a few grand from a soccor mum, but not from me

It's comments like that, that will get you no where, humbug. In fact, it's insulting to the other DR guys here who have spent tons of money and resources (time) in order to get where they are. This isn't changing a water pump or to use a closer to home analogy.. a motherboard or virus removal. The bottom line is, unless you are willing to invest a lot of money and time into this, please don't come here wanting your hand held through a complex data recovery project as you've described. People here are more than willing to help... but jobs like this one don't fall into the "free advice" category. Please be more respectful in your comments and you might just be surprised..

Well, ok then... if you guys are more than willing to help, whats it going to take to learn these things? I'm not in the mood to get ripped off by some one for baloney info I've already paid for... which has already happened thanks to mhdd.com

The point I was trying to make with the above comment; is that I'm not a typical soccer mum with tones of cash that will cough up heaps on request. Unfortunatly for me, I'm just young without alot of money... I'd love to just pay you what you are worth but I only make up 0.001% of your market. Time is all I can invest but I can't do it blindly. obviously. Thats why I am here.

I don't plan to just give up because this is actually something I'd like to learn... I'm not trying to steel business

Humbug, it isn't *just* time you need. You'll spend gobs more money fixing this one problem than you would just letting someone else do it for you. You can't fix this with household items or something you can get at the local Wal-Mart. It's beyond the scope of what you are willing to invest. Similar to asking someone on a forum what the best way to transplant your liver is? It's not going to happen.

Sorry, but I'm not giving up on it just because it isn't easy.

I would rather spend more money on learning how to do it as apposed to having someone do it for me. I value the knowledge more than my data... I can get that data again no probs.

I don't mind getting some specialty tools if they are really required to do some jobs... but for some of those wank tools that you don't really need and can do with a bit of improv is a risk I'm willing to take. i.e. this isn't 900 dollars worth of gear. http://cgi.ebay.com/HARD-DRIVE-HEAD-REP ... 53dd0adc49

I've worked in engineering shops where we can make absolutely anything... the tools we needed is offcourse in the same sort of bucket... and yes they are more expensive than what you'd expect to pay at the local hardware store... but at least you pay for quality and you can get exactly what you need... again at those ebay tools, its clearly cheap rubbish. i mean that little air pump and the magnet removal tool... I could make a jig up to support the drives for less than the fraction of the cost... its obviously a bloated market praying on the desperate.

At least if I do spend gobs of money, I'd be able to do it time and time again and I'll always have my tools. I've already have thousands of $ worth of tools for cars/bikes and I don't see how its any different. Sure, there are special tools that are only good for a handful of models/types but that just goes with it and I understand/accept that. Another thing is tooling is nothing something you just go out and splurge on, it grows over time as you collect it as you need it. I wouldn't see this is any more different.

I know where I can get a whole heap of dead drives for next to nothing... I really don't mind that... but I really want to learn... offcourse it is pointless to do the work blindly with no clue.

I really want to learn... where can I learn it? I'm not interested in learning from any entrepreneurs

well humbug, believe it or not you actually make good points in your 1st post.. the live board swap actually sound feasible, i wouldn't try it with out a hardware copier like DDI or Atola, my be the copy king might work. i don't think straight software would work. you would need a way to control the time outs and internal/external resets on the bad drive. you need a method to sleep the drive in a controlled environment. also if there was a solvent that could be used to help buff out the scratches, that would also be useful.

"first thing I tried was the freezer method" i thought that the MHDD course told you that it should not have been the 1st thing to try.... probably your head change- live board swap method might have worked before the freezer.
final words, ....where there's a will there's away. don't loose hope just choose your path carefully, you don't want to make it worst. who knows you might be able to do heads, live board swap from max LBA, hit the spot wreck the heads. head change live board swap & then LBA 0 till it hits the spot, at least you would have something to work with.

DrFaustus wrote:well humbug, believe it or not you actually make good points in your 1st post.. the live board swap actually sound feasible, i wouldn't try it with out a hardware copier like DDI or Atola, my be the copy king might work. i don't think straight software would work. you would need a way to control the time outs and internal/external resets on the bad drive. you need a method to sleep the drive in a controlled environment. also if there was a solvent that could be used to help buff out the scratches, that would also be useful.

"first thing I tried was the freezer method" i thought that the MHDD course told you that it should not have been the 1st thing to try.... probably your head change- live board swap method might have worked before the freezer.
final words, ....where there's a will there's away. don't loose hope just choose your path carefully, you don't want to make it worst. who knows you might be able to do heads, live board swap from max LBA, hit the spot wreck the heads. head change live board swap & then LBA 0 till it hits the spot, at least you would have something to work with.

if someone has a second hand one they want to part with, let me know

the solvents info seems to be the biggest secret. I know they have a thin polymer coating... and we all know how they go with solvents... and ofcourse I need the correct kind of material to buff it with.

I didn't do the course (even crazier waste of money) but it did buy the book and studied just about every youtube vid. bigest waste of money imho... I really should have done the head change first but i was feeling lazy at the time... really kicking myself now lol. I know my chances are reduced to only about 30% now because of it. i heard the grinding and thought to myself "oh ****"

well, i have 2 sets of good heads that i can use, so it looks like i'd have to change it twice like you said... though I'm not sure if I would be wasting my time due to lack of experience... it looks like I've come to the right place.

Oh cool- and you could make a video and upload it here so that people can learn how not bols up a hard drive.
OR prove everybody else wrong here.. I will be astonished if your head swap works.. just like that.

But I can tell you the spray thing.. forget about it it just BS. you are wasting your time with it. The platter is coated with several layers of alloys and metals.. a can of spray wont fix that. It not like fake hair spray hehehe. On this forum there is a heated and well documented thread about they "magic spray" and how lubrication actually works.

...

The procedure for a simple head swap on a healthy drive is easy enough. It’s not hard to be careful... common sense prevails. Just because there is a scratch on the platter, doesn’t change the process of swapping out the heads… does it not?

I thought that magic spray was a joke anyway. No need to try and bs me though... I know platters can be cleaned up by hand.. they obviously use something... unless you data recovery guys have the jedi force and you can clean the platter with your mind... or better yet, reading the data off the platter with your superman eyes...

What I was 'thinking' of was that it doesn't have to be in spray form, it just needs to clean up the particles on the damaged surface without;
a) Having a chemical reaction with any of the alloys or polymers that may be present there; and
b) not leave any residue...

I need to clean off as much debris off the platter on account of the slider making mince meat of my SA area... if i don't clean that off I'm sure its not going to make it any easier for the slider to keep an air bearing. Unless...

Something else which seems interesting, is that you called it "lubrication" why did you call it that? It seems there is a lot of good info you obviously don't want to tell me.

A head swap in this situation wont "just" work for obvious reasons... i don't even know what made you even want to say that :S

Unless offcourse you could be more helpful, I wouldn't have to post a video of me ballsing up a drive.

it is not enough just "cleaning out" the platter!
The damaged area will create different airflow and the head will behave different way on the top of damages...
Additionally, if you ever will get this drive -*magically*- recalibrate again, you will need an expensive tool for read out the sectors head by head....
This tool will costs 10x or 20x than a simple recovery in any lab.

Janos

This is a perfect case to send to CSSI and see what they can do. Perhaps they will do this one for free, just so that you can report back to us that they can actually do what they claim.

unless you data recovery guys have the jedi force and you can clean the platter with your mind

I posted a video somewhere on the tubes on how resistant a hdd is to external factors.....then set it on fire :lol:

or in this forum somewhere and maybe some other stuff..
I see you very persistent guy but trust me you attempts have a small chance of success.
Here is a hint. Buy a few cheap job lot hdd's - take them apart and try to remove and put the head back. Remember the higher the capacity... the more difficult.. and lower capacities and older drives use different heads. easier..
go to your local chcemical distributor :evil:

and ask them .. hmmmm

my first recovery (raid0)

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