Help with Toshiba MK4019GAX

[ojopipa]

Hi all !

My first post and my first experiences with Toshiba 2.5" hds.


The rotor bearing of this 40gb drive has failed, after greasing extracting the silver ring without results I decided to swap the 2 platters , heads and electronics to another toshiba housing with the same motor in good condition, I extracted the two platter and heads without especial tools but with max care, After mount all on new box the drive spins and after a sequence of "clicking noise", stops and starts, the head go to parking position and bios dont recognize the drive.
I need advice about what happen, i think that i dont align perfectly the two platters therefore i tried little rotations of upper platter without results.... also i think that i can be damaged something with manipulation...i worked with max caution but...errors exists.

Any advise and ideas are welcome !

[pcimage]

If you have let the platters slip out of alignment with each other, it's "bye bye data".

No chance

[ojopipa]

When i extracted the platters, for remain fixed the positions, i marked with a very litle red point the edge (not the surface) of both platters, therefore if have bad alignment only can be half or one micron...but can be enough

[TerraNova]

I am just wondering how precise it must be in terms of micron ? 0.001u ? 0.05? The point is..if there is a misalignment in micron as ojopipa pointed out, would the data still recoverable even though a shift occurs?

[jono-ats]

It is my understanding that relative platter position is critical in most drives, but not so much with Toshiba, which is usually very forgiving.

I have swapped platters in Toshiba drives, almost always with success -- it is standard procedure for me with Toshibas that have bad bearings.

I would certainly check for other issues, such as:

1. Bad heads. How did you load / unload them? Did you swap the magnets with the heads? You might try doing that. Or get another set of heads and try them.

2. Look for contamination in the drive. I once did what you did, i.e. cut away the bearing cap and added lubricant. But the lubricant contaminated the inside of the drive as well!

[ojopipa]

jono-ats: Do you speaking about Toshiba Hd´s with 2 platters? ...really i dont locate somebody that get swap multi-platters successfully.

I changed the heads with magnets inclusive,previously I prevented head-contact with a little paper pieces, the old inner box dont have signs of contamination with oil, i only deposited a little drop of oil over the external bearing to prevent this.

Maybe i can obtain a good hd of same model in working condition and test to de-align and align platters, after this test i can try to change only the platters to this ok hd without manipulation of heads. Anybody see any possibility?

thanks !

[ojopipa]

Hi again,

yet i dont have a good hd, but i tried some experiments:

I disassembled a good hardisk 2,5" Hitachi travelstar IC25n040atcs04-0 this is a similar drive to my toshiba, also with 2 platters, this hd have instaled windows2k working fine, I missaligned the two platers about 1 or 2 milimeters in the external radious among them...and surprise ! the hd works fine ! windows charge and run ok also checked with MHDD scan function....
is sure that this hd have only w2k and the left is empty.... is 1gb of 40 used but is astonishing

comments???

[pepe]

Hi,

I have swapped SP2014 platters, but I had to align them to be centered properly. A 1 disk drive is usualy easy to align, but for example IBM/Hitachi 1 platter drives have so 'wide' gap between the spindle and the platter that I could not realign 1 platter after loosening it for testing...

pepe

[ojopipa]

Hi,

Solved !!

I located a donor hdd same model but different firmware, I changed the two platters and pcb to this donor hdd case, I use heads, housing and motors of the donor, I aligned the platters with the previous red marks painted in the border and .... surprise ! working ! I cloned the drive with freeware soft Easus disk copy utility with only a few bad sectors, and ALL DATA SUCCESSFULLY RECOVERED ! more that 30gb of files ...

Thanks to all !

[mr_spokk]

Hi,
Nice to see that you didn't gave up so easy
Hopefully your data was worth the effort....nice job.

Regards

Bosse

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

hi ojopipa

Very interesting post and also very good job .Never give up is the motto here .

[pcimage]

Great news!

Well done!