Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
July 3rd, 2008, 17:00
Hi all,
I'll have to check a Momentus 5400.2 tomorrow which suddenly stopped working. I hear a slight hum when the drive is power up, but no rotation sound.
Are stuck spindles common also to the 2,5" Seagates, or should I expect something worse?
Do the 2,5"s have a serial console connection? I'd guess it's on the four pins used for master/slave selection, as it is on the desktop drives. But which pins? Anyway, the TxD would be easy to find...
July 3rd, 2008, 17:23
Hi, I would vote for sticktion...i.e heads on the platter.
About the serial connection I don't know exactly witch pin is witch....as I only connect it with my PC3000UDMA, and it have a pre-buildt interface.
Regards/ Bosse
July 3rd, 2008, 17:35
I vote sticktion as well.
July 4th, 2008, 12:00
1:2 for me

Spindle stuck. Heads move freely. This one has three heads, hard to swap without specialized tools. Customer doesn't want any further actions either.
July 6th, 2008, 8:47
shaun wrote:1:2 for me

Spindle stuck. Heads move freely. This one has three heads, hard to swap without specialized tools. Customer doesn't want any further actions either.
I find that with a seized spindle, there is a hum and no other noise.
With stiction, there is normally a very faint "ticking" noise.
Bearing seizure is normally very easy to fix in 2.5" drives.
Duncan
July 6th, 2008, 8:51
Yep, hum, as I wrote in the initial post.
Do you refer to platter swap when you say that seizure is easy to fix?
We do not have platter removal tools yet, so this would not be an option for a three-headed disk. I've opened the drive in the laminar flow cabinet, made sure that the heads are parked in their plastic post and then determined the amount of seizure - quite sticky. It becomes a little less hard after some moving, but by far not easy enough for the little BLDC motor.
July 8th, 2008, 4:41
Hi,shaun ,
You need to our Head Platter Exchanger to swap the platters on a donor chassis definitely.
Regards
Laura
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