WD2500BEVS-UST0 spins up, heads click a few times, repeats

[andrewthecoder]

The title says it all really.
The drive is a friend/client's drive with desirable data, but not desirable enough to fork out for a data recovery professional.
I opened up the drive for about a minute, taking care not to allow any pollutants onto the platter or heads, to film exactly what is happening.
Obviously I don't have a proper clean room, and there is every chance that I have already allowed some invisible/microscopic speck of dust into the drive which could potentially ruin it in future, but it's been spun up a few times since I screwed it back together and there's been no head crash yet, besides it's a risk I am happy to take given the lack of funding for professional recovery.

Anyway, here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKUDeX5y6KU

What I am really hoping is that somebody here with greater knowledge and/or experience than me will watch that short clip, know exactly what the problem is, and be able to tell me how to fix it. I am already looking for a donor drive as I suspect I may need to replace the heads, but having read one or two things on this forum I'm now wondering if there could be an even easier fix?

Thanks for anything you guys can tell me;
Andrew

[drc]

Well, for starters running it with the lid off and the ramp out of place has probably scratched the platters (even if you can't see it)

[andrewthecoder]

Could you please explain how? I didn't touch anything inside it so if the ramp was in a position where the heads would be allowed to come into more contact than the disk than usual, it was not caused by me as far as I am aware, and the disk had been span up a few times making the clicking noise before I opened it.

Of course running any hard drive with the lid off without being in a clean room is an obvious bad idea, but as far as I know the only reason for this is contaminants such as dust, which if allowed to get into the microscopic gap between the head and the platter could cause the head to touch the platter rather than hover above it, causing physical damage to the platters (scratching, possibly complete demolition) ?

The data on the drive is not of too much importance so this is really just a learning activity for myself - I would like to learn more about how hard drives work, about how data recovery experts work their magic, and about any methods which can be used to save a drive which is no longer functioning properly like this one.

I've spent days researching and scouring the web for information but it seems information is sparse. The best resource I've found so far which is partially what I am looking for is this; http://hddguru.com/articles/2006.02.17- ... k-Q-and-A/
which partially satisfied my desire for knowledge yet also made me want to know more, leading me to post here on these forums.

If you could offer any more detailed information on what could be causing the drive in my video to act as it is, and how/if it could be repaired, I would be very grateful (and willing to give you a few quid for a beer or something for taking the time to share your knowledge).

Thanks,
Andrew

[HDD Spaz]

You need to change the failed parts with working parts. You need to do this ensuring that you do not cause more damage. First of all diagnose the drive failure and then change parts.

The reason why you have caused more damage it because the head stack is held in place by a screw in the lid for Western Digital hard drives. If the lid is removed the heads are loose.

Should I send you a PM stating where you should send a cheque?

[BlackST]

Very difficult to believe "This thing "learning activity for myself" .
If you spent so much time "scouring" the internet you should have found what you are looking for (albeit this info won't get one bit out of your drive).
Training is for sale at present !

[drc]

The reason why you have caused more damage it because the head stack is held in place by a screw in the lid for Western Digital hard drives. If the lid is removed the heads are loose.

Additionally if you look closely at the video, the ramp is loose and moving around as the heads are loading on and off. Since there is extra movement in all three axes, I would be really surprised if the sliders weren't hitting the platters in some manner as they load and unload.

[andrewthecoder]

The reason why you have caused more damage it because the head stack is held in place by a screw in the lid for Western Digital hard drives. If the lid is removed the heads are loose.

Ok, if removing that screw alone causes damage, then sure I screwed up, but if that is the case I fail to see how even a data recovery expert in a clean room would open the drive without removing that screw.
If what you meant was I damaged the drive by powering it up with that screw removed (thus, the heads loose), I did not.
I ran it with three of the cover screws in place, and have not removed those screws since I replaced them initially;

Additionally if you look closely at the video, the ramp is loose and moving around as the heads are loading on and off. Since there is extra movement in all three axes, I would be really surprised if the sliders weren't hitting the platters in some manner as they load and unload.

I did not touch the ramp at all, and having glanced at the inside of the cover, assumed there was nothing on the cover which could have affected the operation of the drive. However, on closer inspection after reading your reply, I noticed this little nipple which presumably applies a little bit of pressure on the metal post in the centre of the plastic ramp;



I think what you are saying is that running the drive without that nipple in contact with the metal post could cause either the sliders to come into contact with the platters, or the heads to crash upon loading.
As there appears to be no scoring on the platter I assume I was lucky and neither of the above happened

If I genuinely have already damaged the drive, if you or somebody else could please explain in detail how, I will probable write off any chance of repair from a similar drive and simply dismantle the entire drive completely so I can get a feel for myself of the rest of the parts. As I say, I just want to learn!

Very difficult to believe "This thing "learning activity for myself" .
If you spent so much time "scouring" the internet you should have found what you are looking for (albeit this info won't get one bit out of your drive).
Training is for sale at present !

Sorry if I came across wrong, though I'm not sure what else would be motivating this post? I suppose I could be somebody trying to make a profit from repairing somebody's drive, but if that were the case, god help me
It's a friend's drive, and yes he asked me if I could fix it, I said something along the lines of "probably not without sending it to a data recovery company which costs a lot of money, but i'll take a look anyway" and he said something along the lines of "I've bought a new hard drive anyway and theres nothing important on it, if you could get some of my music that would be cool but it's no big deal".

I think the problem is that what I am looking for isn't realistic, and isn't out there on the internet - in a perfect world there would be some great website which would teach anybody interested all the skills and knowledge of an experienced data recovery expert.
You say training is for sale at present, but where? How does one actually go about getting into the data recovery industry?
Searching for "data recovery training uk" doesn't provide much of an outlook and obviously anything realistic is looking for thousands of pounds, aiming for computer repair businesses who want to expand their list of services.
That may well be me in the future, but right now I was just hoping to learn whatever I could for free at the expense of one broken hard drive.

If they are of any interest to anybody else, perhaps with a similar drive, here are a few other photos I took;
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ab441/HDD/

[HDD Spaz]

if you want to learn for free then you must learn on your own. If you have no intention of starting a DR company then do a first aid course, the skills you will learn will be more useful to you.

DR is not a hobby.