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
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Old drives for data recovery

May 20th, 2011, 15:57

Hello Gurus,

I have got one Quantum LPS prodrive 170MB for recovery in 2011 may....
The case was urgent, because an accountant was used it for storing more companies books.
The OS was used until the HDD is dead, windows 3.1. :)

The original problem was the inner limiter was an rubber gum, wich gets too old and started to turn into liquid state, and the MHA gets it, and moved more and more closer to the spindle's aluminum ring on the bottom side, and finally hits it.
The aluminum gets in to the heads, and finally scratched up the surface on more areas. (on the 2 FAT(16) copies of course affected too.)
The drive not supports LBA addressing, so DE is useless in this case.

(>95% recovered.)

What do you gurus thinsk about this? :)

Somebody have another interesting story?

Have a nice day,

Janos

Re: Old drives for data recovery

May 20th, 2011, 16:06

The guy was still using the PC with the 170HD and windows 3.1, now???

Damn :shock: :shock: :shock:

Re: Old drives for data recovery

May 20th, 2011, 16:57

The guy was an old lady, who don't know almost nothing about PC, even it is for drink or eat. :D
She knows only her job, and done until the PC is worked. :)
The drive was made in '94, so She is one of the few customer who spared a lot of money by not buying new drives again and again...
If we count it up well, the recovery is more cheaper for her... :mrgreen:

Janos

Re: Old drives for data recovery

May 20th, 2011, 17:25

Had some time ago a similar Quantum , it was a ProDrive LPS52 (52 MEGAbytes) , a 270 MB CONNER from a CharlieLab MIDI player and more time ago a 2,5" from Amiga, 40 MB (all recovered). If you remember, we have probably been talking about them.

What's more interesting : I still have in stock a certain quantity of these "dinosaurs" :mrgreen: , just today I successfully refurbished a TNT V-3 series Maxtor DSP from 1999 , 90871U2 (8 GB). Successfully fixed and SS ended OK after some hours...

Re: Old drives for data recovery

May 21st, 2011, 4:16

N.C. wrote:The guy was an old lady, who don't know almost nothing about PC, even it is for drink or eat. :D
She knows only her job, and done until the PC is worked. :)
The drive was made in '94, so She is one of the few customer who spared a lot of money by not buying new drives again and again...
If we count it up well, the recovery is more cheaper for her... :mrgreen:

Janos


I had a similar case in England (New Castle) there was a Public Library and they were using 6-10 Pc`s very OLD
in Windows 3.11 (network heheh) i participated and Upgraded all PC`s for them with P3 (i think)
because the Old Man & Lady there were so nice and they were Physics Teachers before.
Man you took me very long time back in 2004.

Re: Old drives for data recovery

September 19th, 2012, 11:29

Hello Janos and fellows,

I had exactly the same problem with the Quantum Prodrive LPS 52AT.
Quite nasty phenomenon indeed.
The inner (upper) limiter had kind of "melted" and spread all over the magnet and partially on the MHA and the disk couldn't initialize.

May I ask you, did you get the disk back to life by changing MHA?
Btw. What is the purpose of the black platter (with "copper arm") on top of the actual data platter?
Haven't really seen one before. Is it typical for old disks to have it?

Thanks.

Best regards,
Antti

Re: Old drives for data recovery

September 20th, 2012, 7:32

its amazing how this drives last ehehe

i still have 3 working 270 mb quantum maverick windows windows 3.11 instaled in one of them

it only failed because of rubber lol? amazing

did you have spare parts ? or used the hardware of the hard drive cleaned?
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