HDD Failures detect and repairing - HELP advice

[sosorel]

Hi. So, i got hires in a company that sells HDD, headsets, etc. I was responsable for testing the HDD, and sorting them out: good hdds, bad hdds, having mechanical or electrical problems. The thing is, we kinda finished with the testing part, and we have like thousands of broken HDDS. Thousands. That just sit there. And the boss made me responsable for repairing those HDDs. Now comes the funny part: NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO DO THAT. Especialy me. The thing is, they are really prepared. We have a clean room 100, enough money to buy any tools i need, and a lot of time. The only problem is, they will invest any ammount of money in me, only if they see progress from me.

So, he gave me a list of things that I should do before we get started. First, i need a list with all the HDD failures that exist, the detailed description of each of these failures, how do you identify and diagnose this failures (symptoms, causes). All I came with is this list here: http://www.adrc.com/hard_disk_failures.html . Seems like the most detailed list out there.


Then, they will give me the HDDs, the tools and send me to the clean room and I have to come out with a good HDD in shortest time possible. The problem is: I don't have any documentation. I opened up a good HDD, I took out his head and platter, put them back and it worked. But it was a HDD with only 1 platter and 1 head. Easy peasy. Next, they will give me mechanical, electrical HDD and I have to fix them.

What I ask you guys for is if you ANY documentation, books, videos, anything that can help me, I would be deeply thankful.

[jermy]

what is purpose ? fixing and reselling ?

[falther]

Assuming that a quite large number of the drives are reusable, you need a way
to find these drives and the ones which need to be repaired....

If you dont want to do that manually ... each drive individually ... loosing much
time for each - I have a suggestion:

The Atola Disk Recycler is able to be run stand alone for 4x SATA HDD = drive A, B, C, D.

http://www.atola-europe.com/index.php?p ... k-recycler

You could operate from a USB flash stick (certainly also via LAN from a host PC)
One can define one script file for the USB flash stick for a quick test of the hdd:
Press just button for A .. test starts ... press button for B .. test starts ... for C and for D
Result (for each hdd individual LED ) :
green LED - drive OK
red LED - test failed

A quick test works in a few seconds per hdd


If you want to can invest in a 2nd same tool - and use the 2nd one (with a different script
file on the USB flash drive) to instantly start to erase the good drives - found with the 1st tool ...

You can connect up to 200 of these Atola Disk Recyclers into a LAN and operate/control them
with one host pc (software included in price). You can define and run simultaneously a script
(test) for each drive seperately and you even can prepare/define your own reports of the
procedure for each hdd.

If you really have thousands of drives - you might start with one or two of these tools - to see
how that works - and then think it over whether you want to extend that test system.

Finally this might bring you some $$$ bak in reselling the used (and perfectly erased) hdd.
And is positive for your business / company .... etc....
**

For those drives which where found to be defective you can then investigate their status.
Its just the question whether its financially worth it to repair a drive to resell it as a used
one - that definitely makes no sense at all....

BUT ... you might start to investigate, start to learn - how they are internally organised
and go on ... step by step.

For pricing and availability of Atola tools in Europe:
http://www.atola-europe.com
email: office@atola-europe.com

+++

[northwind]

I have another idea, you can tell your boss that you've studied hard, you've put down pen and paper and made all the calculations and you came to the conclusion that it would be cheaper and quicker to just toss the drives (or sell them as they are on ebay, or sell them for scrap metal, or ...) and buy new ones (if needed), instead of investing in time and equipment with a VERY questionable result.
ie. your boss will pay you and the equipment, to have you fix the drives. They will spend x thousand euros and will get zero fixed drives (assuming the drives have mechanical issues). Instead, they will pay y thousand euros (where y<x) to buy new drives and have you do something more productive to cut down the amount of y.

[BlackST]

1) Get REAL tools , at least one PC3000 PCIe / UDMA and get properly trained. Doesn't take long.
2) As you have thousands of drives , you can manage to fix the ones with bad PCB only or BAD firmware / not severe surface problems conveniently.
3) discard / scrap the ones with mechanical failure or head failure. Repair at this level can be done at factory not on small scale or even semi-industrial.
4) Use the PC3000 for diagnosing firmware and where possible (*) refurb the drive, or downgrade - i.e. one surface is disabled and you have a lower capacity drive that work.
5) For the drives that need only wiping and small rework, Atola has perfect solutions (see Falther's post).

Some standard procedures can help you repairing some drives/families, you can hear somewhere of some other more or less complex or cosmetic "repair" procedures but do not expect for everything to work in your very case or to work at all , also especially on some brands/types the drive will likely be killed during the process unless you know how to avoid it.

(*) Even the "industry standard" , unfortunately cannot help on many drives /families. For them, you have to make your own tools and research. Some (now MANY) WDs, Toshiba , Fujitsu and latest Seagate fall into this category.

I do professional repair/refurbishing and mass repair since many years with good results, there is high request especially for enterprise / special drives and low end (i.e. people who want a cheaper replacement for their failed drive regardless of specific use). Just my 2 cents from my experience.

P.S. about "magic ideas" or "tools" that claim this and that for your specific application, before spending even a single cent ask for a LIVE DEMO and/or see in person on a real case if it fits the purpose
P.P.S. Please do not contact me as I do not sell know-how neither tools.