Dear all,

I have a Seagate 7200.11 which had suffered a mechanical shock so its spindle/motor/head is now stuck. I saw some videos on YouTube where a tool is shown to manually spin the platter.

I want to open up the drive and manually turn the platter with a small driver.

Can I not just use any ordinary tool? (of course I have to use it carefully without scratching anything unnecessary)

What is the liquid that is being poured, is it necessary if you work in a clean room?

Thanks,

Never a good idea to open a drive without a clean room !

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Lemmy

Yes, all drives need to be opened in a "clean room". It wouldn't be advised to open the drive though. How do you know that the spindle is jammed? Or do you think the heads are parked on the data area and preventing the platters from spinning up?

It's a Seagate, which means a jammed spindle is VERY likely. You can't just shove a screwdriver in there I'm afraid, either the platters need to be moved to a donor drive (keeping alignment, highly complex procedure) or the jammed spindle replaced.

Basically this is not a job that anyone other than an experienced data recovery professional should perform. If you want your data back you should send your drive to a data recovery company. Youtube movies only do more harm than good in these cases.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

if it is a seized motor ( most likely since i really never see these drives have head stiction)on that family you will end up doing more damage to it. There is no easy fix to free up the motor. A lot of the times you will not get it freed up enough to spin to speed and a platter swap will be necessary or a motor swap ( if you have the right tools). Both of which is NOT DIY. Do not look to you tube on how to fix this kind of issue. It would be like going to youtube to learn how to do heart surgery.

If the data is important contact a professional to give you a accurate diagnosis.

edit - damn you Nick... you beat me to it

Nick is correct as well

I must say I like your heart surgery/Youtube comparison

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

I was going to post the youtube video of it, but it is kinda nasty to watch (yes there is a video of someone doing heart surgery )


to the OP... Be safe and go to a pro.

I also must say the heart surgery / youtube comparison is very accurate.

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SandForce SSD Recovery
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Nice comparison cleanroom

Thanks.

I guess you are right, I can hear the drive trying to spin up but it is not able to.
I have seen some people report that whacking the drive on the edge helps free up the head to move to a proper parking position. What is your opinion?

Um no.... do not do that.. I can almost guarantee that it is not stiction so if anything you will make the seized motor , more seized ( not sure it that is possbile), but you get my point. If it is stiction and you do this the chance that you do not break off the reading head when doing it is small. Do NOT do it..

To use Cleanroom's heart surgery comparison, it would be to say if the heart isn't beating, hit it hard with a steel pipe and maybe it will work again. Unfortunately there is no easy solution.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

There is our tool for it
http://www.hddsurgery.com/art.php?id=6

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HddSurgery - Professional Data Recovery Tools