HI, I recently bought a 160Gig second hand Seagate SATA II drive which has what appears to be a mechanical fault.

The guy I bought it from stated that he had ""sanatized the drive to US defense standards..""

When I was hooking it up I was wondering if Jack Bauer (of 24 ilk) was going to burst through the front door.. desperate to take possession of the drive to prevent some nuclear disaster or/and save his daughter's life..

Needless to say that didn't happen, but what did, was the drive will significantly delay the system booting while it tries to initialise and if you listen carefully there is a short clicking pattern which is constantly repeated.

It sounds like the heads are stuck??

the seller has refunded the purchase price stating that he does not need the return of the drive?

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on this fault..

Since the drive is unusable anyway (tested on two independent systems, same issue) I may as well take it to pieces??

I have never dismantled a drive previously but I am aware that the torque settings are crucial in allowing the drive to operate properly and quietly.

I was wondering if it would be possible to "rock" the heads slightly or some thing similar to free them up or something...

Any advice or ideas please..?

Cheers.

If this is the case and you got your money back throw it away and move on. Or open it up and have fun. There is a lot of HDD art on the internet you might find one that you would like to make out of this drive. I know here on the forum there is a paper on how to take a HDD apart and it shows you step by step in this one. Look it up and take the drive apart, No need now for clean room or to worry about how you take it apart and what you do with this one. Have fun and enjoy

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Iorana Haraharaini

Thanks for the feedback..

I will look for that paper on disassembling the drive, you couldn't give me a bit more info as to where it is on the site please??

Selling the drive for spares or repairs on ebay doesn't work financially.. the selling price would be so low and there are sooooo many faulty drives listed that it probably wouldn't sell anyway and the recurring listing fees just add up, then you have postage which would be minimum £3.99..

I paid £9.00 for this drive working, in good condition and delivered and £10.00 for another one, similar condition..

Why buy a faulty drive for parts when you could buy a working one - for parts?

It does seem such a waste when you consider the level of engineering that goes into making the drives and the new RRP cost.

Surely someone somewhere who doesn't work for the HDD department at Seagate is merrily fixing these drives in their bedroom/lounge/garage/loft/shed/behind the bush at the bottom of the garden?

Please tell me this is the case..

By the way does anyone have a crystal mark bench mark on a SATA 600 HDD, Seagate would be particularly good as I could compare like for like..

Just out of interest to see how my SEAGATE SATA 600 500G performs comparably..

Hi, thanks for the PM spildit.. Great advice, I will have a go in a little while..

Thought I would paste your PM here, I am assuming you don't mind, sorry if you do..

Just so anyone viewing this thread can benefit from your suggestions..

Cheers mate.

Hi !
I don't know what sound the drive is making, if it's heads hitting against the limiter or if its like heads stuck in platter and the platter trying to rotate without success ....
If the drive was really working when the seller ship it and now it's not, maybe it was something in transportation that cause the drive to get the heads stuck to the platter.

Without opening the drive you might want tp try this. Don't connect the data cable, just connect the power one, and as soon as the drive starts to spin just "hit" the drive by the sides with something like a screwdriver, and/or try to rotate the drive with your hand (closed drive, of course) from top to bottom. Idea is that if the head are stuck to the platter the movment of the rottation or the hit done by you combined to the spindle force of the drive trying to spin and the gravity might get the heads unstuck from the patter.

If you are lucky the drive will work again, BUT DON'T STORE ANY IMPORTANT DATA AT ALL ON THE DRIVE, AS MOST LIKELY WILL FAIL DUE TO DAMAGE.

Just download a free copy of MHDD and scan the entire drive for bad sectors. Also do a "smart att" command on MHDD. This of course if the drive starts to work "normaly" when you apply the hits/rotation.

If it's the sound of heads hitting the limiter .... well, you can't depop the damaged head neither figure out what head is damaged without expensive tools (the cheapest one costs $300 - so there is no point in getting tools to fix just one drive that doesn't have data at all that you want to recover)..........

Any reason my input is in need of approval by moderators pre-posting~?

Yes - as a new user, some things in your posts might trigger the need for moderator approval, as an anti-spam feature. One example would be including a link in your posting, but there are other triggers too. Hope that helps explain why some posts are delayed, until you've had several successful (i.e. not reported as spam) postings.

FYI any postings that are delayed for moderation and then approved, will appear in the correct place in the thread for the time they were originally submitted - i.e. they can appear "in mid-thread", after later posts have been added.

ok good to know thanks.

There are two replies I have posted that have not been shown yet..

Makes having a timely discussion a bit difficult..

Roll on freedom of the humble Poster..