Hi all

I have a Samsung SP1614N, 160GB IDE hard disk drive, bought approx. 2 years ago. The computer was running continously for 6 month with breaks of a few hours every few weeks. Then, it was not running for 6 weeks (vacation). After those 6 weeks it immediately failed. I now need to recover as much data as possible.

Symptoms:
Power on system, BIOS runs POST, hdd simultaneously spins up and after 2-3s heads hit 8x in a row against the bumpers (clicking noise), BIOS recognizes the drive, boot procedure starts (systemrescue CD 1.1.6). Linux boots, recognizes the drive, reads partition table (no clicking here).

At the prompt, reading the partition table with fdisk -lu /dev/hda works (no clicking). Output (translated from german):

Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0 GByte, 160041885696 Byte
255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Tracks, 19457 Cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Unit = Sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 Bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 63 144584 72261 83 Linux (Ext2)
/dev/hdb2 144585 10651094 5253255 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb3 10651095 248573744 118961325 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb4 248573745 312576704 32001480 83 Linux (XFS) ------------------- need!
/dev/hdb5 10651158 12755609 1052226 82 Linux Swap
/dev/hdb6 12755673 248573744 117909036 83 Linux (Ext3) ------------------- would be nice

Trying to create images of partitions 1, 4 and 6 with dd_rescue (Kurt Garloff) result as follows:
1 - whole image, no clicking / errors
4 - around 2 GB no clicking / errors, clicking starts and I/O-Errors appear
6 - same as above but up to ~4 GB

Imaging process for 4 and 6 immediately canceled by me after clicking started, just tried it to study behaviour.

Trying to mount and read directly from the same partitions:
1 - Mounting (~30MB boot partition) works, no clicking, whole partition readable.
6 - Mounting results in error, not finding the superblock
4 - Mounting works, no clicking. Browsing directories looks like this:

root@ttyp0[mnt]# mount hdb4
root@ttyp0[mnt]# ls hdb4
ls: hdb4/mnt: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler ( = I/O-Error)
ls: hdb4/dev: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
ls: hdb4/scripts: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
ls: hdb4/sys: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
ls: hdb4/tmp: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
ls: hdb4/usr: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
bin boot etc home lib media opt proc root sbin test var
root@ttyp0[mnt]# ls hdb4/home
ls: hdb4/home/ftp: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler
shadows test

Every time an I/O-Error occured, the drive was clicking continously until the OS gave up and moved on to the next object, which took approx. 30s per erroneous object.

That way, some files could already be copied, even larger files like e.g. 15MB PDFs.

That was the behaviour the same day the failure occured. To not mess things up, I disconnected the disk that day, waiting for me to save me enough money to order a professional to recover my data. Unfortunately, now, 18 months later, I still have not enough money but am really in need of some of the data stored on the disk, so, I have to do a recovery by myself.

The symptoms have not gone worse during the 18 months - good news so far.

Since a manual recovery of files would take too long, I wanted to create images using Antonio Diaz's ddrescue. So, I bought myself a new 250 GB SATA drive. But, since I read, that a damaged PCB could be a reason for that failure, I wanted to be sure that's not the case. Therefore, I checked the surface of the PCB - no burnt spots or odd smells. I further released the screws, lifted it carefully up to inspect the rear side - nothing there either.

So, I was happy and willing to give it a try, tightened the screws of the PCB again, connected the cables and powered the machine. Now the bad news: Behaviour changed... Now, BIOS can't recognize it anymore, as well as Linux.

New behaviour:
Power on, BIOS starts POST, drive spins up, clicks 8 times, then it spins down (!). BIOS hangs around 30s trying to recognize drives, continues but does not recognize the drive. Linux does recognize at least the Model, Size and Manufacturer, but fails trying to read the partition table and in the end does not provide a device node in /dev at all. At this time, drive is spinning again and clicking only occurs during recognition process and stops afterwards, spinning onward. Tools like MHDD report the drive to be busy all the time.

The Big Question here is:
What could've happened during the PCB check? I was really carefull with that and have no explanation for the latest change in behaviour.

After all, I'm allmost certain, that it's an electrical rather than an physical problem. and most likely with the PCB in detail. There is one thing though I spotted on the rear side of the PCB:
The contact points for the head electronics on the PCB are slightly damaged, but it's only 2 of them, even though it's up to 40% per contact point that is not there anymore. I could image that this is a problem, but I don't know, what exactly the seperate contacts are for and if the Heads should'nt stop working at all if one of those contacts is not established.

Any other ideas maybe? I really believe that the drive can be reverted into the state where it was at least recognized by the BIOS and partially readable, I just need to figure out what could've went wrong while I lifted the PCB the first time and if the damaged contacts could cause such a malfunction.

Hi,

I bet for the behavior is changed because a too many clicking (heads damaged when clicking) and not because the pcb remove-realign.
The original problem looks like the drive have one weak head and now the weak head messed up the MC too (BUSY forever).
Now you really need professional help.

I suggest to seek for somebody who can help You with a good price range.

Regards,
Janos

Assuming there is no internal physical damage , the data can be recovered. If there is a physical problem the quote would be higher, but in any case need to see the drive for a complete diagnose. There is no tool you can use to make the drive working, unless you are satisfied with the data you were able to get from the drive. NOTE : the more you try in this state, the more damage to the drive.
NOTE #2 in case of physical damage , you can't get what's not in the drive anymore, so 100% in this case is impossible.
NOTE #3 it's you that can decide if data is worth a professional recovery or not, so I didn't put a quote / price.