[lug] hard drive failure

[F.L. Whiteley]

My experience with the freezer is 50/50.  In one case I got 5 minutes
during each power up and in six sessions recovered 95% of the wanted
data, missing a bit of e-mail that was in some damaged sectors.  Drive
would not start on the seventh try either.
 
I recommend a cold soak though, two hours minimum or overnight for 3.5
inch drives before the first attempt.  Put the drive in a freezer bag
and seal it up.  
 
I've heard of people using USB drive enclosures and leaving the drive in
the freezer during the recovery.  Haven't tried that one yet.  As the
drive warms, it will condense moisture out of the air.  Big drives can
get very wet if the air's damp, so keep the ribbon and power cables out
of the case.  I've done the electronics swap with some drives with known
chip problems.  Problem there was hard to find a good working matching
drive.  Took a few months of seeking and waiting but might be your best
try if available.  Most common thing I find with notebook drives appears
to be motor related.
 
Sometimes I've had to 'spank' the frozen drives or change their
orientation to get them to work.  I mean a good solid thump.
 
YMMV,
 
Frank Whiteley

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us
[mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us] On Behalf Of Carl Wagner
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 09:41
To: Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List
Subject: Re: [lug] hard drive failure


It's not the head hitting the platter, it is the arm the heads are
mounted to hitting one of the stops, probably looking for track 0, and
apparently not finding it.

A long time ago I had a 30Meg drive fail and I found another drive like
it and swapped the electronics.
It worked long enough to get the data off of it that I wanted.  You
might use that as a last gasp effort.

I have heard of the freezer thing that Chip mentioned, but have never
tried it.

Carl.


Luke P wrote: 

Hey,

I have had a laptop hard drive recently fail on me. I can tell it is a
head/arm failure due to the 'clink/clank' sound of head hitting the
platters. Unfortunately, some important data was not backed up so I need
to look around for a shop that could recover the data. Anyone recommend
a local shop that can perform an evaluation, at a reasonable cost, and
quote of the work that needs to be done to recover the data?



Thanks,

Luke



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