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Total harddrive failure...options
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#11
 
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Re: Total harddrive failure...options -
05-04-2005
, 10:00 PM
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straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a slave to working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the other one. I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that wouldn't spin up in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again in PC city, etc., but for some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my system and I was able to grab the My Doc folder before it failed. Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave. They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get. The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released until expansion due to friction heat sticks it again. Avery |
if you power up a failing drive you do stand the chance of getting back the
data or total screwing the platters.
also, the freezer trick may work, but beware of condensation forming on the
thawing parts. water+eletrical current=letting out the magic smoke. and
once the smoke is out, it is a real bitch putting it back in.
S
#12
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straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a slave to working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the other one. |
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I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that wouldn't spin up in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again in PC city, etc., but for some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my system and I was able to grab the My Doc folder before it failed. |
in the original system. The metal tunnels the pins go into can open
up over time and not make good contact. If that is the case, you
dont need to put the hard drive in another system, just try one of
the other power connectors, like off one of the optical drives etc.
There are also a few drives that wont power up if the
drive type in the bios has more sectors than the drive
physically has, and the easy way to avoid that problem
is to ensure that the drive type entry is set to AUTO.
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Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave. |
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They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get. The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released until expansion due to friction heat sticks it again. |
usual reason that freezing can help is a dry joint that
conducts when cold but not once its warmed up.
#13
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I don't see any reason for that either. Semiconductor damage is likely, but the heads flat on an air-cushion generated by the spindle spinning. |
would examine the circuit board and try to see if something is visibly
burned. There is a chance, I don't have any guess at probability, that only
1 component that is (possibly near the power input) burned up. Maybe
something as simple as a surface mount resistor-many devices do use
resistors as a cheap current limiting fuse more or less. I have not
repaired hard drives in this manner but I have repaired many other
electronics devices that had only 1 bad component damaged from power
problems, usually a semiconductor of some sort just as Arno Wagner
mentioned. If you replace one burned component and it works, sweet! If you
never fix it, you aren't out much except the data you gambled with-couldn't
have been THAT important if it wasn't backed up.
--Dan
#14
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Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave. They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get. The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released until expansion due to friction heat sticks it again. Avery |
sandwich bag, fill it with ice cubes, and sit it on top of your
defective hard drive inside your computer case. Wait fifteen
minutes, try turning on your computer and see if the drive spins
up. That way, if it works, the ice will keep it cold for a
sustained length of time. Dry ice would also work, and would be
colder. That's the route I'd go, anyway, rather than the
refrigerator route.
#15
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Power spike THAT bad will have crashed your drive head bigtime. |
the disk surface save a squib and plastic under the drive.
#16
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~ Avery Anderson~ <bogus (AT) nowhere (DOT) net> wrote in message news:8vSdncU_lsVxFOTfRVn-sA (AT) comcast (DOT) com... straw grasping is in order here, what i'd try is adding one as a slave to working system and see if it shows up, then I'd try the other one. He's already tried that. I was recently successful doing that with a "dead" drive that wouldn't spin up in the owner's computer. It was cryin' time again in PC city, etc., but for some reason unknown to me, it spun up in my system and I was able to grab the My Doc folder before it failed. That's usually something quite basic, a defective power connector in the original system. The metal tunnels the pins go into can open up over time and not make good contact. If that is the case, you dont need to put the hard drive in another system, just try one of the other power connectors, like off one of the optical drives etc. There are also a few drives that won't power up if the drive type in the bios has more sectors than the drive physically has, |
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and the easy way to avoid that problem is to ensure that the drive type entry is set to AUTO. Another trick i read about, and tried without success, is freezing the drive for an hour or so, and then putting it quickly in as a slave. Unlikely to be relevant when the drives died when the power supply died. They say when this works you have about 5 minutes to get what you gotta get. The theory is the freeze shrinks the metel and the stuck spindle is released until expansion due to friction heat sticks it again. It aint the spindle that sticks in modern drives. The usual reason that freezing can help is a dry joint that conducts when cold but not once its warmed up. |
#17
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"dg" <dan_gus (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote: [...] The damage is typical to that caused by lightning. The spike leading edge must have been very steep (and high) in order to break through that many components simultaneously, before any protection mechanism could intervene. Surge protection components are ineffective against such impulses. |
than the pulses can push enough energy into other components to damage
them. The principle is that: The surge protection device takes most
of the energy that comes through the line, thereby possible being
destroyed. The protected components are slower to take in the energy
and survive. The amount of energy you can push through, e.g., the
transformer in a PSU, is lmited, since it has to go through components
that can transfer only so much before failing .
Example: A standard transil protector diode can take 100A for 10us
without suffering damage. A standard spark-based surge protector can
take in the range of 10.000A for 10us. A standard metal-oxyde surge
protection resistor can take 100A for 10us. Reaction times for all these
devices are in the nanosecond range. If applied correctly all these
can be used to sucessfully protect a computer from any type of surges
that can come through a power outlet and will not set the house on fire
anyways.
The problem here is that many cheap surge-protection devices are not
well-designed and that many cheap PSUs do not even have them or only
have far too small ones. The spark-based protection device costs
something like 2 USD, fgor example. That is obviously too much for
ceaply designed electronics.
Arno
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