Hard Drive Repair Question Physical Problem with the drive

On 10 Apr, 21:10, Odie Ferrous wrote:

Sorry - you have totally lost me on this one.

Have a look at the images on this website:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articl...stack-Q-and-A/

Perhaps I should say "head load/unload" systems?

Previously bealoid wrote:
On 10 Apr, 21:10, Odie Ferrous wrote:

Sorry - you have totally lost me on this one.

Have a look at the images on this website:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articl...stack-Q-and-A/

Perhaps I should say "head load/unload" systems?

All disks I have opened in the past few year used the magnetic variant.
No head ''load/unload zone''.

Arno

In article , Arno Wagner wrote:
Me too. The drives I opened (broken or not needed anymore)
had no ''electronics that open the latch''. Maybe a WD
invention? I never opened (or owned) one of those...

I had an ESDI drive at work the best part of 20 years ago which
did have a latch on the head array. Latch failed ; heads stuck ; drive
failed to initialise ; boot failure. The efforts we went through to try
to get this drive working again - it had the only known copy of
particular data on it ... ohhh, long task. And because the Boss had
said "we can do this" but hadn't assigned a budget, the multi-thousand
pound fees for putting the drive out to a data recovery company were
not an option. We put a couple of field staff onto manually re-entering
the data from paper records while we were trying to get the drive to
work again. They beat us to success (defined as "something the client
won't notice the shortcomings of for some years").
An educational experience. For one thing, it taught me the
perils of non-standard hardware, even if it were possessed of whatever
claimed advantages. It also taught me that nothing substitutes for a
backup. It also taught me that no matter how often you tell people to
make backups, and you warn them in writing that they'll get the sack if
they don't do backups, people won't do backups. The crew leader
responsible for this debacle didn't get the sack. And the client didn't
notice the shortcomings of their data set until after I'd left the
company. Also educational, but in a different sense.

--
Aidan Karley
Aberdeen, Scotland
Written at Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:42 +0100, but posted later.

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
Previously Odie Ferrous wrote:
bealoid wrote:

On 10 Apr, 16:41, "jmDesktop" wrote:
On Apr 10, 9:39 am, "bealoid" wrote:

On 10 Apr, 02:51, "jmDesktop" wrote:

Drive spins and continues to spin. When I first put power to it I
hear a momentary click or some physical movement inside the drive, but
not after that.

Drives often have a hardware latch to "park" the heads outside the
disk platters, or on the inside of the disk platters. Sometimes the
latch fails, so the drive spins up but the heads can't move.

If you must get data from the disk you can take the lid off, and tape
the latch open, and use recovery software to get data off the disc.
Obviously, the disc is trashed after this. :-)

What do you mean "tape the latch open?"

Have a look at some of the pictures on this website:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articl...stack-Q-and-A/

Looking at the head stacks you'll see a delicate end, over the
platters. Then there's a pivot. Then you'll see a chunky metal end.
This has big magnets, coils, ribbon cables, and maybe a plastic latch thing.

Sometimes the electronics that open the latch break. This means that
the heads can't swing out over the platters. You can take the lid off
the drive, and open the latch, and hold it open by a piece of tape,
then connect the drive to a pc and power it up.

This is a last ditch effort to get data off the drive. You'll
probably need data recovery software.

I've only done this once. I was lucky, I got my data back. I learnt
that back ups are always easier. :-)

Sorry - you have totally lost me on this one.

Why doesn't that surprise any of us.

Me too. The drives I opened (broken or not needed anymore)
had no ''electronics that open the latch''. Maybe a WD
invention? I never opened (or owned) one of those...

You must be very young, babblebot.
Oops, of course you are, as if that was in any doubt.


Arno

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
Previously bealoid wrote:
On 10 Apr, 21:10, Odie Ferrous wrote:

Sorry - you have totally lost me on this one.

Have a look at the images on this website:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articl...stack-Q-and-A/

Perhaps I should say "head load/unload" systems?

All disks I have opened in the past few year used the magnetic variant.

..... suddenly babblebot mysteriously remembers ....

No head ''load/unload zone''.

Maybe because he said "head load/unload" *system*, babblebot?


Arno