Bad Hard Drives - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 03:11:15 am
content: In my 35 years of PC ownership, give or take, I've had perhaps 10 HD's fail on me but my track record over the last decade or so has been much better than the 35 year record. I was just going through some of my retired PC's including a Sony Vaio laptop of 2004 vintage and a desktop PC of 2003 vintage and neither one will boot. I doubt either have been fired up since perhaps 2008 but I was thinking about junking them but wanted to check for important data before drilling holes in the HD's and tossing.So, I open up my old desktop and pull out the four HD's, two of which are SATA drives and the other two, being older and dating to about 2000, are IDE drives. I then popped the drives into external enclosures to see if any of them come to life and two of them did -- guess which ones -- that's right, the two oldest IDE drives. The newer SATA ones are both doing the 'click-click-click' thing and even a round of slapping them onto a table was unsuccessful in bringing them back.Besides the slap method which only occasionally works is there any other thing I can try -- I mean, the worst that can happen is that they're still dead...Interestingly, in the 35 years I've owned PC's I've updated and modified pretty much all of them but only ever built two PC's from scratch. For the most part it's cheaper to buy an off-the-shelf PC/laptop, but if you have a specific need and usually that means performance, then it's often cheaper to build rather than buy and wind up paying huge mark-ups to get the higher spec version. In 2003 I was getting more serious with digital photography and at the time running Photoshop was pretty power demanding so I built a desktop PC to do that. After about 2007 I was travelling a lot (85% of the time) so a laptop was more practical and by then a performance laptop was faster than my desktop. Fast forward to early 2016 and as I'm now doing a lot more 4K video editing I once again needed to build a new PC with the i7-55820K uP as the central component.OK, so if there's some tricks to revive a dead 'clicking' SATA HD let me know and I'll give it a shot -- couldn't hurt!Brian

author: sleemanj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 07:15:00 am
content: Since you have nothing to lose, it's certainly possible to pop the lid off and unstick the head manually to get it able to spin up, reassemble, and pull off as much data as you can.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 08:41:46 am
content: My motto with old storage media/backup archives is that if I haven't had the need to pull files from them for years, then I can safely assume to delete them without trouble. There is nothing of current interest in it; stuff I did 10 years back is barely relevant for me (I got into computers by website building and PHP scripting as a 13 year old)I might even forget completely what was on the storage media or in the archives (some of my older ones, like 10 years ago, are a mess).Nevertheless, I do feel a moment of nostalgia and satisfaction if I wander through my old stuff. Like.. jeez did I really go through this much hell to make this? Glad I know better now

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 10:06:07 am
content: Quote from: sleemanj on September 24, 2016, 07:15:00 amJesus christ donotdo that unless you want to guarantee your data loss, doing that at home is one of the stupidest things you can do if you have anything remotely important. Even the tiniest specs of dust can get between the heads and the platters scratching them and destroying your data.One trick thatcanwork is putting them in a freezer for a few hours, if anything has seized, they may work long enough to get your data backSlapping is also a poor idea if the heads have not parked properly, that too can cause damage to the platters.I would also try them in the old system again, there could be some sort of issue with the power delivery of the enclosure/it's adapter which they are just not liking, I have not noticed that with an external enclosure yet but I have a laptop that refuses to let the hard drive work using one power adapter, but another near identical one works fine. Unfortunately I don't have a scope to see if it's some odd ripple on the output or something that could be causing it.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 04:30:25 pm
content: Don't just chuck hard drives - at LEAST salvage the magnets!The most fun way I ever permanently erased one was when I found out they will spin up with the cover removed - the platter motor has no real torque to speak of, but I was able to lightly drag a screwdriver on the spinning platter until it polished off all the magnetic coating, and I was left with a shiny aluminum disk. But, pounding the platters with a hammer is therapeutic in its own way, and a lot faster. Then there are the commercial shredding machines that can take the whole hard drive and render it into tiny bits of metal, plastic, silicon, and what have you.But always - always, take the magnets.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 04:45:35 pm
content: I have had some luck rotating the drive quickly (hold in hand and use wrist to rotate) while it is powered to get the platters to spin again but usually the platters get stuck again when the drive has been left unpowered for a while.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 05:08:30 pm
content: Scott Moulton gave several talks about hard drive recovery at DefCon and Blackhat. Most talks should be available on YouTube. His channel ishttps://www.youtube.com/user/SuperFlyFlippingA/videos.In my data center @ home I'm replacing desktop HDDs every 3-4 years and server HDDs every 5-6 years. So far I had no issues with bad drives in operation. Only one or two decommissioned drives died. I've given away some old drives to relatives and friends and they usually got another few years out of the drives. And of course, I'm running backups regularly. Old SCSI drives got the most amazing lifetime. Last year I got rid of a pair of SparcStations with nearly 20 years old SCA drives. The drives were still fine.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 05:46:16 pm
content: about 10 years ago, I ran through quite a few bad hard drives over a 1-2 year period. Mostly IBM/Hitachi, WD and to a lesser extent Seagate. All are PATA drives.Since then, I haven't had any bad hard drives - knock on wood, especially sata ones with 1TB or bigger capacity. I do have a few 80GB-250GB sata drives that are SMART-reporting reallocated sectors but they have logged on-time of close to hundred of thousands of hours. No out right failures, however.With the proliferation of ssd, I think hd reliability will only improve.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 06:20:18 pm
content: your laptops not booting, does it post? If not try the discharge trick first. It has brought a few motherboards back to life for me.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 09:33:03 pm
content: Quote from: System Error Message on September 24, 2016, 06:20:18 pmDidn't talk much about the laptop but what do you mean by the "discharge trick"? When first powered up yesterday the battery was deeply dead and the laptop booted into BIOS where I had to reset the real time clock etc. So, it started from a discharged state to begin with...Brian

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 09:38:17 pm
content: Quote from: XOIIO on September 24, 2016, 10:06:07 amI think I'll give the freezer method a shot, if that fails its drill time!Beyond the HD's I still need to dispose of the laptop and desktop PC's. I plan to harvest the ATX PS from the desktop and the power brick for the laptop but other than that and maybe some of the heatsinks and heatpipes the rest is going in the trash. Actually, I probably ought to check for a recycling center in the area or for a proper disposal of e-waste.Brian

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 10:28:41 pm
content: if you just want to make sure no-one will ever read that drive after you dump it, then dump it with the platters removedthere is no-one on this planet who will be able to mount the platters back in the correct order and correctly alignedregarding reading the data before you dump it.... if you didn't miss the content for the last few years, then you won't miss it.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 11:05:38 pm
content: Quote from: rob77 on September 24, 2016, 10:28:41 pmI wouldn't be so sure about that. There is ones & zeroes which can be read from the disk and based on that I'm pretty sure they can reconstruct whatever is on it. Your best best is to physically destroy the platters.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 11:29:16 pm
content: Or, to dispose of unwanted PCs and laptops, you could just run Bleachbit or any other HD scrubber utility, then put the machine out on the street or your front fence intact with a note saying "free for the taking, works but OS-wiped." Include any manuals, driver CDs, etc.Someone who isn't as well off as you will probably appreciate it.[ Added: HD scrubber software works by repeatedly overwriting all sectors with random bit patterns. After even 3 or 4 cycles there's no way any original data is going to be recovered by anyone. And the software overwrites as many hundreds of times as you like. Physically smashing working drives is just barbaric. If the drive is dead and you can't run a scrubber, then sure, recover magnets then crush or burn the platters. Recycle the metals.]Likely failure causes of long-idle drives:- Stuck heads - easily fixed by tapping and quickly rotating the drive case back and forth, using the platter inertia to break the sticktion.- Firmware flash memory data loss. This is guaranteed to happen eventually, and as flash cells get smaller the timescale must be shrinking. Very unlikely any modern drive is going to work after 15 to 20 years storage. It might be a good idea to reflash the firmware every 5 years.- Decay of the magnetic domains on the platter, also the servo tracks. As head, track, domain size and media thickness shrink, this timescale is bound to shrink too. Does any drive manufacturer publish figures on expected drive data retention time? Not sure if reformatting and rewriting your data regularly would help, as some things like servo tracks (and sector headers?) are not rewritten.- The point-contact connections between stuff inside the drive case, to the PCB. The usual story of metal-to-metal contacts that are not pure gold, developing an oxide insulation layer able to withstand the low voltages. Sometimes just taking the PCB off, cleaning those contacts, and putting it back can resuscitate a drive.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2016, 11:45:54 pm
content: some boards if they dont boot up need to be discharged by pressing the power button for a long time. In your case it booted to bios so you have a working laptop.There are utilities that show the detailed S.M.A.R.T. info about the drive so you can see the health of it.Seagate has a very good live boot utility for hard drives. I suggest you check it out.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 03:34:35 am
content: Quote from: rob77 on September 24, 2016, 10:28:41 pmThere are data recovery outfits that would laugh at that statement! There are government agencies that would laugh hard!Brian

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 05:21:43 am
content: Quote from: rob77 on September 24, 2016, 10:28:41 pmAustralia's state and federal Police organisations have the resources to do exactly this and it's not particularly complicated or expensive. Most people know that Governments are usually behind the times when it comes to technology. You'd be surprised by what the average nerd can achieve at home. A lot of data can be recovered from a single platter. There is a reason secure destruction processes exist and they usually include a combination of erasure by way of a deguasser and physical shredding.Even at home I never ever just throw a hard disk in the bin. It's always over-written several times with random garbage then physically destroyed into several pieces (bolt cutters work great for 2.5" drives). I also never sell my old phones because data can still be recovered if you do a factory erase or delete the encryption key. I either hang onto them for nostalgic reasons or they get the same treatment as the hard disks (paying particular attention to the memory chips).Our retail phone shops have devices which can read and bypass security on many phones (up to an including Apple iPhone 4) so they can "backup" customer data if they forget their password or buy a new phone.

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 07:01:00 am
content: Not going to quote to save time but I'd also salvage any small heatsinks from vrm or onboard graphics, those can come in handy. Nice to see you will be recycling some of it.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 07:26:02 am
content: When I had drives in an external housing and it made click click during start up , one time the current supply was not high enough and a different type of external connector worked much better and the drive started right away.As for destroying data, I always open up the drives, selvage good parts like magnets and use a hammer on the disk.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 08:04:11 pm
content: Well, I tried the freeze method and it didn't help at all with the first HD, but the second one actually spun up but it to would not respond beyond that.So, I pulled them apart and wanted to harvest the spindle motors but I could only do that with one of them as the other motor was press fit into the frame and without the tools to press it out it's not going to be of any use to me.But, I was able to get one of the spindle motors and now I need to figure out how to drive it. It looks to be a BLDC motor in Y-configuration as I measure about 2.7 ohms between all three pins -- there is no other pins and the frame is insulated.I have run some Neodymium magnets across the platters and will follow that up with my drill.Brian

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2016, 08:39:58 pm
content: Quoteas our ex-secretary of state can tell you, hammer is the most effective approach. Bleachbit is no math.QuoteI wouldn't bet on that.

author: hasithvm
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2016, 10:20:29 am
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on September 25, 2016, 08:04:11 pmSmall blowtorch should also do the trick. You can also reuse the blowtorch to make a perfect crème brûlée crust afterwards!

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2016, 10:41:25 am
content: Forget about the hard drive. I strongly second the crème brûlée

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2016, 11:17:26 am
content: I've heard stories of heating them in ovens to soften seized bearings. I'm not sure if this is an issue much nowadays.

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2016, 02:06:57 pm
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on September 24, 2016, 11:29:16 pmI have recovered a few drives this way. The contacts had become nearly black with corrosion. The drives all had different symptoms ranging from excessive CRC errors showing in SMART, to not showing up during BIOS POST, to click of death. Cleaning with a rubber pencil eraser removed all the corrosion, revealing shiny contact pads again. The drives have worked for well over a year since this fix. I advocate this as a potential fix for a seemingly failed drive, especially one that had been working but has failed after a period of storage.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 05, 2016, 08:54:47 pm
content: Quote from: macboy on October 05, 2016, 02:06:57 pmI disassembled both failed HD's to recover the spindle motors and inspect the units and didn't find any corrosion of the contacts between the PCB and the rest of the drive. In both cases the spindle would not spin up and while I was able to get one to spin up after the freeze method the other drive would not spin up and the one that eventually did would still not display a folder or make one available from Windows Explorer.The two older IDE HD's, both in the 16 year old range, work just fine.Brian

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2016, 01:17:33 am
content: Quote from: macboy on October 05, 2016, 02:06:57 pmThe game Deponia made a funny joke about this.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2016, 02:04:01 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on September 24, 2016, 04:45:35 pm<- thisCERTAINLY NOT SLAPPING , FREEZING OR OTHER STUPIDITY

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2016, 02:41:02 am
content: The nightmares of disk drive repairs....I think the worst system I worked on was a NOVA (Data General). We are talking about a computer with all the lights and switches on the front. The hard disk had two platters. One was removable. I think these were 14". The heads have to be parked and they had a way to retract them is the power went out. The problem is they pulled them back so violently that it would knock the heads out of alignment.The stupid plastic parts inside the MFM 20MB MiniScribe drives would outgas and make a film that would lock the drive heads to the platters. Saw after effects of people attempting to spin them... They used steppers, so no servo data on the media back then. I pulled a few of these apart and cleaned the heads and media with no clean room. Just gloves, non lint wipes and alcohol. Reformat the drive and done. My success rate was pretty good.When I bought my first LeCroy scope for home, the 7200 with the VME bus, what drive was in it? The 20MB MiniScribe! They wrote the software to support only a couple of different drives. Of course the one with the unit was locked up. Not wanting to relive the 80s, I had a good working 20MB Seagate that I tried (these were bullet proof). No luck, the software would not allow it to work. Using a logic analyzer, sniffed the MFM bus between the two drives, then modified the Seagate to look like the MiniScribe. I still own this scope and it still has the Seagate drive inside and running.The last one I managed to get the data off, person was working on a large project and had not backed up their data in a few weeks.Drive dies of course. Started hearing some BS about a fridge.I manage to get the drive, pull it apart (again no clean room or anything) and found the flex strip running to the heads had shorted internally (amplifiers were on this Kapton Polyimide something flex board) I pull out the flex and attempt to blow the short open with a power supply. This worked long enough for the PC to boot (Windows, so what, 10 minutes). Drive dies, recheck and the board is again shorted. So I soldered a couple of pins onto the flex board and hooked up an external supply to drive it.Managed to recover the entire drive. I took a picture of it and it ended up getting photo shopped into a reminder poster about backing up your data.... True story.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 12:25:24 am
content: I tend to collect the platters and magnets then throw the rest out. I have a nice pile of platters, I need to eventually destroy them. I was thinking thermite. Never played with that stuff before but it sounds fun.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 12:57:30 am
content: The freezer trick actually works. Usually its best with a drive that starts erroring after some use, you stick it in the freezer with the longest cable you have squeezed in the seal to keep it running long enough to recover the data. My own personal drives though I;ve only ever had two fail. One was when I moved into my first house in 1995, unboxed my full size tower and then knocked it over, the drive got a few bad sectors. The second one was a laptop drive in an external enclosure my one year old found made a great rattle as he was shaking it listening to the sound it made. Maybe its because I don't run an inefficient OS so mine are not always swapping. My work provided laptop has 16G of ram and windows still has to constantly use swap.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 01:03:02 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on September 24, 2016, 07:31:32 amWhy wouldn't a nice camp fire do it? They exceed 1000 degrees and that is far above the curie point for the disc platters.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 01:54:41 am
content: The platters are aluminum

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 06:10:34 pm
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 07, 2016, 12:25:24 amWhy keep the platters? I keep the magnets and the PCBs. I run a neodymium magnet over the platters. There are no way crooks can recover data from that. Government, who cares, no worry about them.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 09:28:41 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 07, 2016, 01:54:41 amNot always.Quite often made of glass and make excellent, cheap, first surface mirrors.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 09:44:20 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 07, 2016, 01:54:41 ami disassembled tons of hard drives and i think i never met a single aluminium platter, those platters are too stiff to be aluminium , i think it will be some kind of fancy alloy or ceramic or even glass with magnetic coating as CJay mentioned above.but the case of the disk is usually some kind of aluminium alloy... but be beware of the alloys with high magnesium content.. magnesium can catch fire in the furnace.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 09:59:03 pm
content: All the platters I've ever had were aluminum. Sure they may have been doped with something else but primarily aluminum.

author: xygor
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 10:03:03 pm
content: Quote from: XOIIO on September 24, 2016, 10:06:07 amYour advice is unwarranted because Jesus saves. Everyone else does incremental backups if at all.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2016, 10:13:32 pm
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 07, 2016, 09:59:03 pmyou made me curiousso i fatigue cracked one in half and it's definitely some kind of light alloy - apparently aluminium based, but the stiffness and the "sound" of the unharmed platter rules out "pure" aluminium, so definitely i would do some test on that alloy before shoving them into a furnace to make sure it's not half magnesiump.s. it's funny i never tried to cut or break in half a platterthanks ! i learned something todayi think the reason why i never tried it was the glossy look and stiffness of the platters - somehow i was expecting a brittle material sending shrapnel everywhere when cracked

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 01:01:17 am
content: The most recent HDD I had to recover data from was one that was used in a high speed portable DAQ unit. There was no backup because the errors occurred the first time the user tried to copy the data to a central server. I managed to get a perfect recovery of all but one file using safecopy. The remaining file was mostly recovered and usable.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 02:25:31 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 07, 2016, 09:59:03 pmCoatings as I understand it are proprietary. They are very complex with many different layers of various materials.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 04:11:04 am
content: Quote from: JoeN on October 07, 2016, 01:03:02 amWould probably work if you get it right in the coals. Great way to make a pop can disappear when you don't want to go bring it in the recycling bin in the dark.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 04:13:12 am
content: Quote from: JoeN on October 07, 2016, 06:10:34 pmGovernment is the real threat these days. As they are now they would have a hell of a time getting data mind you. First off all they'd have to match which platter go together and the alignment. (each batch of hard drives has a slightly different head alignment as they are not 100% aligned)

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 04:30:31 am
content: The trick is that the platters must be as flat and warpage free as possible. I would like to see how they make the aluminum disks and what they do to ensure they are as flat as can be. Even a small variation in the coatings on one side versus the other could warp the platter.Brian

author: nessatse
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 09:28:34 am
content: Some glass platters from an old hard drive. I have stripped hundreds of drives and only this once came across glass platters. I don't know if these were plated originally and if it got stripped off as a result of a really traumatic head crash, or if they have some other kind if transparent coating. In any case, they are kind of pretty and I had plans to use them somehow in one of those hard drive clocks one day...

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 10:31:52 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on October 07, 2016, 12:57:30 amI've done this about five times as well and it's never failed for me.

author: kc8apf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2016, 01:53:58 pm
content: When I talked with HGST and Seagate engineers in 2013, glass platters were used for 2.5" and 10k RPM drives and aluminum for everything else. Glass platters are expensive but very robust which is necessary for the high performance and rugged drives.Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2016, 02:25:19 am
content: I tried to bend a platter once (I was just trying to destructively remove it, did not have torx screwdrivers at that time). Found out it was glass. That was a rude way of finding out let me tell you. lol. Thankfully I did not get hurt it just made a huge mess.I'd imagine the aluminium ones probably use some kind of aloy, or maybe some other coating to make them more rigid. It would need to be something that won't really expand/contract with temperature.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2016, 06:07:13 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 09, 2016, 02:25:19 amibm

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2016, 01:35:47 am
content: Oh yes, the deathstars!It may have actually been one of those I did that to, I can't recall. They are not the only ones that use glass though, I think a lot of the 2.5" ones do.