 Re: Hard Drive will not Spin - at all
On Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:07:12 -0700 (PDT), David
<Tasark@aol.com> wrote:
>I had a 400gb Seagate drive in an external enclosure. I was
>transferring files from one computer to another. I finished copying
>files on the drive, and was moving the drive across the room. I had it
>on the ground, moved the cord slightly and the drive spun around
>violently. As if the platters were just frozen in an instant and spun
>the case around.
>
>When the hard drive is powered up, it does not spin, although makes a
>very low noise, almost a hum.
>
>I tried...
>freezing the drive
>plugging it into many different computers
>tapping slightly on the sides of the drive
>Turning it on and off quickly
>Shaking it quickly to try to release 'stiction'
>Replacing the PCB board with a good drive (of the same Product Number
>and Firmware)
>
>After all that failed, I decided to open the drive up quickly, in a
>make-shift clean environment to take a peek. I pushed the seek arm
>slightly to make sure it was not stuck, it wasn't. Although i tried to
>rotate the platters (by pushing on the spindle, and on the outside
>edges of the platters) and they were STUCK! These platters will not
>budge. They will not even move in the slightest bit. I am thinking it
>might be the motor or bearings, but I don't know why they were go
>frozen so suddenly.
>
>I need this data and don't want to spend the $1000 that these
>companies are asking for. I was considering swapping the platters (but
>seeing as they need PERFECT alignment) I need a hard drive platter
>exchange tool, which I can't seem to find (but i know they exist).
>
>Has ANYONE run into this problem? Anyone have any advice? I need help!
The motor bearings are shot most likely, another kind of
motor failure like a short may prevent powered rotation but
not free spinning when you tried to do that manually. It
seems likely the drive was about to fail either way but the
movement of the cord just pushed it over the edge that much
sooner.
There is no reasonable DIY option to fix this. If the
drive had only one platter (which it doesn't being a 400GB
capacity), if you had the right tools and a cleanroom in
which you could take that one platter out, mount it in
another otherwise identical drive and use the damaged
drive's circuit board that might've made it possible, but at
this point even a good attempt at opening it in a clean
environment has likely contaminated it with dust so it
would have head crashes if it were operational again.
Perhaps there is such a thing as a platter exchange tool,
but if there is, such a specialty precision tool set would
likely cost as much as the data recovery service would.
Personally I don't trust external enclosures much, most of
them made in recent years have poor power supplies and poor
cooling, then there's also the potential for corruption if
it's improperly disconnected during data transfers. My main
point would be that I never trust one as a primary data
store, not even as a primary backup for a PC, only as a
redundant copy of a backup stored elsewhere.
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