Hi All,
Just had my hard drive fail on me out of the blue, no rhyme no reason, not even an early warning symptom. Just died, taking a years worth of data with it. Ouch. Now it sits there, beeping at me and refusing to spin up! Seagate tells me the spindle has failed and they'll happily charge me £1,000 to look at it. Double ouch. I made an incremental back up a while ago and so I do have most of what I've lost but that niggling feeling of forgetting what it is you had...
Just wanted to remind you all to back up if you already havent. I've heard it said unless your data is duplicated in at least 3 places, it doesnt exist. Two backups on site, one off site. Good advice probably.
I've resigned myself to my data not coming back as something inside me is just not willing to hand over that level of payment for my own data. As I've got nothing to lose (literally) with the drive now, I'd welcome any recommendations on what steps you've all taken in the past to rescue date from failing drives, what has worked for you? Also what back up procedures and routines do you all have in place? I obviously need to adjust mine and would welcome the advice. Is backing up to optical media such as DVD and Bluray a good idea? Does it last? How about SSD's? No moving parts to fail right?
The internet seems awash with quite a few stories of whacking the drive (percussive maintenance) to get it going, all the way to opening it up and trying to free the problematic area whilst touching as little as possible to avoid contamination. This is probably the first time in my life I ever wished I owned a clean room. Some people even mention freezing it. Anyone had success with this? I'd love to give this a go if nothing else.
Before I lay it to rest and bury the thing in the back garden, hopefully I can give every possible solution a shot. I've already swapped out the PCB boards in it with another of the same model and same firmware, which didn't work. Next up will be to try the thing in a USB powered caddy to see if It'll work off an independent supply at least and spin up. Failing that, I'll turn the house upside down looking for the one and only torx screwdriver I own and it'll be rubber glove time I'd prefer to keep from opening it as a last resort, as I must admit from what I've read, whether its scaremongering by the data recovery companies or not, I kind of think exposing the thing to air will obviously degrade it if not completely over time, then straight away.
Whatever happens, It'll be a learning experience either way and if any of you have any interesting electrical solutions I'd be happy to give them a try, just for the heck of it! I'm not sure I'm quite willing to run any significant voltage through it though - as fun as that might be. Seagate do tell me from the beeping sound I played for them over the phone, it is either the spindle motor or something called stiction, where the head is stuck to the platter. What if I attached a large signal to the motor to get it going? Or a large signal to the (voice coil I believe) to jolt the head off the platter if it's stuck?
Finally, if any of you skilled steady handed people are in need of a new career, it looks like you could do a lot worse than join the data recovery industry. The lowest quote I've had for an examination (not even to fix it) was £250. Not bad for a few hours work, if you can do it!
Suggestions welcome!
Regards,
Megamox
PS. Have you backed up your files lately?
Edit (6th February): In case you don't feel up to reading the entire thread, I managed to get my data back from the hard drive. It involved making my own tools, swapping out the hard drive head, then swapping out the EEPROM chip. Total cost about £50. Techniques and tools covered in the thread. Good luck!
Just had my hard drive fail on me out of the blue, no rhyme no reason, not even an early warning symptom. Just died, taking a years worth of data with it. Ouch. Now it sits there, beeping at me and refusing to spin up! Seagate tells me the spindle has failed and they'll happily charge me £1,000 to look at it. Double ouch. I made an incremental back up a while ago and so I do have most of what I've lost but that niggling feeling of forgetting what it is you had...
Just wanted to remind you all to back up if you already havent. I've heard it said unless your data is duplicated in at least 3 places, it doesnt exist. Two backups on site, one off site. Good advice probably.
I've resigned myself to my data not coming back as something inside me is just not willing to hand over that level of payment for my own data. As I've got nothing to lose (literally) with the drive now, I'd welcome any recommendations on what steps you've all taken in the past to rescue date from failing drives, what has worked for you? Also what back up procedures and routines do you all have in place? I obviously need to adjust mine and would welcome the advice. Is backing up to optical media such as DVD and Bluray a good idea? Does it last? How about SSD's? No moving parts to fail right?
The internet seems awash with quite a few stories of whacking the drive (percussive maintenance) to get it going, all the way to opening it up and trying to free the problematic area whilst touching as little as possible to avoid contamination. This is probably the first time in my life I ever wished I owned a clean room. Some people even mention freezing it. Anyone had success with this? I'd love to give this a go if nothing else.
Before I lay it to rest and bury the thing in the back garden, hopefully I can give every possible solution a shot. I've already swapped out the PCB boards in it with another of the same model and same firmware, which didn't work. Next up will be to try the thing in a USB powered caddy to see if It'll work off an independent supply at least and spin up. Failing that, I'll turn the house upside down looking for the one and only torx screwdriver I own and it'll be rubber glove time
Whatever happens, It'll be a learning experience either way and if any of you have any interesting electrical solutions I'd be happy to give them a try, just for the heck of it! I'm not sure I'm quite willing to run any significant voltage through it though - as fun as that might be. Seagate do tell me from the beeping sound I played for them over the phone, it is either the spindle motor or something called stiction, where the head is stuck to the platter. What if I attached a large signal to the motor to get it going? Or a large signal to the (voice coil I believe) to jolt the head off the platter if it's stuck?
Finally, if any of you skilled steady handed people are in need of a new career, it looks like you could do a lot worse than join the data recovery industry. The lowest quote I've had for an examination (not even to fix it) was £250. Not bad for a few hours work, if you can do it!
Suggestions welcome!
Regards,
Megamox
PS. Have you backed up your files lately?
Edit (6th February): In case you don't feel up to reading the entire thread, I managed to get my data back from the hard drive. It involved making my own tools, swapping out the hard drive head, then swapping out the EEPROM chip. Total cost about £50. Techniques and tools covered in the thread. Good luck!
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