Bad Hard Drives

[raptor1956]

...
 - 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.

I 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.

I 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

[System Error Message]

...
 - 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.

I 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.

The game Deponia made a funny joke about this.

[free_electron]

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.

<- this

CERTAINLY NOT SLAPPING , FREEZING OR OTHER STUPIDITY

[joeqsmith]

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.   

[Red Squirrel]

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.

[eugenenine]

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.

[JoeN]

I always consider the real way to permanently destroy data is to nuke the platters with a microwave oven or an induction cook top.

Why wouldn't a nice camp fire do it?  They exceed 1000 degrees and that is far above the curie point for the disc platters.

[eugenenine]

The platters are aluminum

[JoeN]

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.

Why 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.

[CJay]

The platters are aluminum

Not always.

Quite often made of glass and make excellent, cheap, first surface mirrors.

[rob77]

The platters are aluminum

i 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.

[eugenenine]

All the platters I've ever had were aluminum.  Sure they may have been doped with something else but primarily aluminum.

[xygor]

Jesus christ do not do 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....

Your advice is unwarranted because Jesus saves.  Everyone else does incremental backups if at all.

[rob77]

All the platters I've ever had were aluminum.  Sure they may have been doped with something else but primarily aluminum.

you made me curious so 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 magnesium

p.s. it's funny i never tried to cut or break in half a platter thanks ! i learned something today  
i 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

[NiHaoMike]

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.

[joeqsmith]

All the platters I've ever had were aluminum.  Sure they may have been doped with something else but primarily aluminum.

Coatings as I understand it are proprietary.  They are very complex with many different layers of various materials. 

[Red Squirrel]

I always consider the real way to permanently destroy data is to nuke the platters with a microwave oven or an induction cook top.

Why wouldn't a nice camp fire do it?  They exceed 1000 degrees and that is far above the curie point for the disc platters.

Would 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. 

[Red Squirrel]

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.

Why 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.

Government 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)

[raptor1956]

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

[nessatse]

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...

[timb]

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.

I've done this about five times as well and it's never failed for me.

[kc8apf]

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

[Red Squirrel]

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.

[Rasz]

Found out it was glass.

ibm

[Red Squirrel]

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.