Hey there
I've got a disk here (hitachi deskstar, manufacturing date Apr, 7 2003) which failed all of a sudden. When I powered on the computer all I got was a clicking noise as if the heads try to move into position but hit some obstacle. It sounds a bit like this sample only the clicking isn't quite as loud. I'm pretty sure it's not a head crash as I never heard any squeaky noises, so I'm thinking that maybe the platters are fully intact.
I called some data recovery companies and it's just out of the question that I can afford their service.
Where I work I have access to a clean room and I'm gonna try and open up the disk. Has anybody done this before and can give me a hint on what to look for? I know chances of actually recovering any data are very slim but I'm thinking that maybe it's just the heads jamed in the parking position or something. Any advise or shared experience is greatly appreciated.
Cheers, demian
My laptop hard drive died and I noticed it just sounded loose kinda not scratchy, so I opened it up (in a dirty room, but as careful as I could) and looked how it was setup. The head had kinda fall off the little thing it was supposed to stick to, and it wouldn't stay the way it should, but it would stay enough that if the drive wasn't moved it seemed to be okay. I hooked it all up and bingo it booted. I grabbed my data and sent it thru netcat to my other computer.
speaking of nc, is there a good netcat tutorial somewhere?
I found this link at google.ca/netcat tutorial http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/vie...t=netcat#26967
Hope it helps.
That's really good, thanks a ton.
Just a heads up on this issue: It worked!! Yay!
The heads were indeed jammed in the parking position. I opened it up and let it run without the case and the heads just needed a little push. I made an image of the entire drive to another disk and the amazing thing is: When I powered the machine down after checking the image the heads of the drive wouldn't return back into parking position. Rather they bouced back at some point and crashed right into the edge of the spinning platter... Now I know the drive is really broken. The image, however, is fully intact and I could recover all the files
Sweet, good to hear a success story, glad you got your data back, even if the drive is really dead now.
same thing just happened to me today. my IBM deskstar 120gxp just clicks repeatedly and isnt even seen by the bios. i've got about 40gb of data (out of 100gb total space) that i'd really like to get back. can you explain how you fixed it in more detail? i've got another drive with ample space to put the stuff on.
Well, I guess I was just lucky. First I opened the drive and checked if there was anything visibly wrong. I moved the reading heads very carefully with a pair of tweezers and it worked fine. So I wanted to see what the drive looks like while operating. I hooked it up to a computer and let the disk run without the cover. That's when I noticed that the heads wouldn't move in position over the platters. I gave them a little push and everything was fine. (Until I powered off, that is.) It seemed the metal arm with the heads attached was just blocked by a small grain or something in the bearing. When it first wouldn't move into position it turned by some 10° and then bounced back. Once I pushed it over the obstacle it seemed to be able to move freely. Only when the heads went back into the parking position the arm hit that obstacle again (this time from the other side) and bounced off it and into the platters.
I guess there's not much I can tell you other than to be very, very careful. I guess the clean-room thing wasn't really neccessary, but since I could use it I thought, what the heck. There really wasn't much to what I was doing. It worked through pure chance, I guess.
So, good luck to you.
i think my problem is different than yours. i took the top off and turned the thing on, the heads slowly go to the middle of the platters then quickly go back to the parking things, over and over. i dont see any thing on the top platter that would make it go back, but i can only see the top of the top one. strange thing is, my drive was working just fine until yesterday when i was copying some files onto it from this other harddrive (old seagate) which i now know has some serious problems. while trying to copy certain files from the seagate to the ibm my computer would just freeze, forcing me to hit the reset button. after 2 maybe 3 of these such resets my ibm just clicks. i read some BS on the ibm/hitachi website right here http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/dataloss.htm my problem kinda sounds like symptom #2 except i've left it on for over 10 minutes and it still just clicks. any ideas?
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