On May 7, 5:58, Dave Dunfield wrote:
> Popped the top off, and immediately discovered that the platters did
> not want to turn.
[...]
> I don't recall why, but "just for kicks", I took a fine cloth,
> polished the spot on the platter [...]
> Blew out the drive with a bit of air, and put the top back on, and
> installed it in a machine to "see what would happen".
>
> Not suprisingly the drive spun up right away. So, I low-level
formatted the drive
> and ran a test --- then I got a suprise --- NO ERRORS!
I can't remember if I told this story before... I had a machine that
ran for a couple of years; never powered off because it was a pain to
get the drive to spin again. Well, the inevitable happened, and I had
a power cut last August, which outlasted the UPS. This time the usual
tricks didn't work, and I ended up taking the drive into the workshop.
Even giving it a higher voltage on the 12V supply wouldn't make it
start, so with nothing more to lose, off came the top.
I discovered I could release the brake by hand, but even so I had to
apply 14V (instead of 12V :-)) from a big bench PSU directly to the
innards, and flick the disk with my finger to get it to start.
However, once started, it would run on 12V, though it wouldn't restart
normally if I let it stop. I had to think about how to keep that drive
spinning while I took it back to the machine. Don't try this at home
;-)
It went something like this: connect a PSU from a PC to the smallest
available UPS, and stack the PSU and and the topless drive on the UPS .
Start the drive as described above, then whip off the bench power
leads and connect the PC PSU before it has a chance to spin down
completely. I seem to remember using a paper clip to disable the brake
while doing that. Unplug the UPS from the mains and carry the whole
lot up to the office, with the drive still spinning. Connect to the
computer, cross fingers, and power up the computer. To my surprise and
releif, I was able to read almost all of the drive. I only lost a
couple of files. Needless to say I replaced the drive after that :-)
I've taken the tops off small drives a few times. I don't recommend
this, because I may just have been lucky, but as a last resort it's
allowed me to rescue the data from a few stuck or damaged drives.
Except for the most recent one (I took the wrong screw out and
finished the drive off).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Fri May 07 2004 - 17:53:13 BST