| Author |
Message |
Ryan Underwood
Guest
|
 Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 9:35 am Post subject:
replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort. Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Thanks.
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JazzMan
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 9:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Ryan Underwood wrote:
| Quote: |
Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort. Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
|
Before we can proceed further, we need to know what class
clean room you are working in.
JazzMan
--
**********************************************************
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
**********************************************************
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
********************************************************** |
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Jack
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 9:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
"Ryan Underwood" <nemesis@icequake.net> wrote in message
news:-YqdndsC1K7HCw_enZ2dnUVZ_tmdnZ2d@fidnet.com...
| Quote: | Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with
the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did
not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head
assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and
met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the
voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort.
Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it
stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they
slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the
heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Thanks.
The same moment that you opened the case exposing the platters to not "clean |
room" air, you killed your drive!
JMK
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Dave D
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:35 pm Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
"Ryan Underwood" <nemesis@icequake.net> wrote in message
news:-YqdndsC1K7HCw_enZ2dnUVZ_tmdnZ2d@fidnet.com...
| Quote: | Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with
the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did
not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head
assembly.
|
<snip>
As others have pointed out, this is not possible to do at home, period.
For starters, a hard drive must never be opened in anything other than a
special clean room because a speck of dust landing on the platters will
cause a head crash which will destroy the surface integrity of both heads
and platters.
Secondly, dismantling the mechanism will severely damage the heads and
platters, special tools and jigs will be required to accomplish this- there
is no room for error.
Thirdly, even assuming one managed to physically transplant a new mechanism,
the drive will never read or write data again because of the contamination
of the previously sealed drive and the alignment of the mechanism.
The drive is now junk, you'll have to forget about the data on it I'm
afraid.
Dave |
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Ken
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:35 pm Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Ryan Underwood wrote:
| Quote: | Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort. Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Thanks.
|
I agree with the other posters, but there is the freezer technique that
I would try before giving up if there is data you wish to recover. I
trust you know what I am referring to??? My guess is that it is the
disk that is more likely to be your problem, rather than the heads. If
that is true, your head swap effort would be for naught even if you were
successful, and that is unlikely. |
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Sam Goldwasser
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:35 pm Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
In two words: Forget it. Sorry, the cleanroom and alignment issues
are just so far beyond what you likely have available, that the chances of
success are about as close to zero as the odds of winning the lottery
twice in a row.
If the data was that valuable, you should have sent the unopened drive to
a data recovery service.
--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/
Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/
+Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm
| Mirror Sites: http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_mirror.html
Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is
ignored unless my full name is included in the subject line. Or, you can
contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.
JazzMan <No_Spam@airmail.net> writes:
| Quote: | Ryan Underwood wrote:
Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort. Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Before we can proceed further, we need to know what class
clean room you are working in.
JazzMan
--
**********************************************************
Please reply to jsavage"at"airmail.net.
Curse those darned bulk e-mailers!
**********************************************************
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of
supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
********************************************************** |
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Ted Bundy
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sun Dec 04, 2005 11:51 pm Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
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|
Another Maxtor harddrive to fail, way to common- rule #1 AVOID MAXTOR
Harddrives.
western digital much better, plus a better warranty.
"Dave D" <dave_d@dave_d.com> wrote in message
news:xa6dnTTqGNclYg_eRVnytw@pipex.net...
| Quote: |
"Ryan Underwood" <nemesis@icequake.net> wrote in message
news:-YqdndsC1K7HCw_enZ2dnUVZ_tmdnZ2d@fidnet.com...
Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with
the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which
did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head
assembly.
snip
As others have pointed out, this is not possible to do at home, period.
For starters, a hard drive must never be opened in anything other than a
special clean room because a speck of dust landing on the platters will
cause a head crash which will destroy the surface integrity of both heads
and platters.
Secondly, dismantling the mechanism will severely damage the heads and
platters, special tools and jigs will be required to accomplish this-
there is no room for error.
Thirdly, even assuming one managed to physically transplant a new
mechanism, the drive will never read or write data again because of the
contamination of the previously sealed drive and the alignment of the
mechanism.
The drive is now junk, you'll have to forget about the data on it I'm
afraid.
Dave
|
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Ryan Underwood
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 12:47 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Ken <user@domain.invalid> writes:
| Quote: | I agree with the other posters, but there is the freezer technique that
I would try before giving up if there is data you wish to recover. I
trust you know what I am referring to??? My guess is that it is the
disk that is more likely to be your problem, rather than the heads. If
that is true, your head swap effort would be for naught even if you were
successful, and that is unlikely.
|
I would like to know why you think the disk is the problem. As I said, it
failed while transferring data, and never again did anything but click. Were
it a media defect at the particular location, it should still come online and
fail when accessing that area. Were it a defect in the firmware storage areas,
it should not have failed while running, but at bootup.
I think it's funny how everyone jumped on me for not being in class 100 clean
room. Unlike apparently everyone here, I have opened and run hard drives
both without the cover and with the cover replaced, and they do not instantly
crash. Yes, they probably do eventually crash (at least one did after several
days), but that's not what I'm worried about. The head to platter alignment
issue bothers me more, since there are 4 platters and I presume 8 heads (I
haven't opened this drive yet). Unless the heads are precisely aligned with
each other at manufacturing time ensuring that every set of heads is identical
(or at least identical enough for our purposes), a disk format with one set of
heads will be unreadable by another set due to differing physical displacement
between the heads. |
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Mark
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
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|
Ryan,
if the boot sector is bad, maybe you can hook it up so that you boot
from the other drive then switch over to "your" drive on the fly
somehow...
Mark |
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Mark
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
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|
oh...and if the head was bad, I think only part of the data would be
missing,,, the part on the platter with the bad head...unless that is
the boot platter too...
good luck....let us know how you make out...
I agree with you for trying , you may not succeed but you gotta dig in
and try and you will learn by trying.
Mark |
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James Sweet
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
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3T39 wrote:
| Quote: | This is all nonsense! I've had an opened drive running just fine for an
hour or two, with the heads and platters exposed to the "poisoned" air. I
opened the drive just to see how it worked. That's how I aproach most
technology, it's the only way to really find out what your up against. but I
must say I wouldn't like to try to replace the voice coils or heads, whether
you're in a clean room or not, this is going to be close to impossible
without damaging something. But don't forget, once the drive spins up, the
dust that will undoubtedly settle on the platters, will be thrown off by the
centrifugal forces and kept off by the layer of air that's dragged round
with it. Another thing, I have it on good authority (someone who works in
the data recovery bussiness) that WD drives are undergoing some problems
right now, and Seagate are the clear favourites.
With best regards, 3T39. E-mail: rubbishrat@hotmail.com
|
I've opened worthlessly old drives a few times, some of them worked for
a few hours afterward, some of them failed within minutes, one old 40MB
drive worked for a couple years, but with the newer higher density
drives the chances of them still working are minimal. |
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James Sweet
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Ryan Underwood wrote:
| Quote: | Hello.
I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I recall two problems I had at the time. One was that when removing the voice
coil magnet, it seemed to be awfully close to the platters for comfort. Is
there any risk to the platters if this magnet is removed, as long as it stays
as far away from them as it did when mounted to the coil?
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Thanks.
|
If you've already had the cover off you may as well just throw the drive
in the trash. With several thousand dollars and a bit of luck a
professional data recovery shop *may* be able to rescue some of your
data but you've already destroyed the drive beyond any hope of fixing it
yourself. |
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3T39
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
This is all nonsense! I've had an opened drive running just fine for an
hour or two, with the heads and platters exposed to the "poisoned" air. I
opened the drive just to see how it worked. That's how I aproach most
technology, it's the only way to really find out what your up against. but I
must say I wouldn't like to try to replace the voice coils or heads, whether
you're in a clean room or not, this is going to be close to impossible
without damaging something. But don't forget, once the drive spins up, the
dust that will undoubtedly settle on the platters, will be thrown off by the
centrifugal forces and kept off by the layer of air that's dragged round
with it. Another thing, I have it on good authority (someone who works in
the data recovery bussiness) that WD drives are undergoing some problems
right now, and Seagate are the clear favourites.
With best regards, 3T39. E-mail: rubbishrat@hotmail.com |
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Tom MacIntyre
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 12:47:50 -0600, Ryan Underwood
<nemesis@icequake.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Ken <user@domain.invalid> writes:
I agree with the other posters, but there is the freezer technique that
I would try before giving up if there is data you wish to recover. I
trust you know what I am referring to??? My guess is that it is the
disk that is more likely to be your problem, rather than the heads. If
that is true, your head swap effort would be for naught even if you were
successful, and that is unlikely.
I would like to know why you think the disk is the problem. As I said, it
failed while transferring data, and never again did anything but click. Were
it a media defect at the particular location, it should still come online and
fail when accessing that area. Were it a defect in the firmware storage areas,
it should not have failed while running, but at bootup.
I think it's funny how everyone jumped on me for not being in class 100 clean
room. Unlike apparently everyone here, I have opened and run hard drives
both without the cover and with the cover replaced, and they do not instantly
crash. Yes, they probably do eventually crash (at least one did after several
days), but that's not what I'm worried about. The head to platter alignment
issue bothers me more, since there are 4 platters and I presume 8 heads (I
haven't opened this drive yet). Unless the heads are precisely aligned with
each other at manufacturing time ensuring that every set of heads is identical
(or at least identical enough for our purposes), a disk format with one set of
heads will be unreadable by another set due to differing physical displacement
between the heads.
|
If you are so experienced, why the original question?
Tom |
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Ken
Guest
|
| Posted:
Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:35 am Post subject:
Re: replacing head assy in a hard drive |
|
|
Ryan Underwood wrote:
| Quote: | Ken <user@domain.invalid> writes:
I agree with the other posters, but there is the freezer technique that
I would try before giving up if there is data you wish to recover. I
trust you know what I am referring to??? My guess is that it is the
disk that is more likely to be your problem, rather than the heads. If
that is true, your head swap effort would be for naught even if you were
successful, and that is unlikely.
I would like to know why you think the disk is the problem. As I said, it
failed while transferring data, and never again did anything but click. Were
it a media defect at the particular location, it should still come online and
fail when accessing that area. Were it a defect in the firmware storage areas,
it should not have failed while running, but at bootup.
|
First off, I am NOT jumping on you for anything. I just want to make
that clear. That being said, I have messed with HDs when they were no
longer functional and needed, just to see if anything could be done with
them. Most failures I have encountered with the clicking noise were due
to what I think is a failure to read the boot sector.
It has been useful to do the freeze process in both the boot sector and
data sector failures so that information can be retrieved, but you have
limited chances at this. If the only the logic was needed for a HD to
be recognized, then it should be possible to boot from only the logic
board without the disk attached. I do not think this is possible,
because it takes a reading of the boot sector for the drive to be
recognized.
There is another feature to consider when you physically change the
platters. If there is more than one disk, I believe interleave still
takes place. I may be wrong about this, but it still might be a
consideration in how you install the platters if you are able to read
them with different heads.
| Quote: |
I think it's funny how everyone jumped on me for not being in class 100 clean
room. Unlike apparently everyone here, I have opened and run hard drives
both without the cover and with the cover replaced, and they do not instantly
crash. Yes, they probably do eventually crash (at least one did after several
days), but that's not what I'm worried about. The head to platter alignment
issue bothers me more, since there are 4 platters and I presume 8 heads (I
haven't opened this drive yet). Unless the heads are precisely aligned with
each other at manufacturing time ensuring that every set of heads is identical
(or at least identical enough for our purposes), a disk format with one set of
heads will be unreadable by another set due to differing physical displacement
between the heads.
|
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