Re: [PLUG] Rescuing data from a likely dead HD

Back when I did mac support we had a run of frozen hard drives and could get them to spin up by holding them outside the chassis and giving them a sharp clockwise wrist-flick on power-up.

On May 3, 2013 8:42 AM, "Will" <staticphantom@gmail.com> wrote:

I used to work for a company that was a vendor for hard drive companies. I can say that replacing the controller should work most of the time. As far as opening the drive, I'll admit I've done that and it works without being a clean room. With that said, do it some place as clean as possible and I'm sure you can recover the drive. Just note however, once the cover is off it is a ticking time bomb before the drive starts seeking a lot.

If you try to replace the controller on the drive, be careful! There are some rather fragile ribbon cables. Live was a bit easier before companies started flipping the controller on the drives to heat sink the chips.

If the drive is a Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, or later model Hitachi drives I have a few tricks which I will not talk about on a public channel that can help with information retrieval.

-Will Christensen

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Will <staticphantom@gmail.com> wrote:

I used to work for a company that was a vendor

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Mike James <mpjames53@gmail.com> wrote:

a friend of mine said he actually opened the drive case and gave the
platter a nudge to get it going. not sure if I believe it or not :) I
have seen the trick with replacing the controller work.

kids, don't try this at home

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Joe Terranova <joeterranova@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, I'd only try this if he's cool with potentially losing the data altogether.
>
> Your next option would be to try replacing the controller on the hard
> drive. If you can find a hard drive of an identical model and version,
> you can take the controller off of that and put it on the dead drive.
> Many hard drives have the controller on the outside of the casing, and
> you can replace it without exposing the platter. If the hard drives
> requires exposing the platter to replace the controller, you will
> likely lose the data if you don't do so in a clean room.
>
> Joe Terranova
> US20100864125
>
> On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Adam Zion <azion1995@gmail.com> wrote:
>> OK, ignore the last question- I solved that myself (will explain offline if
>> anyone's interested). This new one may be more difficult- or, at least, more
>> expensive.
>>
>> A home support customer of mine has had his notebook HD fry on him. He has a
>> backup, but it's old, so he'd like to restore data from the dead drive. I've
>> tried the deep freeze trick- all I get from that is a quiet sound that's as
>> if the drive is *trying* to spin up... but not able to do so completely.
>>
>> Is there anything short of sending this drive out to a data recovery place,
>> w/the associated costs?
>>
>> Thx,
>> -Z
>>
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> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
> Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
> General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug