Dead hard drive? [no fix possible - discarded]

[The Chief]

I left my laptop powered up and plugged in over night.  Now it won't respond and won't boot.  Keeps saying no bootable device.

I booted up a live USB (booted fine) and it could not see the hard drive.  

I pulled the  hard drive out and connected it to a USB adapter cable and another computer - nothing!  As far as I can tell, the motor doesn't even spin. So, most likely the interface electronics are OK.

Anyway, wouldn't be a big deal except for some lost ebooks (that I can recover, it's just a pain) and some lost emails (probably gone forever).

I don't suppose there is any possibility I did something that caused this, is there?  Just a random hardware failure?

[jaydot]

i've had drives die on me for no apparent reason.  nothing i did, they just died.  some entities do die young.

[The Chief]

Looks like I can get a 320 gb replacement somewhere around $50 to $75.

[T6]

how old was that hard disk?

when the device is not detected and you don't hear it spin, it is more likely to be the controller than the mechanic parts

on those circumstances you can try recover info by getting a new controller, not every models let you change the controller easily but sometimes is possible

[ThirdOfSix]

I was brought an hp netbook that had been stepped on and had a totally destroyed display.

She wanted me to see if I could get her 1.4 Gb of family photographs off of it and into another computer.

So of course, I said, "sure, no problem". I pulled the hard drive out of it and connected it to my main PCLOS machine with the intent of just dumping the pictures file.

I was very surprised to find out that my machine could not see the drive and it did not spin up.

I tried it on two other machines just in case it just could not work with my external USB adapter.

About then, I decided that the hard drive was probably spinning when the netbook was stepped on and was actually pinched such that the running platter was stopped and the circuitry overloaded or burned out. The thing has a real thin plastic case that provides no protection for the display or circuitry.

By now, I figured there was no way she was going to read anything from that drive without paying one of the data recovery outfits to do their magic for big bucks that she did not have.

I decided that drastic measures were in order as there appeared to be nothing to lose at this stage.

I took the circuit board off of the drive and found several overheated contact pads that had been severely overheated to the point that the gold plating was almost all gone.

I buffed up the pads as well as I could and put the board back on the drive.

It did not work but on holding the drive to my ear, I could hear an intermittent tone that kind of sounded like a motor on a variable speed drive that is stuck. This tends to cause the windings to sing.

I put it back on the external USB adapter on my main machine so that I could rotate the  drive and and stop rotating it to give the inertia of the platter a chance to cause it to spin and maybe give it a bit of a boost start. I have had this work on a couple of drives that would not spin up reliably. That did not work this time so I figured I would go to more extreme measures.

I proceeded to tap the drive on the desk harder and harder. At some point, it started to spin up for a second or two and then stop each time I tapped it on the table.

When it reached the point where it would stay running for several seconds, I tried to access the drive. I was very surprised when it opened in dolphin.

I had no idea for how long it would stay running or if it would ever spin up again.

So while I could see the files in dolphin, I found her picture folder and copied it to my machine successfully.

The first thing that I did after retrieving that folder was to write it to a DVD.

Needless to say, she was more than happy.

The point of all this is that if you have nothing to lose, get creative and do whatever it takes if there is a chance to get a drive spinning long enough to recover your data.

Oh yeah, the other point is that if you have any family members who have all of their family pictures stored on only one machine, please educate them.

[The Chief]

how old was that hard disk?

About 14 months - long enough for the warranty to expire.

when the device is not detected and you don't hear it spin, it is more likely to be the controller than the mechanic parts

on those circumstances you can try recover info by getting a new controller, not every models let you change the controller easily but sometimes is possible

Well, I removed the drive and connected it to another computer and it was still totally dead, as if it didn't exist.  So, the controller could be bad, but I say not likely.

[T6]

if you have the chance to change it, you could have good results, but is a cost that i personally wouldn't accept

we have tried this on the past and had only one good result between maybe 4 but worth to try

[The Chief]

if you have the chance to change it, you could have good results, but is a cost that i personally wouldn't accept

we have tried this on the past and had only one good result between maybe 4 but worth to try

The replacement drive will be here next week and once it's in and set up, I'll fiddle with the old drive to see if I can recover anything.  I'll try all the buffing and bouncing...

[T6]

but, how do you know that it will work? is the same model and size?

if not, then it doesn't help to experiment, just to replace the damaged one

[Tony]

I certainly would re-connect the HDD, and give it some gentle but sharp taps with a light piece of wood, if you haven't gone down that path. (don't break it, just the lightest of taps)

The amount of times a 'tap' in the right place has resurrected a Mechanical/Electronic device is countless.

It may have overheated, burnt a data cable, or whatever, ... have fun. 

[The Chief]

but, how do you know that it will work? is the same model and size?

As long as they are both SATA (electrical fit) and 2 1/2 inch (physical fit), why wouldn't it? 

True, I will have to remove the old one from the carrier tray and put the new one into the tray before installing into the laptop.

All the controller cares about is that you plug in an SATA drive...  Doesn't care about physical size or storage capacity - within limits, of course - it probably wouldn't like a 10 tb drive...

[T6]

"As long as they are both SATA (electrical fit) and 2 1/2 inch (physical fit), why wouldn't it?"

i was talking about swapping the controller on the old hard disk with the new one to see if the controller helps to recover the old hard disk info

but i see that you abandoned that idea, don't forget those gentle hits in one side and flat on a table

[ThirdOfSix]

don't forget those gentle hits in one side and flat on a table

When I was doing this on the Seagate 160GB 2 1/2 inch drive last week, I was tapping the edge of the drive on the table. This way, it jars the platter bearings but does not cause the heads to slap against the platter which could wipe out a few sectors worth of data.

Some time in the future when I get space cleared on the work bench, I'll take the drive apart and see if I can spot what the original damage was.

The problem is that I was not told whether the drive was damaged a week ago or a year ago.

When I first ran into a drive with a sticking platter that would not spin up, it was with a Macintosh back in the early eighties. Apparently the manufacturer used a lubricant on the bearings that would thicken when the drive sat over a cold week end  and the motor did not have the torque to break it free. Every Monday morning, I would have to pick up the whole computer and rotate in violently to break the platter free. Then I would leave it on all week and it would run fine...until the next Monday morning.

I doubt that any present day manufacturer makes the mistake of using the wrong lubricant though.

[Mike]

I didn't see this marked solved, so I thought I'd chime in with this.

Take a good look at the hard drive SATA terminals within the laptop. Might find signs of heat failure or corrosion, should be fixable by cleaning...

[Yankee]

If you can get any kind of signal at all, and it's not too old
with SMART available, GSmart from Synaptic is a good prorgram.