WD1600 Hell Week

[abedalkareem]

Update: I ended up changing the heads again in that WD1600JS and the normal manipulation in PC-3000 utility could read head 0 & 1 with no issues. I did need to make another cover adjustment before heads 4 & 5 would complete. I guess the first heads were just too far off for the standard "trick" to work.
And right after those 2 old WDs, I got a WD5000AAKS (2007) that was quoted $2200 from DriveSabers. It was a much quicker recovery than the other two drives.

The hell week turned to lucky week i guess [emoji4]

Sent from my SM-G570F using Tapatalk

 

[Blizzard]

The hell week turned to lucky week i guess [emoji4]

Yes! I don't want to see any old HDDs this week, for a change.
But, with my luck, they will all be DMs with degraded media.

 

[LarrySabo]

Your success with those old dogs is sure to attract more of the same.

 

[Blizzard]

Your success with those old dogs is sure to attract more of the same.

Maybe it's the way I smell
About a month ago I received a Maxtor 7546AT. Yes, that's a 540MB HDD. It was running Novell Netware. Well, until the heads let go and destroyed the platters. Looked like that video where the guy uses a screwdriver on his HDD while the motor is spinning.
And low density, it was 2 platter.

 

[LarrySabo]

[post]7434[/post]

Your success with those old dogs is sure to attract more of the same.

Maybe it's the way I smell

:lol: :lol:

 

[Sam]

[post]7302[/post] Good work!!

Talk about hellish recoveries--I would have taken on 10 of those cases instead of the 2500JB I have now. All 6 platter surfaces completely covered with a layer of silicon dust from 3 of the parking zones being torn to shreds. :shock: Wish me luck!

Well, 6 weeks after taking on this case it's looking to be better than a 99% recovery.
It took me a month to make a tool to suspend all 3 platters, allow me to spread them apart, and keep rotational alignment while I worked on each platter surface. Then it took another week to figure out how to clean off the ground-in silicon dust. Also had to keep the heads permanently out of the parking zones while the drive spun.
I thought of an etch-a-sketch when I first spread the platters. It had been opened by another DR company (had a CDR sticker on it... tracked it down to Crucial Data Recovery) and looked like someone had tried to create designs in the dust with the heads, hah.
Oh yeah--of course there was some media damage in the SA but was able to collect the FW mods and create a smart donor. Drive loses readiness from time to time but am able to do a hot swap with the smart donor to continue imaging. Just cleaning up a few skipped sectors now.

Overall a very fun project--like 10 normal recoveries wrapped up into one!

 

[Blizzard]

Well, 6 weeks after taking on this case it's looking to be better than a 99% recovery.
It took me a month to make a tool to suspend all 3 platters, allow me to spread them apart, and keep rotational alignment while I worked on each platter surface. Then it took another week to figure out how to clean off the ground-in silicon dust. Also had to keep the heads permanently out of the parking zones while the drive spun.
I thought of an etch-a-sketch when I first spread the platters. It had been opened by another DR company (had a CDR sticker on it... tracked it down to Crucial Data Recovery) and looked like someone had tried to create designs in the dust with the heads, hah.
Somewhat fun project overall!

That's amazing! how did you block/limit parking zone, if you don't mind sharing?

 

[Sam]

No problem--I got the idea from a post I read where someone had to limit head travel to avoid moving over some media damage. They put a spacer somewhere in the magnet assembly but it was on a drive that had a parking ramp. I used the same method. It's probably also fortunate that this drive is older, where in a newer drive it might have just caused a case of stiction.
I did have 3 donor drives that I used for experimentation at every stage of this recovery to make sure I wouldn't do irreversible damage to the patient drive.
One pretty cool thing I discovered along the way is that with this model at least, if the platters are several mm out of rotational alignment the drive will still initialize and can still be imaged by head.

 

[LarrySabo]

Wow, congrats Sam! Truly awesome work!

 

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

[post]7302[/post] Good work!!

Talk about hellish recoveries--I would have taken on 10 of those cases instead of the 2500JB I have now. All 6 platter surfaces completely covered with a layer of silicon dust from 3 of the parking zones being torn to shreds. :shock: Wish me luck!

Well, 6 weeks after taking on this case it's looking to be better than a 99% recovery.
It took me a month to make a tool to suspend all 3 platters, allow me to spread them apart, and keep rotational alignment while I worked on each platter surface. Then it took another week to figure out how to clean off the ground-in silicon dust. Also had to keep the heads permanently out of the parking zones while the drive spun.
I thought of an etch-a-sketch when I first spread the platters. It had been opened by another DR company (had a CDR sticker on it... tracked it down to Crucial Data Recovery) and looked like someone had tried to create designs in the dust with the heads, hah.
Oh yeah--of course there was some media damage in the SA but was able to collect the FW mods and create a smart donor. Drive loses readiness from time to time but am able to do a hot swap with the smart donor to continue imaging. Just cleaning up a few skipped sectors now.

Overall a very fun project--like 10 normal recoveries wrapped up into one!

Sam ,
I Have Two Questions For You ...

First : You Designed And Made A Tool To Spread a Multiplatter Platter And Not Loose Alignment .Is This What You Said .If Yes I Too Have a Few Idea On This Project Myself But i Will Not And Cannot Implement It right Now .I Need Some Time To Complete Old Projects And Settle Down

Secondly : You Cleaned The Platter ,You Know We All Have Had A Variety of discussions on this in jareds forum ,Can you mind sharing how and what you did in this regard .

Third : Did any of you try the gorge screwdriver i suggested ?