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.

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
************************************************** ********

"Ryan Underwood" wrote in message
...
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

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 writes:

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
************************************************** ********

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?

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.

"Ryan Underwood" wrote in message
...
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

Another Maxtor harddrive to fail, way to common- rule #1 AVOID MAXTOR
Harddrives.
western digital much better, plus a better warranty.
"Dave D" wrote in message
...

"Ryan Underwood" wrote in message
...
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

Ken 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.

Ted Bundy wrote:
Another Maxtor harddrive to fail, way to common- rule #1 AVOID MAXTOR
Harddrives.

I disagree. I haven't had problems with them, and I have quite a few.
I think they're fine when not abused.

western digital much better, plus a better warranty.

I prefer Maxtor to WD, but not on the basis of reliability.

"Dave D" wrote in message
...

"Ryan Underwood" wrote in message
...

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






--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

I have never replaced a head assembly, but I've recovered data from
opened hard drives in very filthy environments and had remarkable
success (for example, when one head crashed). Your platters are
certainly not damaged at this point just because you opened the drive.
You can't consider your rebuilt drive to be as reliable as a new one,
but it will most certainly last long enough to get the data off.

I am not sure alignment is an issue either; the sectoring on the
platter should handle this.

To keep the heads apart, just wedge something in betwen the arms;
don't put anything in contact with the heads.

Ryan Underwood wrote:
Ken 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.


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.

On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 12:47:50 -0600, Ryan Underwood
wrote:

Ken 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

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:

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

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

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?

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.

In message , Ryan Underwood
writes
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 most certainly wouldn't like to try and replace the whole head
assembly, but it might be possible to replace the head amplifier
chip.... You'd need some way of making sure the fumes from whatever
soldering process you use don't hit the platters but it should be
possible to do provided you can get the chip. I *have* replaced heads
and head assemblies before but a long time ago when drives didn't have
an embedded servo. You might have some success if you had a drive with
only one platter but I believe the tolerances on a multi-platter drive
would make this nigh on impossible without having to re-write the servo
tracks, destroying any chance of recovering the data.
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?
Ummm, a comb? We used to call it a spragging tool but I'm not sure if
that's even a word, let alone one that's commonly used to describe the
tool. We made them out of perspex strips with a lot of care, you need to
be very careful with such a tool as the arms the heads are mounted on
are extremely delicate and any distortion will cause an instant crash.

Thanks.

Final words, if the data is important, send it for data recovery, you're
not going to get it back and risk destroying all hope of anyone getting
it back. If you're doing this for the experience, go for it, if you're
doing it to gain a drive, then go out and buy one, you'd never be able
to trust it with any data you wanted to keep.

Good luck.
--
Clint Sharp

3T39 wrote:
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:




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.

Ken writes:

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.

That's possible, but the drive doesn't even come online. It would attempt to
read the boot sector at the point when the BIOS passes control to the boot
sector, not when the drive has just spun up.

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.

I think we are just confusing the 'firmware area' with 'boot sector'.

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.

Well, I wasn't planning on removing any of the platters since that just
sounds like a disaster in the making. So hopefully this won't be an
issue.

Tom MacIntyre writes:

If you are so experienced, why the original question?

How does "having run drives open without immediate catastrophe" have anything
to do with "the best device to keep heads from slamming against each other
during replacement"? Some folks with no answer for the question that was
asked preferred to demonstrate their ignorance instead. I was simply
correcting that ignorance, not attempting to lay claim to any credentials in
the area. I claim no experience whatsoever in successful head replacement.

"3T39" writes:

the data recovery bussiness) that WD drives are undergoing some problems
right now, and Seagate are the clear favourites.

WD and Maxtor both have had well-known problems where the firmware will corrupt
the on-disk "GLIST", the defect list, and the drive will no longer function.
Some Russian company sells a device that repairs such drives, but it costs ~$3K
IIRC.

Not claiming any brand is better than the other, but I have had a
disproportionate number of failures in both Maxtor and WD over the years.
Also, this was the first time a Maxtor drive had failed "clicky" on me, a trait
usually reserved for WD - I had always preferred Maxtor of the two since
usually the failure was not as catastrophic. Oh well. I've been buying Seagate
ATA drives for a while now and that will probably continue.

Clint Sharp writes:

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?
Ummm, a comb? We used to call it a spragging tool but I'm not sure if
that's even a word, let alone one that's commonly used to describe the
tool. We made them out of perspex strips with a lot of care, you need to
be very careful with such a tool as the arms the heads are mounted on
are extremely delicate and any distortion will cause an instant crash.

For the record, another fellow suggested Post-It notes arranged in a particular
fashion.

Final words, if the data is important, send it for data recovery, you're
not going to get it back and risk destroying all hope of anyone getting
it back. If you're doing this for the experience, go for it, if you're
doing it to gain a drive, then go out and buy one, you'd never be able
to trust it with any data you wanted to keep.

Oh, it's not a big deal. Basically, the drive housed my /usr partition and I
was caught without a backup when it happened. I can rebuild everything except
/usr/local and /usr/tmp. The former contains several years worth of admin
scripts and other tidbits, and the latter contained open source code I was
working on. Neither is a catastrophic loss by any means, but I would very
much like to have them back - they just aren't worth as much as $500 is worth
to me right now. Hence my casual approach to this issue.

On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:57:40 -0600, Ryan Underwood
wrote:

Tom MacIntyre writes:

If you are so experienced, why the original question?

How does "having run drives open without immediate catastrophe" have anything
to do with "the best device to keep heads from slamming against each other
during replacement"? Some folks with no answer for the question that was
asked preferred to demonstrate their ignorance instead. I was simply
correcting that ignorance, not attempting to lay claim to any credentials in
the area. I claim no experience whatsoever in successful head replacement.

Why do you use quotes when you are paraphrasing?

Tom