Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

PlainBill wrote:
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

Just a shot in the dark with the first thought that comes
to mind, if I may?

Would it be worth the effort to try telling the old drive/new
electronics combo how big it is? Instead of letting it tell
bios?

Good luck recovering the pics of your grand daughter's; know
it would devastate me...

Ken

"PlainBill" wrote in message
...
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Well the first bit of advice is to *not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
some of the least reliable I've dealt with, obviously that's no help now
though.

You could try replacing the motor driver IC, it's usually a square 44 pin or
so SMT chip, replacing it requires some care and skill but it's doable.

It's sometimes possible to restart a drive that won't spin up by
removing the drive and holding it horizontally with the cables attached.
Start the computer and give the drive a very sharp rotational twist
around the drive axis. If you get it to boot, immediately back up. It's
better to let the 'puter run constantly, rather than shutting it down.
Drives rarely fail while running, unless they are very old. No spinup on
start is a much more common failure mode.
JR

PlainBill wrote:

Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill


--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth

"JR North" wrote in message
...
It's sometimes possible to restart a drive that won't spin up by
removing the drive and holding it horizontally with the cables attached.
Start the computer and give the drive a very sharp rotational twist
around the drive axis. If you get it to boot, immediately back up. It's
better to let the 'puter run constantly, rather than shutting it down.
Drives rarely fail while running, unless they are very old. No spinup on
start is a much more common failure mode.
JR



That was a fix that worked with very old drives (like 15-20 years old) that
suffered from "stiction" but this is no longer an issue, these Maxtor drives
burn out the motor driver chip, no amount of spinning and whacking it around
will make it spin up.

"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:KkO0e.1408$Go4.35@trnddc05...

That was a fix that worked with very old drives (like 15-20 years old)
that
suffered from "stiction" but this is no longer an issue, these Maxtor
drives
burn out the motor driver chip, no amount of spinning and whacking it
around
will make it spin up.

Drill a hole in the side and blow compressed air in G?

I did see the techs once try to erase a hard drive with a bulk eraser.

N

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?

Dan

NSM wrote:
"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:KkO0e.1408$Go4.35@trnddc05...


That was a fix that worked with very old drives (like 15-20 years old)

that

suffered from "stiction" but this is no longer an issue, these Maxtor

drives

burn out the motor driver chip, no amount of spinning and whacking it

around

will make it spin up.


Drill a hole in the side and blow compressed air in G?

I did see the techs once try to erase a hard drive with a bulk eraser.

N

"NSM" wrote in message news:j6P0e.116256$gJ3.30149@clgrps13...
I did see the techs once try to erase a hard drive with a bulk eraser.

I bet it worked, too! Probably a bit better than they hoped :^)

Eric Law

"Dan" wrote in message
...
I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?

Dan

This is a long standing fictional piece of work.
The platters cannot be removed from one hdd and read in another - even an
identical hdd.

The other work of fiction, electron microscopy.

someone2


NSM wrote:
"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:KkO0e.1408$Go4.35@trnddc05...


That was a fix that worked with very old drives (like 15-20 years old)

that

suffered from "stiction" but this is no longer an issue, these Maxtor

drives

burn out the motor driver chip, no amount of spinning and whacking it

around

will make it spin up.


Drill a hole in the side and blow compressed air in G?

I did see the techs once try to erase a hard drive with a bulk eraser.

N

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:51:37 GMT, Ken Weitzel
wrote:



PlainBill wrote:
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

Just a shot in the dark with the first thought that comes
to mind, if I may?

Would it be worth the effort to try telling the old drive/new
electronics combo how big it is? Instead of letting it tell
bios?

Good luck recovering the pics of your grand daughter's; know
it would devastate me...

Ken
Ken,

That would be the ideal solution - while I can solder, I'm a lot
better working with an IC with the pins on .1" centers than smt parts
- not that there's anything wrong with smt. Now if you would happen
to know of a source for the software used to program these drives...

PlainBill

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 04:23:53 GMT, "James Sweet"
wrote:


"PlainBill" wrote in message
.. .
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Well the first bit of advice is to *not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
some of the least reliable I've dealt with, obviously that's no help now
though.

You could try replacing the motor driver IC, it's usually a square 44 pin or
so SMT chip, replacing it requires some care and skill but it's doable.

James,

I tend to agree with you on Maxtor drives, but I have several around
that have been working perfectly for more than 3 years. As far as
replacing the motor IC... Well, there's a problem. I'm competent
when working on a standard DIP package with pins on .1" centers. I
think I could handle the flash chip with 8 pins on .05" centers. I'm
sure I'd be out of my depth on a chip with 64 pins on .03" centers.

PlainBill

In this case it isn't a 'stiction' problem. The failure is in the
controller, not the hda. I usually leave the computer on 24/7, but
it's kind of hard to replace the motherboard with power on. In this
case, the drive worked perfectly after the motherboard was replaced; i
went belly up when I moved it (power off) from the workbench to the
computer desk.

PlainBill

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:32:32 -0800, JR North
wrote:

It's sometimes possible to restart a drive that won't spin up by
removing the drive and holding it horizontally with the cables attached.
Start the computer and give the drive a very sharp rotational twist
around the drive axis. If you get it to boot, immediately back up. It's
better to let the 'puter run constantly, rather than shutting it down.
Drives rarely fail while running, unless they are very old. No spinup on
start is a much more common failure mode.
JR

PlainBill wrote:

Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

There are a few problems with the idea. The number one problem is my
lack of mechanical dexterity. I'm OK on things like sparkplugs, lug
nuts, and assembling kid's wagons, but when I get down to the really
delicate stuff, I'm SOL.

Picking up a used drive isn't likely - Maxtor just went into
production with this line. A new drive wouldn't be impossibly
expensive; as a matter of fact I have on right here! The problem is
the electronics board contains SOMETHING about the characteristics of
the drive. With 1 million bit serial chip, it could be a LOT of
information.

What you describe is pretty much what a data recovery place would do.
However, they presumably have the capability of matching the
controller characteristics to the drive. I don't.

PlainBill

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 09:33:04 -0500, Dan
wrote:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?

Dan

NSM wrote:
"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:KkO0e.1408$Go4.35@trnddc05...


That was a fix that worked with very old drives (like 15-20 years old)

that

suffered from "stiction" but this is no longer an issue, these Maxtor

drives

burn out the motor driver chip, no amount of spinning and whacking it

around

will make it spin up.


Drill a hole in the side and blow compressed air in G?

I did see the techs once try to erase a hard drive with a bulk eraser.

N

PlainBill wrote:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:51:37 GMT, Ken Weitzel
wrote:



PlainBill wrote:

Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

Just a shot in the dark with the first thought that comes
to mind, if I may?

Would it be worth the effort to try telling the old drive/new
electronics combo how big it is? Instead of letting it tell
bios?

Good luck recovering the pics of your grand daughter's; know
it would devastate me...

Ken

Ken,

That would be the ideal solution - while I can solder, I'm a lot
better working with an IC with the pins on .1" centers than smt parts
- not that there's anything wrong with smt. Now if you would happen
to know of a source for the software used to program these drives...

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

I was thinking of a much simpler solution... and one that
wouldn't run the risk of doing damage to the new controller
card and getting Maxtor upset in the process...

What I'd consider trying is to go into bios, and rather than
letting bios auto-detect the drive, instead entering the
heads/cylinders etc info yourself.

The downside to this is that you'd have to somehow get the
info first... from either Maxtor if they'd tell you, or
someone else who had a similar drive that does report the
203.9 size correctly.

Another thought that came to mind since the first post...
Maxtor's have drive limiter pins on them... not possible
that it was on one but not the other? I can't recall which
it is, but it's definitely one of the "end" ones. Look at
the little data sticker. One end pair will be marked as
the master/slave or something; the other end pair won't
even be mentioned. That one will be the size limiter.
Might be worth a shot.

Good luck.

Ken

PlainBill wrote:

There are a few problems with the idea. The number one problem is my
lack of mechanical dexterity. I'm OK on things like sparkplugs, lug
nuts, and assembling kid's wagons, but when I get down to the really
delicate stuff, I'm SOL.

Picking up a used drive isn't likely - Maxtor just went into
production with this line. A new drive wouldn't be impossibly
expensive; as a matter of fact I have on right here! The problem is
the electronics board contains SOMETHING about the characteristics of
the drive. With 1 million bit serial chip, it could be a LOT of
information.

What you describe is pretty much what a data recovery place would do.
However, they presumably have the capability of matching the
controller characteristics to the drive. I don't.

PlainBill


The EEROM has a map of bad sectors when the drive is low level
formatted at the factory. Changing the chip won't help unless both
drives had exactly the same bad sectors at the time they were formatted.

--
?

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

PlainBill wrote:

In this case it isn't a 'stiction' problem. The failure is in the
controller, not the hda. I usually leave the computer on 24/7, but
it's kind of hard to replace the motherboard with power on. In this
case, the drive worked perfectly after the motherboard was replaced; i
went belly up when I moved it (power off) from the workbench to the
computer desk.

PlainBill


Inspect all the SMD chips for hairline cracks and loose solder balls
under the leads. You might get lucky and repair the board. Did Maxtor
offer any guarantee to attempt to recover data from a drive that's still
in warranty?

--
?

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

*not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
some of the least reliable I've dealt with

I've had bood luck with the Diamondmax series, but I have seen plenty
of their cheap drives go bad. The drives they sell to Compaq etc. are
the low end, and I really do think the Diamondmax drives have better
quality control.

IMO WD drives are the worst. Clunk clunk clunk. Its probably one design
flaw that's not easy for them to change, but who cares WHICH part
causes you to lose your data.

Now that I think of it, I've only seen one bad Seagate, and it was
spindle bearing sticktion you could whap it on the side just right and
it would work fine. This only happened when the drive got cold and it
was about 8 years old at the time.

Seen one new bad Diamondmax, but honestly, I dropped it. It was only
from a height of about 1", but it hit a very thick and firmly supported
glass table. It hit right on the bottom.

Yes I have seen a few bad Maxtors, but they were not Diamondmax, they
were all either the kind you get from OfficeMax or something, or OEMs
in a Compaq or an Emachine or something. On the other hand I've seen
alot of WDs bad in 3 years, sometimes sooner. I lost some irreplacable
data on one of them and swore off of WD forever. If the Diamondmaxes
start failing me I'll go with Seagate, unless you have a better
suggestion.

JURB

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Now I know why they have air filters.

URB

wrote:

*not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
some of the least reliable I've dealt with

I've had bood luck with the Diamondmax series, but I have seen plenty
of their cheap drives go bad. The drives they sell to Compaq etc. are
the low end, and I really do think the Diamondmax drives have better
quality control.

IMO WD drives are the worst. Clunk clunk clunk. Its probably one design
flaw that's not easy for them to change, but who cares WHICH part
causes you to lose your data.

Now that I think of it, I've only seen one bad Seagate, and it was
spindle bearing sticktion you could whap it on the side just right and
it would work fine. This only happened when the drive got cold and it
was about 8 years old at the time.

Seen one new bad Diamondmax, but honestly, I dropped it. It was only
from a height of about 1", but it hit a very thick and firmly supported
glass table. It hit right on the bottom.

Yes I have seen a few bad Maxtors, but they were not Diamondmax, they
were all either the kind you get from OfficeMax or something, or OEMs
in a Compaq or an Emachine or something. On the other hand I've seen
alot of WDs bad in 3 years, sometimes sooner. I lost some irreplacable
data on one of them and swore off of WD forever. If the Diamondmaxes
start failing me I'll go with Seagate, unless you have a better
suggestion.

JURB


I've got piles of bad hard drives, and they cover a wide swath of
manufacturers. All of them have had bad models. I recently scrapped 25
Seagate 1004 hard drives that had been rebuilt and failed a second
time. If you listened to everyone, you would be afraid to use any hard
drive.

--
?

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

writes:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Yes, but in a relatively clean office environment, they won't die instantly.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ Mirror: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/
Repair | Main Table of Contents: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/REPAIR/
+Lasers | Sam's Laser FAQ: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/lasersam.htm
| Mirror Sites: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/REPAIR/F_mirror.html

Note: These links are hopefully temporary until we can sort out the excessive
traffic on Repairfaq.org.

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.

"Dan" wrote in message
...
I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?



Absolutely *do NOT* try this, at best you'll render the drive completely
unrecoverable.

"Dan" bravely wrote to "All" (25 Mar 05 09:33:04)
--- on the heady topic of " Hard drive repair (longish)"

Da From: Dan
Da Xref: aeinews sci.electronics.repair:44068

Da I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he
Da were to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them
Da into a working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the
Da one that has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've
Da always supposed that something along these lines must be what done by
Da those places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run
Da over, etc., no?

No, he could never align the radial position of the disks properly again.
What those data recovery places do is to install their own control
circuitry, motor drive, and heads onto the existing platters without
disturbing their alignment. Their control heads can separately
microstep between tracks to get the most reliable pickup.

One trick nobody here mentioned is to put the failing drive into the
freezer for an hour or so, then start it up cold. Apparently this can
sometimes give one last chance at making a backup.

A*s*i*m*o*v

.... Isn't Fourier and it's applications a bitch!

On 25 Mar 2005 16:48:47 -0800, put finger to keyboard
and composed:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Now I know why they have air filters.

URB

I used to service the old Control Data BK7 series disc drives. These
had removable disc packs with 10 platters. An undetected overnight
head crash would leave you with a drive full of metal debris and 20
disintegrated heads. In those days the flying height of a head was
about .0001", so the thickness of a fingerprint would have been enough
to cause head-disc interference, at least according to CDC's tech
notes. I've also seen a Seagate tech note that likened hard disc
technology to a Jumbo jet flying at supersonic speed 1m above the
ground, counting the blades of grass as they passed underneath.


- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.

"Dan" wrote in message
...
I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?

You could practice first by performing your own vasectomy, and then
reversing it. After that you might like to try hard drive servicing without
a clean room.

N

PlainBill wrote:
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill


try slaving the drive to a a machine with an existing XP or NT-based OS
and see if you can read the data

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:56:17 GMT, Ken Weitzel
wrote:



PlainBill wrote:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:51:37 GMT, Ken Weitzel
wrote:



PlainBill wrote:

Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

Just a shot in the dark with the first thought that comes
to mind, if I may?

Would it be worth the effort to try telling the old drive/new
electronics combo how big it is? Instead of letting it tell
bios?

Good luck recovering the pics of your grand daughter's; know
it would devastate me...

Ken

Ken,

That would be the ideal solution - while I can solder, I'm a lot
better working with an IC with the pins on .1" centers than smt parts
- not that there's anything wrong with smt. Now if you would happen
to know of a source for the software used to program these drives...

PlainBill

Hi PlainBill...

I was thinking of a much simpler solution... and one that
wouldn't run the risk of doing damage to the new controller
card and getting Maxtor upset in the process...

What I'd consider trying is to go into bios, and rather than
letting bios auto-detect the drive, instead entering the
heads/cylinders etc info yourself.

The downside to this is that you'd have to somehow get the
info first... from either Maxtor if they'd tell you, or
someone else who had a similar drive that does report the
203.9 size correctly.

Another thought that came to mind since the first post...
Maxtor's have drive limiter pins on them... not possible
that it was on one but not the other? I can't recall which
it is, but it's definitely one of the "end" ones. Look at
the little data sticker. One end pair will be marked as
the master/slave or something; the other end pair won't
even be mentioned. That one will be the size limiter.
Might be worth a shot.

Good luck.

Ken
Ken,

I've already tried setting the drive size manually without success.
Part of the problem lies with the way LBA-48 seems to work. The drive
parameters (C - H - S) are set to the maximum values (65,535 - 16 -
255) and then the drive is apparently queried by the BIOS and reports
the full capacity. One of my systems with a bios that supports LBA-48
does not allow me to set parameters manually, the other still errors
out.

On the other hand, your idea of using the capacit limit jumper is
something I never even thought of. I'll be giving it a try and
reporting success or failure.

If all else fails, I've got a few old expansion cards here. I've
decided that I will give myself some practice removing and
reinstalling SMT ICs on a scrap board before trying the real thing.

Thanks for the advice.

PlainBill

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:44:19 +1100, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

On 25 Mar 2005 16:48:47 -0800, put finger to keyboard
and composed:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Now I know why they have air filters.

URB

I used to service the old Control Data BK7 series disc drives. These
had removable disc packs with 10 platters. An undetected overnight
head crash would leave you with a drive full of metal debris and 20
disintegrated heads. In those days the flying height of a head was
about .0001", so the thickness of a fingerprint would have been enough
to cause head-disc interference, at least according to CDC's tech
notes. I've also seen a Seagate tech note that likened hard disc
technology to a Jumbo jet flying at supersonic speed 1m above the
ground, counting the blades of grass as they passed underneath.


- Franc Zabkar
Not a bad analogy. I also like the one: A hard drive head is a
little airplane flying around above your data, looking for a place to
crash.

PlainBill

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 06:07:48 -0600, "philo " "philo
wrote:

PlainBill wrote:
Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill


try slaving the drive to a a machine with an existing XP or NT-based OS
and see if you can read the data
I could give it a try before trying anything potentially destructive,
but I'm not optomistic. The new drive (and the old hda with the new
electronics board) spins up as soon as power is applied. The old
drive, (and the new hda with the old electronics board) won't spin up
under any circumstances.

PlainBill

On Friday, 25 Mar 2005 23:25:04 -500, "Asimov"
wrote:

"Dan" bravely wrote to "All" (25 Mar 05 09:33:04)
--- on the heady topic of " Hard drive repair (longish)"

Da From: Dan
Da Xref: aeinews sci.electronics.repair:44068

Da I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he
Da were to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them
Da into a working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the
Da one that has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've
Da always supposed that something along these lines must be what done by
Da those places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run
Da over, etc., no?

No, he could never align the radial position of the disks properly again.
What those data recovery places do is to install their own control
circuitry, motor drive, and heads onto the existing platters without
disturbing their alignment. Their control heads can separately
microstep between tracks to get the most reliable pickup.

One trick nobody here mentioned is to put the failing drive into the
freezer for an hour or so, then start it up cold. Apparently this can
sometimes give one last chance at making a backup.

A*s*i*m*o*v

... Isn't Fourier and it's applications a bitch!
This has been reported to work on drives with unreadable sectors. In
this case, it's a dead electronics board. Still, it's worth a shot if
the board has a crack which will close if cooled down.

PlainBill

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 00:35:07 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

PlainBill wrote:

There are a few problems with the idea. The number one problem is my
lack of mechanical dexterity. I'm OK on things like sparkplugs, lug
nuts, and assembling kid's wagons, but when I get down to the really
delicate stuff, I'm SOL.

Picking up a used drive isn't likely - Maxtor just went into
production with this line. A new drive wouldn't be impossibly
expensive; as a matter of fact I have on right here! The problem is
the electronics board contains SOMETHING about the characteristics of
the drive. With 1 million bit serial chip, it could be a LOT of
information.

What you describe is pretty much what a data recovery place would do.
However, they presumably have the capability of matching the
controller characteristics to the drive. I don't.

PlainBill


The EEROM has a map of bad sectors when the drive is low level
formatted at the factory. Changing the chip won't help unless both
drives had exactly the same bad sectors at the time they were formatted.

Mike, let's see if we can get on the same page here. I have a drive
with a bad electronics board - won't spin the drive motor. On that
board is a memory device which contains information for the bad
drive.

I have a second drive with a good electronics board, and a memory
device which contains information for the good drive. If I move the
good electronics board to the bad drive, the bad drive now spins up,
but is not useable - presumably because the memory device on the good
board contains the wrong information.

One possible option is to move the memory device from the bad board to
the good board. That way IN THEORY the good board now contains the
information for the 'bad' hda. I see two problems with this. First
of all, the soldering is at the limit of my ability. Second of all,
does the memory device contain information related to the board
itself?

Alternatively, if it were possible to read and save the information
from each each device, then write it back, I could avoid soldering.

PlainBill

What a clever idea. Unfortunately, I had mine done years ago, so I'll
need another subject. I've got my rusty tin snips & oven mits; drop
your pants, wise guy.

So how DO data recover services work their magic on disabled/damaged hdd's?

Dan

NSM wrote:
"Dan" wrote in message
...

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he were
to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them into a
working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the one that
has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try. I've always
supposed that something along these lines must be what done by those
places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires, run over,
etc., no?


You could practice first by performing your own vasectomy, and then
reversing it. After that you might like to try hard drive servicing without
a clean room.

N

PlainBill wrote:
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 06:07:48 -0600, "philo " "philo
wrote:


PlainBill wrote:

Well, I really blew it this time. About a month ago I replaced my 120
gig hard drive with a new 200 Gig Maxtor, model # 6B200P. In
violation of my common sense, I did NOT keep the old drive as a
backup. Well, the new drive went belly up last week - it wouldn't
even spin up. Some of the stuff on the drive is easily replaceable,
but many of the pictures of my Granddaughter cannot be replaced.

I requested an advance replacement from Maxtor, and when it arrived I
tried to repair the bad drive by swapping the electronics boards. I
verified these had identical part numbers. This had a limited sucess:
The new hda does not spin up with the old electronics board; the old
hda DOES spin up with the new board. However, the drive does not
properly report it's size. The new drive reports it is 203.9 Gig; the
new electronics board with the old hda reports it's size as 250 Gig,
then generates POST errors.

At this point I can restore the electronics boards to the proper hdas
and return the old drive to satisfy the terms of the advance
replacement, since I have not altered anything. The last option I am
considering is a part which appears to be a SST Serial flash chip. It
should be possible to swap these between boards if I unsolder with
chip-quik, but I'm not looking forward to it.

Does anyone have any experience with these drives, or any advice to
give?

PlainBill


try slaving the drive to a a machine with an existing XP or NT-based OS
and see if you can read the data

I could give it a try before trying anything potentially destructive,
but I'm not optomistic. The new drive (and the old hda with the new
electronics board) spins up as soon as power is applied. The old
drive, (and the new hda with the old electronics board) won't spin up
under any circumstances.

PlainBill

but you originally said that the old drive
with the new board on it DOES spin up...
if that is so...then even if seen incorrectly in the bios...
if you slave it to an existing OS...the data should still be readable

One possible option is to move the memory device from the bad board to
the good board. That way IN THEORY the good board now contains the
information for the 'bad' hda. I see two problems with this. First
of all, the soldering is at the limit of my ability. Second of all,
does the memory device contain information related to the board
itself?

Alternatively, if it were possible to read and save the information
from each each device, then write it back, I could avoid soldering.

PlainBill


I would start by getting a datasheet for the memory device from the
manufacture's website and see what's required to program it. If it's not
socketed though I'd be very hesitant to muck with the new drive, I still
think it'd be a better idea to find someone who can replace the motor driver
chip though.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
wrote:

*not* buy Maxtor drives as they've been
some of the least reliable I've dealt with

I've had bood luck with the Diamondmax series, but I have seen plenty
of their cheap drives go bad. The drives they sell to Compaq etc. are
the low end, and I really do think the Diamondmax drives have better
quality control.

IMO WD drives are the worst. Clunk clunk clunk. Its probably one design
flaw that's not easy for them to change, but who cares WHICH part
causes you to lose your data.

Now that I think of it, I've only seen one bad Seagate, and it was
spindle bearing sticktion you could whap it on the side just right and
it would work fine. This only happened when the drive got cold and it
was about 8 years old at the time.

Seen one new bad Diamondmax, but honestly, I dropped it. It was only
from a height of about 1", but it hit a very thick and firmly supported
glass table. It hit right on the bottom.

Yes I have seen a few bad Maxtors, but they were not Diamondmax, they
were all either the kind you get from OfficeMax or something, or OEMs
in a Compaq or an Emachine or something. On the other hand I've seen
alot of WDs bad in 3 years, sometimes sooner. I lost some irreplacable
data on one of them and swore off of WD forever. If the Diamondmaxes
start failing me I'll go with Seagate, unless you have a better
suggestion.

JURB



I've got a couple dead DiamondMax drives right here, they both go click
click click and won't read.

"Sam Goldwasser" wrote in message
...
writes:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Yes, but in a relatively clean office environment, they won't die
instantly.


I opened a 20MB (yes megabyte) drive once simply because it was 12 years old
and of zero real value and it continued to work for quite some time though
gradually developed some bad sectors. I suspect newer larger capacity drives
are a LOT more sensitive though, this thing used an actual stepper motor to
position the head assembly. It was fascinating to watch it read and write
though, I still have it on display on my bookshelf though a while back I
rotated the platter and it ripped one of the heads off the arm, oops.

"PlainBill" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:44:19 +1100, Franc Zabkar
wrote:

On 25 Mar 2005 16:48:47 -0800, put finger to keyboard
and composed:

I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea

Not stupid, but unworkable. Some things are determined by individual
tolerances of mechanical parts. If you could lowlevel format the drive
you might use the platters, but this does not retrieve lost data, it
erases everything.

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

Now I know why they have air filters.

URB

I used to service the old Control Data BK7 series disc drives. These
had removable disc packs with 10 platters. An undetected overnight
head crash would leave you with a drive full of metal debris and 20
disintegrated heads. In those days the flying height of a head was
about .0001", so the thickness of a fingerprint would have been enough
to cause head-disc interference, at least according to CDC's tech
notes. I've also seen a Seagate tech note that likened hard disc
technology to a Jumbo jet flying at supersonic speed 1m above the
ground, counting the blades of grass as they passed underneath.


- Franc Zabkar
Not a bad analogy. I also like the one: A hard drive head is a
little airplane flying around above your data, looking for a place to
crash.


Of course the "ground" is also quite a lot more level than any field of
grass you'd find on earth but it's interesting none the less.

"Asimov" wrote in message
...
"Dan" bravely wrote to "All" (25 Mar 05 09:33:04)
--- on the heady topic of " Hard drive repair (longish)"

Da From: Dan
Da Xref: aeinews sci.electronics.repair:44068

Da I'm sure there's some reason this is a stupid idea, but what if he
Da were to remove the disks from the old drive & carefully insert them
Da into a working drive? Maybe he could pick up a used example of the
Da one that has failed at a local used pc place & give this a try.
I've
Da always supposed that something along these lines must be what done
by
Da those places who obtain data from drives which have been in fires,
run
Da over, etc., no?

No, he could never align the radial position of the disks properly again.
What those data recovery places do is to install their own control
circuitry, motor drive, and heads onto the existing platters without
disturbing their alignment. Their control heads can separately
microstep between tracks to get the most reliable pickup.

One trick nobody here mentioned is to put the failing drive into the
freezer for an hour or so, then start it up cold. Apparently this can
sometimes give one last chance at making a backup.


Forgot about that one, I've had some luck with it, though in this case it's
highly unlikely since we know the motor controller is fried. The freezer
trick mostly just works with drives that spin up but can't read reliably.

"Dan" wrote in message
...
What a clever idea. Unfortunately, I had mine done years ago, so I'll
need another subject. I've got my rusty tin snips & oven mits; drop
your pants, wise guy.

So how DO data recover services work their magic on disabled/damaged
hdd's?



They do something conceptually similar, but they put the platters in their
own special (and *very* expensive equipment) in a clean room environment.
The read/write heads they use can be manually controlled to read the data, a
hard drive's onboard controller and mechanics are just not capable of this.

If all else fails, I've got a few old expansion cards here. I've
decided that I will give myself some practice removing and
reinstalling SMT ICs on a scrap board before trying the real thing.



Remove with a heat gun (mask surrounding components with something). To
reinstall, put some liquid flux on the pads, and dip the chip pins in it as
well. Put a small dab of hot glue or double sided tape on the bottom of the
chip, carefully align it and stick it in place, then form a ball of solder
on the end of the iron and carefully drag it across the pins while keeping
the ball fed with fresh solder. With some luck the flux wil keep the solder
from bridging and the chip will neatly be soldered down. I always thought
it'd be super hard to solder this stuff but it turned out it was easier than
I thought.

"Sam Goldwasser" bravely wrote to "All" (25 Mar 05 21:57:18)
--- on the heady topic of " Hard drive repair (longish)"

SG From: Sam Goldwasser
SG Xref: aeinews sci.electronics.repair:44137

SG writes:

Opening the platter chamber in a HD requires a clean room, or close to
it. I read once they had a running HD open somewhere and simply blowing
cigarette smoke at it caused it's immediate failure.

SG Yes, but in a relatively clean office environment, they won't die
SG instantly.

You can have a cleanroom environment by installing a hepa filter with
a boxer fan blowing air into a box large enough to work in. The
positive air flow keeps any external dust from falling in the box.
Be sure to run the fan for a while and vacuum the interior very well.
It is rudimentary but better than nothing. Don't forget the hair net!

A*s*i*m*o*v

.... Techs would rather pee on an electric fence for the light show