Things I've done before to successfully recover a drive: - open it up like you did, but hold it upside down to avoid as much dust as possible. Move the head a little bit. That got one unstuck. Was lucky I guess. Worked well after that! - one didn't start until I preheated it in the oven on 50C for a few minutes. Then, it would work reliably. That was a very old drive with a stepper motor - replace a PCB from another drive of the same type. Not doable anymore with "modern" hard drives as they are mostly mated and you'd need additional tools/expertise probably beyond an amateur's means
There's a screw that goes through the cover into the top of the heastack pivot as you mentioned. This needs to be torqued up to the PRECISE setting with the cover on, they support each other, otherwise the stack alignment is off, that's why your platters were stiff with the head over them. It's a shame my solution didn't work. It worked 3 times out of 4 for me. As soon as I saw how clean your contacts were I knew it wasn't the issue, when they oxidise they go an oily colour like diesel on a wet road!
By opening the Hard Drive, exposed it to the air, which is bad because there is certain amounts of pressure in the drive that allows the drive to work. Also, there is bits of dust that you can't see got into the platter and destroyed the drive as a speck of dust or dirt like this could scratch up the surface. That's why they make it hard to open these drives because you can't use them afterwards.
I once had a WD HDD where the seal got sliced when I attempted to mount the drive into a system. Drive was immediately rendered failed. It was an older 160GB IDE drive.
It’s quite odd that the hard drives in the Toshiba series laptops seem to have HD issues, I have a Techra 520 from the early nineties that has been through two drives while another Dell has its original drive still working in it from the same era.
it may well be willing to read and write with the cover off though based upon looks, should hook it up to a usb 3.0 to ide/sata and copy any data it has on it to another.
When this happens just gently tap the hard drive till it spins up. Next recover anything you can off the computer and install a bigger drive or a SSD. If its a SSS you are installing make sure it can get some cooling ❤
Doing this for viewer requests, so no, not exactly so simple. Attempting to resurrect the drive so I can boot into the 10 year untouched installation on it.
it may only like having its platter uncovered, if it'll pick up and read and write in windows you should extract all the data you can from it while it lives
That's really bad. You'll freeze the bearing and the drive will have frozen water on the top and inside of it. There will be condensation on the platters and you'll freeze the motor.
@NatK2010 Probably but i'd save any data off it in any way it will work first before experiments, that way he has nothing to lose with experiments to revive it.
@@patg108 Why would you do it with your data on it anyway? Of course you would back it up. Why wouldn't you? I know, I have done it once just messing around, but still...
@NatK2010 to see if it can work again properly or even close. The only reason for it to be open or in a odd position or way is just to get it to function temporarily (my father has a 3.5 inch 1 Tb hdd that only functions upside-down for instance) Basically just satisfying the finicky hardware's quirks to get it to play nice lol. If the drive would operate normally then there is no need to do odd things to it. Of course the priority is to save any Data that is of use or value and archive it on something else. The rest is just to play around with tricks for fun to see if i can get more use out of the hardware. And what about putting it in a Ziplock bag first? To prevent condensation (it works on playstation analog sticks that have become sticky as a means to remove it, and to avoid affecting the electronic components you could disassemble the controller 1st and then only have those parts in the freezer overnight or a day or so)
I think the WD drives from that time period all suffer after sitting for so long for whatever reason. I have an old laptop that only had 3 months of use in its whole life,it was working perfectly the last time the original owner used it then it sat unused for 10 years or so without being thrown around or abused in some way. When i bought the laptop for my collection since it was in mint condition for its age, the hard drive was the same as this one and the symptoms were the same and it was not the first one i saw doing this either
could be a bad headstack. Or firmware.. Swapping PCBs on newer drives doesn't work if the headstack is bad, or one of the heads has failed, or if there's platter damage. Also you'd need to swap the BIOS chip on the PCB from the old PCB to the new one for it to work. Even though the PCB #'s and the drive model is the same, there could be differences in the service area or track/sector layout. I've only been able to do this with older drives, newer ones just dont recognize or click when spun up.
You should do a video on harddrives you have that you believe and know to be dead and test and try to resurrect those that you know to be dead. And in the meanwhile pull whatever data is worth saving off of those that live to another for archival
While I don't specialize in data recovery, I do have numerous videos up on the channel of opening up old failed HDDs to show their internals and how they work. The only reason I tried to recover this one was due to request from viewers. I doubted it was gonna work, but I tried it anyway.
@@CubeComputerChannel They won't as there's firmware on the platters as well as in a ROM chip, so if that doesn't get read it doesn't show up. I'm wondering if the firmware has gone bad because of "bit rot" but it doesn't seem to have been sat long enough. Either that or head failure. I just subbed too. A fellow tinkerer! Hi there! :)
It is dead anyway, he knows what he is doing, he even mentions don't do it unless you have a clean room and critical data. Did you not watch the video?
There exist logical ways to try to fix a HDD drive externally via software, but definitelly not by tearing it down or punching at it. So yes, this is brainless.
@@Tressie13 Software is not gonna fix a mechanical failure in a piece of hardware. That would be like using software to unseize a car engine. As mentioned in the video, the procedures I was using were not the proper way of doing it, and should not be treated as such. If I was interested in recovering the data from it, I would have sent it off to have it done.
@@CubeComputerChannel Still nonsense. You can actually fully recover an aparently dead HDD, or partialy make it work if it has damaged sectors that won't make it boot, or at least properly diagnose it to say it is irrecoverable usig numerous tools for each case, but you didn't even tried anything and started doing this ridiculous meaningless stuff. Don't make an "atempting to resurrect the failed hard drive..." this absurd and misinformed way then.
Your contacts on the drive side where you plug it into the laptop, is quite dirty. You did'nt clean them.... Second: Get yourself some nail clippers and cut those diggers of yours.
Things I've done before to successfully recover a drive:
- open it up like you did, but hold it upside down to avoid as much dust as possible. Move the head a little bit. That got one unstuck. Was lucky I guess. Worked well after that!
- one didn't start until I preheated it in the oven on 50C for a few minutes. Then, it would work reliably. That was a very old drive with a stepper motor
- replace a PCB from another drive of the same type. Not doable anymore with "modern" hard drives as they are mostly mated and you'd need additional tools/expertise probably beyond an amateur's means
There's a screw that goes through the cover into the top of the heastack pivot as you mentioned. This needs to be torqued up to the PRECISE setting with the cover on, they support each other, otherwise the stack alignment is off, that's why your platters were stiff with the head over them. It's a shame my solution didn't work. It worked 3 times out of 4 for me. As soon as I saw how clean your contacts were I knew it wasn't the issue, when they oxidise they go an oily colour like diesel on a wet road!
I would clean those contacts with school rubber, scrubbing it... They would shine like you had polished them...
By opening the Hard Drive, exposed it to the air, which is bad because there is certain amounts of pressure in the drive that allows the drive to work. Also, there is bits of dust that you can't see got into the platter and destroyed the drive as a speck of dust or dirt like this could scratch up the surface. That's why they make it hard to open these drives because you can't use them afterwards.
I once had a WD HDD where the seal got sliced when I attempted to mount the drive into a system. Drive was immediately rendered failed. It was an older 160GB IDE drive.
@CubeComputerChannel Oh no. I didn't think that could happen.
It’s quite odd that the hard drives in the Toshiba series laptops seem to have HD issues, I have a Techra 520 from the early nineties that has been through two drives while another Dell has its original drive still working in it from the same era.
It's dead Jim
it may well be willing to read and write with the cover off though based upon looks, should hook it up to a usb 3.0 to ide/sata and copy any data it has on it to another.
When this happens just gently tap the hard drive till it spins up. Next recover anything you can off the computer and install a bigger drive or a SSD. If its a SSS you are installing make sure it can get some cooling ❤
I would just replace the hard drive with a Ssd drive simple
Doing this for viewer requests, so no, not exactly so simple. Attempting to resurrect the drive so I can boot into the 10 year untouched installation on it.
it may only like having its platter uncovered, if it'll pick up and read and write in windows you should extract all the data you can from it while it lives
what about putting it in the freezer? ive heard others suggest that
That's really bad. You'll freeze the bearing and the drive will have frozen water on the top and inside of it. There will be condensation on the platters and you'll freeze the motor.
I plan to try heat and see if that gets it working.
@NatK2010 Probably but i'd save any data off it in any way it will work first before experiments, that way he has nothing to lose with experiments to revive it.
@@patg108 Why would you do it with your data on it anyway? Of course you would back it up. Why wouldn't you? I know, I have done it once just messing around, but still...
@NatK2010 to see if it can work again properly or even close.
The only reason for it to be open or in a odd position or way is just to get it to function temporarily (my father has a 3.5 inch 1 Tb hdd that only functions upside-down for instance) Basically just satisfying the finicky hardware's quirks to get it to play nice lol. If the drive would operate normally then there is no need to do odd things to it.
Of course the priority is to save any Data that is of use or value and archive it on something else.
The rest is just to play around with tricks for fun to see if i can get more use out of the hardware.
And what about putting it in a Ziplock bag first? To prevent condensation (it works on playstation analog sticks that have become sticky as a means to remove it, and to avoid affecting the electronic components you could disassemble the controller 1st and then only have those parts in the freezer overnight or a day or so)
I just subscribed to your UA-cam channel today i like computers like you
i hope this is an early april fools
I think the WD drives from that time period all suffer after sitting for so long for whatever reason. I have an old laptop that only had 3 months of use in its whole life,it was working perfectly the last time the original owner used it then it sat unused for 10 years or so without being thrown around or abused in some way. When i bought the laptop for my collection since it was in mint condition for its age, the hard drive was the same as this one and the symptoms were the same and it was not the first one i saw doing this either
could be a bad headstack. Or firmware.. Swapping PCBs on newer drives doesn't work if the headstack is bad, or one of the heads has failed, or if there's platter damage. Also you'd need to swap the BIOS chip on the PCB from the old PCB to the new one for it to work. Even though the PCB #'s and the drive model is the same, there could be differences in the service area or track/sector layout. I've only been able to do this with older drives, newer ones just dont recognize or click when spun up.
y not hook it up to anethor pc by usa and see what it does thats or update it with a ssd drive
I hooked it up to another system in the video via SATA hotswap. It didn't detect.
You should do a video on harddrives you have that you believe and know to be dead and test and try to resurrect those that you know to be dead. And in the meanwhile pull whatever data is worth saving off of those that live to another for archival
While I don't specialize in data recovery, I do have numerous videos up on the channel of opening up old failed HDDs to show their internals and how they work. The only reason I tried to recover this one was due to request from viewers. I doubted it was gonna work, but I tried it anyway.
@@CubeComputerChannel just saying it'd be fun to show off ones that aren't covered. And it wasn't showing up via usb even when opened?
@@patg108 It wasn't being detected at all.
@@CubeComputerChannel They won't as there's firmware on the platters as well as in a ROM chip, so if that doesn't get read it doesn't show up. I'm wondering if the firmware has gone bad because of "bit rot" but it doesn't seem to have been sat long enough. Either that or head failure.
I just subbed too. A fellow tinkerer! Hi there! :)
sticktion either the heads are stuck or the spindle.
Just buy an SSD! They are not cost a lot! Also this laptop will be faster!
Honestly, you have no idea what you are doing, everything wrong here.
It is dead anyway, he knows what he is doing, he even mentions don't do it unless you have a clean room and critical data. Did you not watch the video?
Everyone is an expert..
There exist logical ways to try to fix a HDD drive externally via software, but definitelly not by tearing it down or punching at it. So yes, this is brainless.
@@Tressie13 Software is not gonna fix a mechanical failure in a piece of hardware. That would be like using software to unseize a car engine. As mentioned in the video, the procedures I was using were not the proper way of doing it, and should not be treated as such. If I was interested in recovering the data from it, I would have sent it off to have it done.
@@CubeComputerChannel Still nonsense. You can actually fully recover an aparently dead HDD, or partialy make it work if it has damaged sectors that won't make it boot, or at least properly diagnose it to say it is irrecoverable usig numerous tools for each case, but you didn't even tried anything and started doing this ridiculous meaningless stuff. Don't make an "atempting to resurrect the failed hard drive..." this absurd and misinformed way then.
Your contacts on the drive side where you plug it into the laptop, is quite dirty. You did'nt clean them.... Second: Get yourself some nail clippers and cut those diggers of yours.