[mdlug] local data recovery service

[Dave Arbogast]

When Sony sold Apple all those drives with contaminated spindle bearing 
grease, we were the warranty shop that replaced them. I thought of a 
similar technique to recover the data for the customers. Using a cable 
extender for the bus and the power, I had the drive exterior to the 
computer with the replacement drive also on the bus but another address. 
Then. holding it on the end furthest from the spindle, I would hit it 
with my hand at startup in the plane of the disk platters. Do the 
physics, the inertia of the platters closes to my other hand - the new 
pivoting point for the mass, was different from the mass of the platters 
furthest from my hand. I was able to recover all the data for all the 
drives we did after that point.

I've done the same thing on several laptops with "clicking" drives. I've 
also had a few dozen with failed PCB that replacing the PCB allowed full 
recovery. I've never had a motor fail to spin after this technique, 
heads, or servo fail, but I'm sure it happens.

-dave
Robert Adkins wrote:

>	I (recently) spent roughly 3 hours lightly tapping on a laptop hard
>drive as a ghosted it to a replacement laptop hard drive. The hard drive
>would get "stuck" after a few moments of operation and if left idle, this
>would cause the OS or whatever operation that was being performed to kick
>out a fatal error message.
>
>	The light tapping "loosened" up the drive and kept it spinning long
>enough for the ghost process to play out.
>
>	No, it wasn't fun.
>
>	Would I do it again? If I must, then I must.
>
>	Did it actually end up saving me time? Heck yeah, installing Windows
>XP Pro from scratch, along with all the drivers, patches, applications and
>then patches for those applications would have taken me nearly 5 hours.
>
>	-Rob
>
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org 
>>[mailto:mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org] On Behalf Of Scott Webster Wood
>>Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 2:07 PM
>>To: MDLUG's Main discussion list
>>Subject: Re: [mdlug] local data recovery service
>>
>>Yeah, I have a laptop drive that started 'clicking' - the 
>>process made further complex with the fact it's a laptop 
>>drive and thus the inner workings are smaller and some shops 
>>can't deal with them.  Most places quoted me prices 
>>'starting' in the $600-1200 range and all had big disclaimers 
>>that this was just a base quote.
>>
>>SW
>>
>>----- Original Message ----
>>From: Jeff Hanson <jhansonxi at gmail.com>
>>To: MDLUG's Main discussion list <mdlug at mdlug.org>
>>Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 11:34:18 AM
>>Subject: Re: [mdlug] local data recovery service
>>
>>On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 9:33 AM, Novak, Louis (L.M.) 
>><lnovak1 at ford.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>> More details:
>>>
>>> Windows (sigh) won't boot. Boot reports hard disk error 7  
>>>      
>>>
>>The Dell 
>>    
>>
>>>disk utility reports read and time-out errors.
>>>
>>> Using an Ubuntu Live CD the drive is visible but does not 
>>>      
>>>
>>mount  as a 
>>    
>>
>>>secondary drive.
>>>      
>>>
>>That would imply an electronics or motor failure.  Fixing the 
>>electronics requires a matching PCB.  Fixing the motor 
>>requires a clean room ($$$$$$$).
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery
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