Killed by magnet | HDD examination
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- This HDD was destroyed in my previous video. In this video I take it apart to investigate if I can tell exactly what went wrong. And then I just fool around with it...
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'EDM Detection Mode' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC Attribution 3.0.
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'Carefree' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC Attribution 3.0.
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The magnet erased the "SA" or "Service area". The SA is a track before the MBR that you cannot access without special expensive hardware or reverse engineering.
The SA contain usually the drive geometry, a bad sector list, smart data, firmware extension, LBA translator (which include bad sector reallocation address)... Without the SA, the hard drive can't boot. The SA is usually at the very beginning or end of the disk, that's why the head in your dead drive stay most of his time in the centre.
Also, like Nevin Williams mentionned, you probably have erased the servo (data at the beginning of each sectors) that help the drive know his LBA position and rotating speed.
So a super strong magnet is not necessarily a sure way to perma-wipe a HDD?
@@TaiganTundra If you want to also damage the drive, than go for it. But keep in mind that the corruption caused to the SA / Servo will prevent you to run the drive after, to confirm you properly actually wiped everything.
If you want to perma wipe the drive and render it unusable, a other good solution you can do and actually visually inspect, would be to use that strong magnet, but then, you get flat screw driver, spin the disk then remove the oxide layer with the screw driver. You do all the surface until all the brown stuff is gone. Then you turn platter over and do it on the other side.
Thanks for all the kind comments and suggestions on what might have gone wrong with the drive!
In my video where I opened another magnetically killed HDD, I concluded that the data on the platters were simply wiped away by the magnet.
I still have a feeling that is the case - but I can't conclude it with certainty.
Especially after reading this from the pro's: www.supermagnete.de/eng/faq/What-is-the-safe-distance-that-I-need-to-keep-to-my-devices#hard-drive
But the 6x2" magnet is ridicously strong - even at some distance. Much more than my second-largest neo-magnet and the sizes that Supermagnete sells. So I wouldn't be surprised if the 6x2" is able to wipe data from the platters at some distance (~10 cm from the laptop in my case). It's just hard to prove :) I may need to revisit this magnet vs. HDD in the future...
the magnet messed up the low level format so the reader/head don't even know where it is
+brainiac75 Please do, this awesome!
did you check if it showed up in disk or device manager.
+brainiac75 I think you bend the head's arms, that's why you can hear a tiny weird sound when the head is moving. Old HDD contains a lot of magnetic elements, even on the disk itself, nowadays engineer make them less sensitive to magnetic fields, but with a your powerfull magnet, I think you can still kill one.
You clearly wipe everything on it (every single bit is a polarisation state so...) but this is not the major failure.
I'm not a pro, so I don't tell you "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS !!" and I'm French so forgive me my english skills aren't very good.
Bonne continuation :)
+brainiac75 I took one of my old harddrives apart to find the read/write arm was bent on the top platter which was why it was making noises and likely why it was causing windows to crash. It wasn't even my boot drive and it was causing massive system instability. Your magnet may have not only wiped the data but also bent the read/write head even just slightly.
The magnet removed the low-level formatting on the platter, that the drive's hardware needs to determine the characteristics of the drive, such as its actual RPM, velocity of the platter at the heads, and the spacing and location of the tracks. With those marks gone or damaged, the hard drive circuitry can't tell for sure if the platter is even turning, or how far the heads are from the platter's hub.
What might be interesting is determining if you've erased _all_ of the factory formatting: The heads appear to linger at certain locations before sweeping the disk's surface: is that because there's still some data there for the heads to lock onto, or is it just a physical coincidence or hard-wired spot? Does applying more magnetic disruption change the heads' behaviour?
+Nevin Williams
*That.*
Only other thing I can think of, but would say it's already improbable: the strong magnetic field permanently magnetized something in the heads.
superdau That'd also be interesting to see: what all parts of a hard-drive are susceptible (to a significant degree) to magnetic fields.
I know some parts are shielding, such as the mounts for the neodymium magnets that swing the heads: They're still attracted to a magnet, but they constrain the flux away from the platters. It might be interesting to see this property explored too.
+Nevin Williams It could also be that the head did crash into the platter and that destroyed the head. It could be a very slow crash (for example near the middle of the drive) or a very swift touch but it could be enough to destroy it, I think.
+Nevin Williams well he could take an hdd, open it and then hold a much smaller magnet close to it whilst spinnig, thus erasing only that particular area
+GiantPen23 +Nevin Williams or even carefully take one apart, then re assemble (to make sure you can) test, then if it is ok, disassemble again and only test one platter, use paper to protect it, and make sure it cant hit the magnet, after each test try the next plater, once all are tested you have a definite answer, i thought that the head position was determined by the force applied
its likely erased the servo tracking information
the drive could easily b erepaired if you have the million dollar equitment lol
That or something similar to that was my theory as well.
It's corrupted so it needed to be formatted then it woud work
@Creeper1105 no
HDD platters make nice mirrors!
+SteelSkin667 I know right, I think the first time ive ever truely seen myself was in a corrupted notebook hard drive platter... Sat there for like 25 minutes...
Your videos are well made, informative and clearly you are passionate for the subject matter. Thank you for sharing this
+YOA Ownage HD
Thanks for watching and commenting. Nice to know I'm on the kind side of TH-cam :)
+Brainiac75 magnet vs hard drive with the top off to see what it would really do
George Murray That's actually a good idea. A working HDD should be able to run without problems for a short time with the lid off. Maybe with some acrylic glass over to keep the worst dust particles out. Maybe it could visualize what effect the magnet has on the HDD.
do it plz
hmm youtube comments are broken again i cant see all replys
Probably the reader heads are damaged. I once took apart a hard drive (mainly to see how a hard drive worked). I pretty much killed it from my stupidity. the drive was then used to create an xbox prank video. after that, I smashed the deceased drive with a hammer.
Tracking data on the platters is most likely damaged.
Did you try looking into disk manager? Windows only shows actual usable partitions in My Computer. But now that you've opened it it's destroyed, forever.
I'm pretty sure the drive was damaged beyond repair. The drive would just constantly click and spin the disk up and down - even before I opened it :)
With all due respect to the magnet, Seagate drives really don't need much encouragement to get to the "click of death." There's a reason data centre admins steer well clear of them.
You messed up the data on the hard drive, the heads don't know where to go.
as soon as I saw clicking realized the heads were fucked
the sound of the head scraping against the platters made me cringe
It is a horrible sound... I turned the volume way down in editing to avoid maddening people. In real life the sound was unbearable.
This is pretty cool, I have a 3TB Seagate Barracuda that shit itself a while ago and I kinda want to dismantle it now
it almost looks like the read heads were bent up
Funny!! I learned Danish today and I learned something about HDDs! Subscribed for the long run, mate!
+Zurhairi Zohreen
Awesome! Glad to hear.
+brainiac75 say "fnugfri klud" 3 times in your next video :-P.
Nevin Williams is correct, the lower platter is pre -formatted with addressing and vital information necessary for the heads to know where they are at and fine tuning for reading and writing. Once erased all the ques necessary for the transfer of information and first transmission and hand shaking is lost. Heads do retries and verification and that is about it.
My guess would be that the basic magnetic structure of the platters has been damaged or destroyed. Mechanically it looks fine but magnetically it probably looks like a total mess. The computer is probably detecting it as a drive initially but when it comes to actually read the parameters of the drive it's getting rubbish so it doesn't show it in the drive listing. You might be able to plug it into a linux machine and get a bit more information about what's going wrong.
3:44 i am not an expert in hdds but i heard a scratching noise from the readwrite heads
What strikes me most about Danish is the simplicity of the words.
0:46 Repeating that Danish word wasn't very hard for me as I come from Germany and moved to Sweden.
The noise from the hard drive is because the heads have been bent by the magnet, and when passing to the disc, the heads are not aligning correctly. Also one of the heads may not be touching the disc and there for not reading all required bits. The hard drive may have not shown in in Explorer because it needed to be initialised.
The dreaded HDD click noise. Still triggers anxiety attacks after all these years.
"Alright, enough Danish lessons for today." 😂😂😂😂
3:54 disk sounds like a heart monitor machine or what ever you call the beeping heart noise
It could be tiny little floaters that hover very very close to the platter that are not the heads, but near the location of the heads that might've slipped, and flew away resulting the actual read/write heads to actually touch the platters (the read/write heads aren't actually supposed to touch the platters, it's only supposed to hover very close above them)
the hdd's controller also store some data on the platter itself if im not mistaken. if that data is wiped the controller will fail to bootstrap
Probably the service area got erased by the strong magnetic field. The strange head movement is due to the heads trying all the various backup service area locations on the HDD, and finding them all corrupted (a HDD always has multiple copies of the service area, in case a bad sector develops in one).
Basically what happened, is that the magnet set all of the poles on the platter to one polarity (north or south) erasing all data. There is a spot on the platter near the center of the platter that tells the head where it is, and that was erased. So, the head couldn't find where it was and read any data, effectively destroying it.
The read/write heads are broken , you may try to replace it for the drive to work again
Every millimeter surface of the disk have negative and e
positive attractions that are encoded like 101010 etc. When a powerful magnet gets to close to the shiny disk parts, the plates become demagnetized, rendering them useless to read or save info.
I think the head is trying to find the low-level format information and because of the magnet, this has all gone.
In the old days as part of maintenance an engineer could do a low-level format but it's just done at the factory these days and the only thing an installation engineer or a user can do is a high-level format.
Maybe the extreme magnetic field just threw the HDDs servo motors out of alignment? It might think it's moved the read head to the right position, but in reality it's off by a few millimeters.
The reading/writing head was bend up, so that it is too far away to read or write any Data to the disc. This distance is still to small to see anything.
Maybe the magnetisation was weakened by the magnet, and was strong enough for a big jolt outwards, but only retracted back in by the disk spinning and pushing it back. Another theory is that (as a fact) the distance between the disk and needle is thinner than a human hair (hence why its game over as soon as you open it) but the magnet bent it enough so it touches, however that theory would make sounds as soon as it started, so to refine that theory, the airflow that the disk produces is enough to create a cushion around the needles, until it retracts back inwards, but pushes when going out.
the reason why im saying inwards all the time is because if you listen and watch carefuly, the noise only happedns when the needle resets
I still have a couple of those magnets "sticking" around from HDD I smashed open like 20 years ago.
If you could, do a video on how you store all your magnets, it would be really cool and I think a lot of people will like it!
The reading arm got damaged. You ever see what happens to a machine that wants to move one way but you are preventing it form moving that way?
Try connecting it to your laptop and opening Disk Partitioning Program to see if it detects it. Run a cmd and start disk part program, check if it's working there, usually windows doesn't recognizes not working disks from the normal gui.
The hunting suggests it is trying to find the servo tracks which you successfully erased.
Your massive magnet magnetized the core (the spinny thing), and the head reader is being attracted to it. You can see it getting stuck @ 2:18 cool video!
3:54 Tactical Nuke Incoming!
the bomb has been planted
Terrorists win.
Mission failed, we'll get 'em next time.
The big magnet maked the screws magnetic because of this, the reader arm going to the magnetic parts ant makes the "click" sound.
Well, isn't the firmware stored partly on the magnetic discs?
If it got erased, it would not boot correctly because something vital is missing
Smie87 no it's on a flash chip
Smie87 is right.
No. The firmware is stored in the Controller which is there on the drive.
@@beedslolkuntus2070 Well, what do you think about that? www.securedatarecovery.com/services/hard-drive-recovery/firmware-damage
I think if you put the magnet near a floppy disk it will also erase data since floppy disks store data the same way like a HDD . Just that floppy disks are made of a different material.
The magnets demagnetized the magnets (or really screwed them up) that are used to control the read write heads and the magnet probably destroyed the low level on platter firmware. As a result the hard drive was completely rendered helpless. Data recycling companies often use these kind of magnets to completely destroy the low level formatted sector tracks and then the data so it will be gone forever. The magnet also probably warped the read write heads just enough short before a head crash but to prevent them from ever being able to read or write data anymore.
When it did that click, it seemed like it was trying to scan but couldn't.
Not sure if it was answered or not: those heads are not supposed to "touch" the disk like that. that is why it isn't working. they are out of alignment. after you opened it in a non sterile environment as well it just ensured it was totally screwed :P
If I were to take a guess I would say that the large neodymium magnet permanently changed the polarity of a ferromagnetic piece of the drive. As I don't know for sure, it would be cool to look for field lines in all of the pieces with some magnet viewing film.
based on the erratic movement of the heads id say you offset the magnetic field that it uses to control read position, you could have magnetized something that was not meant to be or you could have de magnetized something that was meant to be, or you could have changed how strong those neodymium magnets are, either by increasing or decreasing their strength
***** ok, my question i guess is how do the needles index their position, is it through field strength variation in witch case a bad bearing could mean the inability to read, or is it like a magnetic version of optical coder wheels and strips? where changing the position (if each platter has it) of the platter would have no effect and changing platters could not work no matter how much you format it if they don't have the same code ring?, if so why don't cd drives do that with just limit switches and dc motors instead of still having one or 2 limit switches anyway but having a stepper motor
It made me laugh when you ran the drive without the head guides. You're such a boss.
I love your videos! It's really interesting seeing magnetism demonstrated on camera with so much stuff, from HDDs to chemical elements. Cheers from Mexico!
+luneki
Thank you very much! Greetings from Denmark.
The reading arm without the head guide is just like "eww, no get it away"
The disk might not be working as the magnet may have corrupted something like the partition table or something, making it hard to boot from, or be recognised at all
It might be the identifier, Hard disk identifiers are sensitive to magnets, the identifier might be damaged and could not recognize the read files from the hard disk. (Off the bat I'm not really a computer genius, it's just my guess, reply if I got anything incorrect)
The carbon pads that make 'contact' with the platters are actually rather sensitive, so it is possible that the heads were offset. Another possibility is that the magnet corrupted the firmware, though that is unlikely as it is usually stored on solid state chips.
+SPEEDYxArcher
You could be right. The head/plate-distance has incredible low tolerances and is crucial for the HDD to work.
+SPEEDYxArcher My guess is that the magnet corrupted the boot sector of the drive - the firmware is fine, it's trying to scan properly, and the head stops where it needs to, but it just can't find the thing it's looking for.
+Ardusk if there were no boot sectors then drive would report no os erorr to the bios
Grzes kop I'm pretty sure that the "Error 2100: HDD0 (HardDisk Drive) initialization error" that we got in the last video is more serious than that. For a "No OS" error I imagine the computer needs to boot the hard drive, check for an OS, and then get back with a negative. If the boot sector is malformed, then it can't check for the OS because it simply doesn't know where to start looking.
In the hard drive the read/write head writes data by changing the magnetic charges on the disk. The big magnet must of changed all of the charges and made the read/write head confused.
maybe the read head was bent away from the disks a bit, just enough for it to not be able to read the data
This is really well researched and filmed, good job dude!
"Repeat after me. 'Electr... '" *skips 5 seconds*
This hard disk drive needs new platters and new read-write head
Damage may be on the circuit board, maybe something overheat from locking the arm or something.
what probably happened is that the magnet erased EVERYthing off of the drive, including data on how fast the drive spins, where the park/start zone is, and all the firmware stuff. Hmm, cool
Its either the usb to sata didnt deliver enough power or the magnet might have actually pulled the read head up
A SSD, Solid State Drive, is used for short-term data storage. So is the Hard Disk Drive, Which writes Low, Magnetic fields on the platter. But, dust is sort of a problem. A 3 NanoMeter clearance between the platter and the Head means that debree and dust scratch the platter, screwing up the head. Click read more for SSD and other info.
The Magnet may have not only "overlapped" the small magnetic field, BUT the read heads could have crashed into the platter.
Now, with SSD.
Solid State Drives are used for Short Term Data storage. The reason why is because SSD's use electrical currents to store data. These currents can "erode" overtime, so its best to keep it plugged in. These drives can not be hurt with a magnet.
maybe the reader eye laser thing got messed up? but it was still detecting there was no platter thing. so i dont know but i used to take the magnets out of good HDDs!
The heads sounded like they were scraping the disk slightly. The magnet may have misaligned something.
HDD forgot he is an HDD, now its an Toaster
The sound is coming from the heads hitting and bumping the sides of the platter from being bent from the magnet.
The magnet probably erased the low-level formatting of the drive, meaning the actual tracks.
I've seen a video before, though it was long ago, where someone opened up a hard drive, powered it up, and released the discs while they were spinning at full speed, you could do that to still get some fun out of this old busted hard drive!
+XANApwns
Hehe, that actually sounds a little scary. They could travel quite far and fast at the rate they're spinning.
I think in the setup he used, he had a small room where he put together a quarterpipe against the wall so they would travel up it and get some air
I wonder what would happen if you were to put it next to a 286 laptop running from floppy
drives.
Hard drives uses electromagnetic to write data in its sectors using the binary code 1's and 0's. 1's are magnetized and 0's are demagnetized. By applying a magnet to it your hard drive you turned all the 0's in to 1's braking the binary code. This is why the hard drive can't be read.
Hi,
Either the header to disk gap is misaligned(increased) due to the pull of the magnet or the magnet which moves the header in the assembly lost its power due to domain misalignment.
you most likely scrambled the platters with the magnet.
something may have been bent by the magnetic force?
It could have erased most of the low level data for the drive. Although considering the heads still move, they could have just been damaged.
You've wiped out the low level format that's done at the factory. Only the factory can restore this formatting scheme.
try to put the disc platters in brand new hdd
why would he do that?
İ dunno
It might not be a bad idea. Maybe something other than the platters was damaged.
Unless he has a clean room, the risk of getting some sort of dust or contaminate in the new hard drive is relatively high.
Can you attach a glass plate over the HDD and run it with a magnet ?
I believe that when the drive is manufactured some data is placed on it that will tell the drive what to do. Perhaps the magnet erased that supposed data.
Brian, your videos are very instructive about neo-mag's and with PC Hard Drives! I indeed like your videos and I wish you very good luck with it!
+[OFFICIAL] xXxFTM2XxX (FranciscoTheMan2)
Thank you very much :)
The Magnet destroys the propper reading distance to the discs so it can't find the boot sector anymore...
Possibly motor damage, with an incorrect speed, the heads are unable to correctly read data
I think what happened is the magnet erased the part of the hard drive that tells the head where to start reading (or something along those lines). 😺
i do this to all HDD's that i get rid of, put a massive magnet on top and it erases the track info and sectors, etc and the heads don't know where to read so they just click.
It's also possible the heads are damaged so it can't read it's own capacity and refuses to output data to the computer.
the normal hard drive seems to be working properly.
I want to take a HDD apart now just for those platters. They're very nice looking.
I'm not sure I understand how harddrive RPMs work...if the platters spin at 120 RPM, how does that equal 7200? Are there 60 layers to all the platters in total?
It would be good if you could somehow read the lowest level of the hard drive. Maybe it's even possible from within the OS.
To get recognize the harddrive you have to connect firstly the data cable to USB pc and then the energy cable. If you dont follow these steps Windows will not detect the harddrive
some HDDs use magnetic fields to determine if each bit is a 0 or a 1. using a giant magnet can secretly screw up the magnetization and the magnet itself.
hope this helps.
Hard drives have pretty powerful magnets inside them maybe the big magnet moved them?
Do you think that your Giant magnet might of breeched the shielding of the HDD's magnet, thereby altering the internal HDD's own Nxx value?
That's unlikely. Neodymium magnets have high coercivity, so they are very hard to demagnetize/degauss with another magnet.
Thanks for watching!
My pleasure and thank you.
The magnet distorted the electrical blip made by the memory process rendering it useless
Try exposing the drive to a decreasing AC field?
That is the best way to destroy hdd data!
The drive seems intact, but it's completely unusable! Very effective!
Even more than shooting nails through it (Snowcrash)!!
Or just smash it down with a hammer a couple times.
Electronic screw tiger set? I hope i did it right.
The magnet destroyed the telemetry data of the drive stored at negative cylinders. There are tools available to trick the drive to run external firmware and emulate the telemetry data to allow the drive to be retested. Even though the drives OS is in flash all of it's parameters are available only via reading the factory programmed platters. hddguru.com has info details and tools. I've gone as far as use software to emulate the firmware on a SATA I drive and actually recover some data and swap PCB from donor drive. Otherwise off to the pro for the real magic.
could you make a video to see if you can recover the drive ?