I like that you’re honest. Most data recovery service dudes will act as if opening your hard drive will cause permanent damage just so you can call them for help and pay up.
These fucking data recovery dudes are mad pei , they let down all of your hopes and asking stupid questions and doesn't have guts to except the challenge , ones they heard about you did open your hard drive ,that's it " I am not touching it " world end up, life is under the thread , I am dying , I m blind , I say keep opening bloody hard disk ,you one day learns things.
Fascinating to see how these devices work. They are more fragile than I thought. My WD drive is well out of warranty. I think I will crack open the case and see if the platters are intact since I have no idea what caused my drive failure. Thanks for the tech lesson!
Actually, the read heads are somewhat easy to replace. They have sort of a springy head so the reader can be repelled by the individual magnetic pulls. That springiness also allows for flexibility between platter thicknesses. and that thing about the formatting, all read heads I've seen are the same, they all same amount of turns in the copper coil, and no chip. This means the only electronics in it is the ribbon wire, coil, and heads. The chip that controls the movement is either on a board inside the enclosure, or on the outer board. To make a long story short, just unplug the reader, unscrew the plastic guide thing that keeps the heads from going too far from the platter, remove the top neodymium magnet, and remove the read heads. Installation: Unless you plan to save the platters, you don't have to worry about scratching them when removing the heads, just don't let it touch the ones in the new drive. To install them, just do the same thing to remove the damaged heads, then slide the new ones into the plastic guide and screw it down and it should be good to go. Just don't forget to put the magnet back and plug the read head in to the board. Edit: Nvm, I guess there's more to it then that: th-cam.com/video/J9P4UadRdNA/w-d-xo.html Well, I was mostly right.
have a disk with me to know what happened to it and it no longer works and I want to fix it in the strongest coefficient where it is, I want what is inside it, it is very important to me, Can you show me the strongest coefficient for it
Wow, that's awesome. I'm thinking of doing this myself so I have got questions. Will it work if I swap the head using the same model, size, first 3 digits of serial number and same firmware version? If it will work, can I use hddsuperclone to clone the hard drive or I still have to use PC3000??
It is possible to recover data from a hard drive with this type of damage. You won't get information that is on the damaged part... but all other areas are recoverable. You just have to have data recovery software that will ignore the read error that you will get when it gets to the end of the drive... Basically, since the heads are damaged, they would be replaced... You will see what you can get before the new ones get damaged, replace the heads again, and start reading again... As long as you get a set of heads that survive going over the damaged area.. you'll get everything on the inner part of the drive that isn't damaged. Which from your video is about 90%-95% of the data. The alignment issues you are talking about are with the platters being aligned with each other. When you replace the heads, you use paper to keep them from crashing on each other... you then remove the paper seperaters as you seat the heads on the HDD platters.
no the damaged area would just damage the new set of heads put on the system, Also where it reads to seek and read track 0 is messed up, so it will never be able to become ready UNLESS u turn the head off that reads that platter unless all the platters have that damage.
Thanks for posting. Just for folks to be aware, if you intend to open a HDD, you need to do it in a clean environment. Airborne dust is sufficient to cause problems when it settles on the platter. Finger prints on the platter are a disaster. Cover your hair and clothing, wear neoprene (or touch sensitive) gloves. Generally parts (such as heads) are not interchangeable. If there is annular scoring as in this example, other tracks/ sectors may be readable. If he scoring is a spiral, that crosses all data tracks and renders the drive scrap metal. You need good light and the steady hands of a surgeon. :) :)
I recently discovered your channel to see if I could possible save what I thought was a stuck head on my 2TB HDD and I was confident in opening the drive and unjamming the heads until I found out that all three of my platters had 3-5 rings of very deep scratches...moral of the story: remove your HDDs before transporting a PC
I have a Samsung 2.5" HDD, it literally flew and fell on hard floor (turned off), and then... it still worked flawlessly, and was still working last time I checked... But when turned on, even a light shock can mean goodbye for good.
the best thing is to use an ssd i have 4 hdds in my Alienware 17 r2 i have 1x(512gb m.2) and 2 (256gb m.2) and 1 (4tb hdd for steam. all my personal stuff is on a few 128gb sand disk usb drives. my pics and over important docs are on DVDs nobody uses them but they are the best my be slow at reading but will never fail unless you scratch them
The worked for me after two pc shops refused to open the unreadable hard drive. as soon as I opened the case and saw it wasn't in a parked position I figured it was stuck and rotated counterclockwise the disc while dragging the reader head back to parked position and that fixed it. Thanks for sharing!
@@idiosyncrazy1980 For an even dirtier fix put the drive on its side and give it a bump into a table. Worked for me, got the drive going but I thought it would work again after that which it did not.
most drives can be forced to read specific tracks with specialized interfaces and software, usually provided thru the manufacturer. this can allow retrieval of partial data from non damaged areas, but only if the heads are undamaged. if heads are non functional, some services have success by actually removing the disc platters and mounting them into a new case with good heads, much like a manufacturing process. inspection at microscope levels to determine suitability is essential before choosing what to do, as even minute surface defects will ruin subsequent heads that attempt access to those areas. most recover is a multistep process, first to enable reliable mechanical operation, then read as much data into an external image file, and finally parse the recovered image file for data structure and useable data. with many systems, the fragmentation of files is extensive and often very time consuming makingit difficult to recover individual consecutive data (however, even partial data can be useful)
Amazing info! Thank you very much! I have a ~7 yr old Seagate Barracuda 360GB hard disk, that fell sick few months ago (dunno how, never fell down or something). Luckily, i got a new WD 1TB on time and transferred 98% data safely to the new hdd. I was not able to run it for more than 20-30 mins (temps going 45C+ then BSOD) till 2 days ago when i discovered that it is making one clicking sound then fails to be detected at startup. I just backed up my data before the hdd died totally.
THank you so much man! I don't know yet if this will work for me, but thanks for explaining what are REALLY the risks to open the HD... vs almost all experts as you said who just say "no ! don't try !!!! you gonna lose all!!"
My several LaCie d2 / Quadras have NEVER fallen over! The base plate foot thing is wider than the drive housing! Drives always kept in a safe environment! Since 2007 < J.C.
I am watching the third video of your hdd help and I am asking my self why I didn't open any. Thank you for inspiration and for lot of helpful informations! :)
after a head crash, I would expect the head(s) to be "junk", so I would not expect them to work, even on undamaged parts of the disk; in the old days, with ferromagnetic coating, one could easily see the "furrow" that was ploughed by the head, and examining the head would also show the magnetic material clogging and/or having scratched up the head(s); good explanation, great video! BTW, I don't think you have to align "bits" on the surfaces, they would automagically align when the disks are reformatted (deep, including timing tracks); a bigger problem IMO would be (re)balancing the disks on the spindle, to avoid "wobble" when they turn at high speed? probably the falling over caused ALL of the "top" heads to "bounce" off the surface, and start pushing up material
You can't "force" the drive into the read position! Data recovery centres CAN recover data from such drives and it is likely they could have recovered the data off this drive, prior to dismantling.(obviously there will be some data that cannot be recovered where the heads have crashed into the platter). It does depend on the ability to use the original head (or if they can install new r/w heads). Recovery centres have specialised software to step the heads and control which track is read. The data DOES NOT have to align vertically between platters. There is some form of alignment based purely on the relationship between the heads and how they are mounted on the drive, but this has nothing to do with VERTICAL data alignment. Today's high capacity drives (usually) have logical allocations. This means the drive to the "end user" may be described for example as 2048 tracks and two r/w heads, while in practice, the physical device may have hardware that uses two platters and four heads. The computer requests the drive to write on track 1056, but the hard drive "logically" locates the appropriate track that "represents" track number 1056. This track could be on the second platter, read and written by head three. The computer does not need to know this logical allocation, this is handled by the embedded software on the hard drive.
Praise the lord and all mystic creatures! Not everybody (including the incompetent car mechanics in the video) is out of his mind. Fills me with hope for humanity. I can not understand why it's not obvious to everybody that 99.9% of the data on the drive was fine BEFORE that """""expert""""" violantly destroyed it while spitting out nonsense about sky being blue, motor rotates and knife doing scratchy noises. DJ Hard Disk in da house.
@@eugenkeller exactly LOL these noobs who dont know anything about data recovery talk bout head crashes like its the worst thing but guy at ontrack could recover 99% of data so easy even in bad hc cases
I have taken the lid off of a working hard drive and used it that way. It will work. Probably not very long. But I was able to read files etc. Not recommended for data recovery, but fun to see it work.
How cool was to watch this vid... made with patience, care and taking us with you in the curiosity of checking every single piece... thank you for the trip, congrats for a great vid!
Nice video with good explanation delivered with patience. I liked everything but liked most the bit where you made effort to improve camera focus so the heads became clearly visible.
Ok. A drive can be in any direction. As long as you don't move it when it's running, it's all good. Proof : "According to several manufacturers, mounting a 3/5″ hard drive horizontally, vertically, or sideways doesn’t affect the hard drive life significantly. These are statements taken from the hard drive literature at each manufacturer’s website; it’s four years old but things probably haven’t changed much. Hitachi: The drive will operate in all axes (6 directions). Performance and error rate will stay within specification limits if the drive is operated in the other orientations from which it was formatted. Western Digital: Physical mounting of the drive: WD drives will function normally whether they are mounted sideways or upside down (any X, Y, Z orientation). Maxtor: The hard drive can be mounted in any orientation. Samsung: As long as it is securely attached to the chassis, hard disk drives may be mounted either horizontally or vertically depending on how your computer’s case is constructed."
But, if for example you don't run a drive laying down (horizontal), you are adding a very slight stress on the head because they are designed to move horizontally. It takes less energy to make the heads travel horizontally than vertically. (The difference is way too small to be significant). But i would never make the claim that running hard drives in any other ways beside horizontally, will lead to a hard drive failure. That's just rubbish.
I have the same problem... I purchased a 4tb Seagate external drive, I then proceeded to transfer 20 years of data from 4 smaller external hard drives, totalling around 3tb, onto it. I formatted each one as I finished & used them for other things.. About a week later I was vacuuming, caught the external drives power lead under a table, this caused the drive to fall 2" onto its side & it immediately emitted a nasty screaming/grinding/rotating noise, in the same way that one is.. I strongly suspect my platters now look exactly the same as your one.. I will open it at some point to see, I`ve been avoiding it as I`m kinda hoping it will miraculously fix itself, even though I`m 99% sure its now permanently dead. The moral of the story is, always back things up at least twice... I also think I`ll be wrapping my external drives in a couple of layers of bubblewrap in future, just in case..
Indeed that was kinda foolish, to have the opportunity to make a proper backup (having the data on one device only is _not_ a backup), and yet use the older HDDs to hord moar data, probably less worthwhile than those 3TB... You could have recovered part of the older data from those still working drives, depending on how much new data had been written on them since. The damaged HDD could still be partially recovered by a professional data recovery company, if you haven't made a foolish attempt to open it in dusty environment and screw it up for good, but of course it would cost a lotta money, about a whore's day (depending on where you are located it might even be worth ten days of a whore's work, or a kidney).
The heads were probably destroyed when it scratched the drive. The heads would servo would just search across the media for a reference point - but with no heads, that was impossible. With a replaced head set, you could have possibly gotten some data. If you magnified 80k x you'd still be unable to see the actual head. What you zoomed in on were probably like pre-amps that the heads use to amplify the electron state. NO CHANCE those heads could work once they've hit each other.
Not sure if platter replacement is completely impossible, hard drive always uses one head at once and i guess it compensates misalignment and eccentricity a little during rotation. But it's just my guess. I believe tracks are too dense to be able to make hard drive perfect mechanically.
the reason its scraping or making that sound when you're turning the disk with it powered off and the head is on the disk, is that when its powered up the air creates a path inbetween the head and the disk which makes it kind of float. kinda like an air hockey table.
have a disk with me to know what happened to it and it no longer works and I want to fix it in the strongest coefficient where it is, I want what is inside it, it is very important to me, Can you show me the strongest coefficient for it
This is why most folks should be getting SSDs, they are not 100% indestructible (You shouldn't be really throwing a SSD like a Frisbee LOL but they could 95% take a drop and still run like a champ.
They said the heads don't touch the surface of the disc while spinning because the air friction slightly lift it up but at 5:35 I can hear noise when it reaches the scratch area which means the heads are in contact with the disc while reading data.
1) The cover is off, as the guy said (one of the few smart things he said in this video) it might mess up the air flow which is required for the heads to fly above the platters - at an extremely small distance though. 2) The deep scratches alter the platters' surface, creating irregularities which look small with the naked eye but are enormous compared with the heads' size and the distance at which they normally fly over the platters - just imagine a Formula 1 car driving on a volcanic landscape...
I just want to make a little correction that HDD is a western digital caviar green.They are used in USB devices and regular PC's i have one of these Hard drives.
I'm wondering why you did not try to recover any data? I had the exact same HDD shown here. It stopped reading any data. So I opened it the same as you. No visual damage was there, but I did make the mistake of turning it on to see if it spins. It did, and the heads went crazy. I put it back together and was able to recover 90% of the data. Somehow opening it let it work again for enough time to copy/paste data to another drive.
you are a legend... thankyou sooo much, i recovered my DATA, oh the excitement, it was all pictures and memories of my children... i'm super super excited, thanks heaps for this video
Hi. You say that there is no problem removing the top of the hard drive. I always thought that unless this was done under clean room standards it will damage the platter(s). I watched another video which said that it can be done without clean room standards but you would be taking a risk. Just to be clear would you say that it is risk free regarding particles landing on the platter? Thanks, and thanks for posting this video.
Some say that only time you should even try to open HDD is when you try to save not important data from it. I would not even try, as normal room is always full of dust and tolerances inside HDD are too tight for any particles.
With the exception of very very important data - most aren't willing to send it out for professional recovery as it is nearly prohibitively expensive. It sounds like the heads are toast. When she starts up she has a track with smart data, etc on the drive that she must be able to read, if she can't she codes out and the integrated controller will give up. This particular drive looks like it was dropped while still spinning - an expensive mistake. Platter replacements are impractical - you have to be so precise that it is damn near impossible for home users. The higher the data density the less likely you are to get it working again.
Yep, the MyBooks do tend to get knocked over and this is a great video to describe what happens inside them when this happens. I much prefer the 2.5" externals anyway.
Tell me more man... I have a 1TB drive,which shuts off,as it cannot start up properly like in the video. Then no partitioning at all. If you have solution step-by-step,i'll listen,cause i could use those 900GB happily.
Thank you so much, absolutely fascinating, . Now I can reasonably know what the hard drive on my laptop would have looked like after it crashed some years ago. That too clicked. Cheers
Hi Abraham, I just few videos on how to repair laptop's internal hard drives , sounds like you're the best person who can slove my issue. Can you help me with my laptop issue ? Thanks.
Surely a head replacement would have helped get some data off the disc though? The head had scratched the disc yes so that data is gone obviously. However the head was also visibly damaged so replacing it (assuming the damage isn't on an important part of initialisation) should surely work in recovering some data? Or does any scratch to any part of any disc make it completely unreadable ?
Thanks for sharing - although I am late to the party. I have a the Western Digital Caviar Green Power 500GB External Hard Disk Drive": It crashed in the year 2525 [ha got carried away in reference to a song] - it actually crashed in 2015! A local shop tech told me that the only way I could recover my data is by obtaining a identical enclosure controller board to read the data? I still have my WD 500GB external hard - I removed the case, but I didn't disassemble the drive itself. I guess I could give it a try again because my toolbox has improved - I own a Thermaltake - BlacX Duet Hard Drive Enclosure Docking Station - Black. any advice?
Quick question. My heads look good. the platters have no rings or signs of damage. when I turn it on the heads start to move into the reading position and half way there they stop and pull back and a beep is made. i repeats this about 5 times and then turns its self off. any help? please and thank you!!!
Danielle Becerra he just told you in this video to NOT turn your disk on when the lid is off :/ how do you know they was in that position when it was on? you kind of screwed this one up :(
+Thomas Matikainen That it's a bad idea to turn it on with the lid off doesn't mean that the contents are necessarily destroyed in the process - merely that the risk is greater.
A serious data recovery company will charge an extra fee just to thoroughly and carefully clean the platters in a case like this, when the cover has already been removed in a dusty environment... Attempting a recovery with dusty platters is a recipe for disaster.
Resp Sir! Same Hardisk SMD Capacitors Shorted Sir and 25 Values Desplyaed with Beep Sound Sir and IC was Heated Sir. Sir IC Fail Sir or Not Sir. Please Advise Sir. Thank U Sir. Ur Each and Every Vedios I am Seeing Sir. -- ChinnaRao Paderu Andhrapradesh, India.
I've had a number of this type of drive fail on me. The SSD is supposed to last about 10 years maybe if you keep plenty of free space on it so it doesn't rewrite the same sectors all the time.
Rather pessimistic, there's only a small part of the surface damaged, if platters are moved to something that can read them a lot of data should be able to be recovered.
Nice job guys, do I have got questions. Will it work if I swap the head using the same model, size, first 3 digits of serial number and same firmware version? If it will work, can I use hddsuperclone to clone the hard drive or I still have to use PC3000??
I had the same problem with my 1.2TB seagate. I did lose stuff, but you just have to move on. I had two rings like that, one on the outside, and one in the inside.
the heads are ment to be parked on the ramp area when the drive is off, that noise u are hearing is the heads rubbing on the platters because it is not getting the correct lift to read .
Exact same thing happened to an external hd that was knocked over that someone wanted me to look at today. Scratched platter created by the head during impact while the platter was still spinning, except on the inner portion rather than the outer portion. It had click, click, click symptoms. Zero hope for it. Be more careful with your externals people. Ive seen many externals completely destroyed in this manner, just from being tipped over.
I'm just 12,what the crap should I do... I've used this PC since I was 6 and I play roblox on it... I feel like a loved one is in the hospital dieing. beep beep beep beep beeeeep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep 😢😥😞😩😦🙍😿😭💓💜💛💚💙❤💔💀
I saw the same vid. The guy made it clear that the platters must stay aligned and that his lab had special equipment to do it. He said the Scotch Tape would not work with many other drives because of clearance problems.
Nice Video !. I have a pair of bad HDD and I wonder how to make them spin and also make the actuator moves back and forth, my intention is to put it on a display without the cover without connecting to a computer just power, and then see the disk spin and the actuator moves . thanks
Mine was clicking, scratching and beeping. Attempted to reset the head placement but it didn't need that as the heads were in place. Looking at the top platter #1 of 3, I see that there are at least 9 scored rings around the top platter going down about 1 inch to the center from outside edge. There are a few metal shavings on the platter too. When I look at the heads. I can see that there is a bent one. Looking at the other heads I one of them looks like a preying mantis at the side waiting for it's prey. It's literally 5 mm off the heads and touching the bottom of the HDD case. Needless to say I'm not very optimistic in getting this fixed!
Enjoyed watching it taken apart but it appeared to me that you could still retrieve a large part of the data that wasn't scratched. Isn't the large unscratched sections still recorded data? Or is the only data on the disc the smaller outer section from where the scratch occured? I'm just curious if there is a way to recover SOME or the undamaged data, and if not, should we hang on to our platters or hard drives incase technology comes up with a way to do so. Thanks for the learning lesson on damage and disassembly.
Way after anyone probably cares given SSDs but the answer is a big "Well..." The fact is there are companies that do computer forensics and have the equipment to do this. It is astronomically expensive and what you get out of it is going to usually be underwhelming. A few things complicate it aside from what is mentioned in the video. Big one is that as this head was swinging back and forth desperately trying to find the FAT or whatever, it was also sandpapering the surface of the disc. While it might look undamaged there are probably unreadable sections scratched all over each track. Some types of files like images may be at least partially recoverable.
@@tee2567man you’re completely delusional, after a head crash you can easily recover the data, you only wont be able to recover the data on the small portion of the platter where the head smashed, guys at ontrack do that on a daily basis
My hard drive sort of clicks and doesn't recognize, so I opened it up and the platter looks super clean and fine. However, the end of the thing (IDK the name, I think you call them disks) that goes over the platter is cracked at the head. I assume this is very very bad and that means it's over.. The head of the "disk" the very pointy part on the end, is like cracked and almost bent.
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I like that you’re honest. Most data recovery service dudes will act as if opening your hard drive will cause permanent damage just so you can call them for help and pay up.
These fucking data recovery dudes are mad pei , they let down all of your hopes and asking stupid questions and doesn't have guts to except the challenge , ones they heard about you did open your hard drive ,that's it " I am not touching it " world end up, life is under the thread , I am dying , I m blind , I say keep opening bloody hard disk ,you one day learns things.
can you be more specific? Sounds like by "data recovery service" you mean that guy in the video.
@@khurramsa5133 Why did you open your hard drive?
y’all delusional and cringe 🤣🤣🤣 guys at kroll ontrack could recover anything u just dont know shi bout data recovery
because in the shell is their treasury
Fascinating to see how these devices work. They are more fragile than I thought. My WD drive is well out of warranty. I think I will crack open the case and see if the platters are intact since I have no idea what caused my drive failure. Thanks for the tech lesson!
the disk is now history, and you are the best history teacher ever. Thanks dude.
Actually, the read heads are somewhat easy to replace. They have sort of a springy head so the reader can be repelled by the individual magnetic pulls. That springiness also allows for flexibility between platter thicknesses. and that thing about the formatting, all read heads I've seen are the same, they all same amount of turns in the copper coil, and no chip. This means the only electronics in it is the ribbon wire, coil, and heads. The chip that controls the movement is either on a board inside the enclosure, or on the outer board.
To make a long story short, just unplug the reader, unscrew the plastic guide thing that keeps the heads from going too far from the platter, remove the top neodymium magnet, and remove the read heads.
Installation: Unless you plan to save the platters, you don't have to worry about scratching them when removing the heads, just don't let it touch the ones in the new drive. To install them, just do the same thing to remove the damaged heads, then slide the new ones into the plastic guide and screw it down and it should be good to go. Just don't forget to put the magnet back and plug the read head in to the board.
Edit: Nvm, I guess there's more to it then that: th-cam.com/video/J9P4UadRdNA/w-d-xo.html
Well, I was mostly right.
have a disk with me to know what happened to it and it no longer works and I want to fix it in the strongest coefficient where it is, I want what is inside it, it is very important to me, Can you show me the strongest coefficient for it
Wow, that's awesome. I'm thinking of doing this myself so I have got questions. Will it work if I swap the head using the same model, size, first 3 digits of serial number and same firmware version?
If it will work, can I use hddsuperclone to clone the hard drive or I still have to use PC3000??
It is possible to recover data from a hard drive with this type of damage. You won't get information that is on the damaged part... but all other areas are recoverable. You just have to have data recovery software that will ignore the read error that you will get when it gets to the end of the drive... Basically, since the heads are damaged, they would be replaced... You will see what you can get before the new ones get damaged, replace the heads again, and start reading again... As long as you get a set of heads that survive going over the damaged area.. you'll get everything on the inner part of the drive that isn't damaged. Which from your video is about 90%-95% of the data.
The alignment issues you are talking about are with the platters being aligned with each other.
When you replace the heads, you use paper to keep them from crashing on each other... you then remove the paper seperaters as you seat the heads on the HDD platters.
Which kind of software? Any recommendation, Welcome. Thanks
no if the controller can't pass the POST!, that kind of damage is a dead one. Atleast not using the original controllers, but a hacked one
no the damaged area would just damage the new set of heads put on the system, Also where it reads to seek and read track 0 is messed up, so it will never be able to become ready UNLESS u turn the head off that reads that platter unless all the platters have that damage.
In a case like this a live PCB swap could do the trick - see the presentation from Scott Moulton ad DefCon15.
Thanks for posting. Just for folks to be aware, if you intend to open a HDD, you need to do it in a clean environment. Airborne dust is sufficient to cause problems when it settles on the platter. Finger prints on the platter are a disaster. Cover your hair and clothing, wear neoprene (or touch sensitive) gloves. Generally parts (such as heads) are not interchangeable. If there is annular scoring as in this example, other tracks/ sectors may be readable. If he scoring is a spiral, that crosses all data tracks and renders the drive scrap metal. You need good light and the steady hands of a surgeon. :) :)
I am sorry it couldn' t be repaired, but thank you for showing us the internal mechanics of the hard drive! That was really interesting!
I recently discovered your channel to see if I could possible save what I thought was a stuck head on my 2TB HDD and I was confident in opening the drive and unjamming the heads until I found out that all three of my platters had 3-5 rings of very deep scratches...moral of the story: remove your HDDs before transporting a PC
nah, if you shut down the PC the heads should go into the "parking space", where small vibrations are not going to damage them.
I have a Samsung 2.5" HDD, it literally flew and fell on hard floor (turned off), and then... it still worked flawlessly, and was still working last time I checked... But when turned on, even a light shock can mean goodbye for good.
the best thing is to use an ssd i have 4 hdds in my Alienware 17 r2 i have 1x(512gb m.2) and 2 (256gb m.2) and 1 (4tb hdd for steam. all my personal stuff is on a few 128gb sand disk usb drives. my pics and over important docs are on DVDs nobody uses them but they are the best my be slow at reading but will never fail unless you scratch them
The worked for me after two pc shops refused to open the unreadable hard drive. as soon as I opened the case and saw it wasn't in a parked position I figured it was stuck and rotated counterclockwise the disc while dragging the reader head back to parked position and that fixed it. Thanks for sharing!
Well, and then, what happened ? Could you recover everything ?
How long did it work properly after that quick and dirty fix ?
@@idiosyncrazy1980 For an even dirtier fix put the drive on its side and give it a bump into a table. Worked for me, got the drive going but I thought it would work again after that which it did not.
most drives can be forced to read specific tracks with specialized interfaces and software, usually provided thru the manufacturer. this can allow retrieval of partial data from non damaged areas, but only if the heads are undamaged. if heads are non functional, some services have success by actually removing the disc platters and mounting them into a new case with good heads, much like a manufacturing process. inspection at microscope levels to determine suitability is essential before choosing what to do, as even minute surface defects will ruin subsequent heads that attempt access to those areas. most recover is a multistep process, first to enable reliable mechanical operation, then read as much data into an external image file, and finally parse the recovered image file for data structure and useable data.
with many systems, the fragmentation of files is extensive and often very time consuming makingit difficult to recover individual consecutive data (however, even partial data can be useful)
Yes true. Some small percentage of the data is gone, but chances are you can restore most of it in a lab. At least 80%.
how?
@@jerichoular7837 probably only an MRI, very expensive process
@@JerrodJohnsonD lol
2:20 3:10 3:32 4:00 8:44 10:40 11:45 12:05 12:44 I added the timestamps
Amazing info! Thank you very much!
I have a ~7 yr old Seagate Barracuda 360GB hard disk, that fell sick few months ago (dunno how, never fell down or something). Luckily, i got a new WD 1TB on time and transferred 98% data safely to the new hdd. I was not able to run it for more than 20-30 mins (temps going 45C+ then BSOD) till 2 days ago when i discovered that it is making one clicking sound then fails to be detected at startup.
I just backed up my data before the hdd died totally.
That's because you're Batman!
Arvin Ardakani
Well, you know.. being billionaire, having batcomputer, and being batman... still have to face common problems :S
Mine is making that same clicking noise too. I was able to recover some data from it but it seems my photos are lost.
@@trulygrateful7217 Ah! :(
After 6 days of scanning hdd wd red 2tb that fell of the table now I hear clicking noise... gonna buy new one to try this. Thank you
This is so satisfying, i would watch this before going to bed.
THank you so much man! I don't know yet if this will work for me, but thanks for explaining what are REALLY the risks to open the HD... vs almost all experts as you said who just say "no ! don't try !!!! you gonna lose all!!"
An excellent tutorial of how to destroy a hard disk that still was recoverable.
Excellent video of what to do, and what NOT to do if attempting this type of repair.
At least you can get the very strong magnets! I have many of them myself!!!
OMG..Yeahh..
My several LaCie d2 / Quadras have NEVER fallen over!
The base plate foot thing is wider than the drive housing!
Drives always kept in a safe environment!
Since 2007 <
J.C.
I am watching the third video of your hdd help and I am asking my self why I didn't open any. Thank you for inspiration and for lot of helpful informations! :)
It's always interesting to know the expert's opinion.
Yes, but you did not hear one in this video ! :^p
12:34 you need to pull out that stopper (shape like a small black rod between the disk and the yellow stuff) so that the reader can pull out.
my drive had this same damage. i sent it to data recovery and are able to recovered most of my data.
Where are recovering your data
after a head crash, I would expect the head(s) to be "junk", so I would not expect them to work, even on undamaged parts of the disk; in the old days, with ferromagnetic coating, one could easily see the "furrow" that was ploughed by the head, and examining the head would also show the magnetic material clogging and/or having scratched up the head(s); good explanation, great video! BTW, I don't think you have to align "bits" on the surfaces, they would automagically align when the disks are reformatted (deep, including timing tracks); a bigger problem IMO would be (re)balancing the disks on the spindle, to avoid "wobble" when they turn at high speed? probably the falling over caused ALL of the "top" heads to "bounce" off the surface, and start pushing up material
I put HD magnets on the bottom of my engine oil filter to catch any metal particles if any are floating around.
You can't "force" the drive into the read position! Data recovery centres CAN recover data from such drives and it is likely they could have recovered the data off this drive, prior to dismantling.(obviously there will be some data that cannot be recovered where the heads have crashed into the platter). It does depend on the ability to use the original head (or if they can install new r/w heads). Recovery centres have specialised software to step the heads and control which track is read. The data DOES NOT have to align vertically between platters. There is some form of alignment based purely on the relationship between the heads and how they are mounted on the drive, but this has nothing to do with VERTICAL data alignment.
Today's high capacity drives (usually) have logical allocations. This means the drive to the "end user" may be described for example as 2048 tracks and two r/w heads, while in practice, the physical device may have hardware that uses two platters and four heads. The computer requests the drive to write on track 1056, but the hard drive "logically" locates the appropriate track that "represents" track number 1056. This track could be on the second platter, read and written by head three. The computer does not need to know this logical allocation, this is handled by the embedded software on the hard drive.
Praise the lord and all mystic creatures! Not everybody (including the incompetent car mechanics in the video) is out of his mind. Fills me with hope for humanity.
I can not understand why it's not obvious to everybody that 99.9% of the data on the drive was fine BEFORE that """""expert""""" violantly destroyed it while spitting out nonsense about sky being blue, motor rotates and knife doing scratchy noises. DJ Hard Disk in da house.
@@eugenkeller exactly LOL
these noobs who dont know anything about data recovery talk bout head crashes like its the worst thing but guy at ontrack could recover 99% of data so easy even in bad hc cases
I have taken the lid off of a working hard drive and used it that way. It will work. Probably not very long. But I was able to read files etc. Not recommended for data recovery, but fun to see it work.
Buff the damage out with a dremel or successively finer grades of wet'n'dry.
+GaryChap lets hope nobody actually believes this xD
No idiot
Halen Martini HE IS KIDDING.
regarding Halen Martini, sarcasm is high level of humour, it has a limited audience, is not for everyone
Onc cannot sense sarcasm without _at leaset_ a *slight* hint that it is sarcasm. The OP did *Not* hint at sarcasm.
How cool was to watch this vid... made with patience, care and taking us with you in the curiosity of checking every single piece... thank you for the trip, congrats for a great vid!
Nice video with good explanation delivered with patience. I liked everything but liked most the bit where you made effort to improve camera focus so the heads became clearly visible.
Thank you for the extensive video. It was indeed informative and fascinating.
Ok. A drive can be in any direction. As long as you don't move it when it's running, it's all good.
Proof :
"According to several manufacturers, mounting a 3/5″ hard drive horizontally, vertically, or sideways doesn’t affect the hard drive life significantly.
These are statements taken from the hard drive literature at each manufacturer’s website; it’s four years old but things probably haven’t changed much.
Hitachi:
The drive will operate in all axes (6 directions). Performance and error rate will stay within specification limits if the drive is operated in the other orientations from which it was formatted.
Western Digital:
Physical mounting of the drive: WD drives will function normally whether they are mounted sideways or upside down (any X, Y, Z orientation).
Maxtor:
The hard drive can be mounted in any orientation.
Samsung:
As long as it is securely attached to the chassis, hard disk drives may be mounted either horizontally or vertically depending on how your computer’s case is constructed."
But, if for example you don't run a drive laying down (horizontal), you are adding a very slight stress on the head because they are designed to move horizontally. It takes less energy to make the heads travel horizontally than vertically. (The difference is way too small to be significant).
But i would never make the claim that running hard drives in any other ways beside horizontally, will lead to a hard drive failure. That's just rubbish.
I always save the magnets. they are super strong :)
Word?😎
same
I have the same problem... I purchased a 4tb Seagate external drive, I then proceeded to transfer 20 years of data from 4 smaller external hard drives, totalling around 3tb, onto it. I formatted each one as I finished & used them for other things.. About a week later I was vacuuming, caught the external drives power lead under a table, this caused the drive to fall 2" onto its side & it immediately emitted a nasty screaming/grinding/rotating noise, in the same way that one is..
I strongly suspect my platters now look exactly the same as your one.. I will open it at some point to see, I`ve been avoiding it as I`m kinda hoping it will miraculously fix itself, even though I`m 99% sure its now permanently dead.
The moral of the story is, always back things up at least twice...
I also think I`ll be wrapping my external drives in a couple of layers of bubblewrap in future, just in case..
Indeed that was kinda foolish, to have the opportunity to make a proper backup (having the data on one device only is _not_ a backup), and yet use the older HDDs to hord moar data, probably less worthwhile than those 3TB... You could have recovered part of the older data from those still working drives, depending on how much new data had been written on them since. The damaged HDD could still be partially recovered by a professional data recovery company, if you haven't made a foolish attempt to open it in dusty environment and screw it up for good, but of course it would cost a lotta money, about a whore's day (depending on where you are located it might even be worth ten days of a whore's work, or a kidney).
You should put the screw on the pivot of the moving arm that support the heads.
The heads were probably destroyed when it scratched the drive. The heads would servo would just search across the media for a reference point - but with no heads, that was impossible. With a replaced head set, you could have possibly gotten some data. If you magnified 80k x you'd still be unable to see the actual head. What you zoomed in on were probably like pre-amps that the heads use to amplify the electron state. NO CHANCE those heads could work once they've hit each other.
Informative video..
Good job..
Keep it up and continue for learners..
Thanks..
Jzakallah..
So the noise coming from my computer is where I thought it was. Thanks for showing us this video.
very good information. i am a newbie and had no idea why my drive was making that exact noise
Not sure if platter replacement is completely impossible, hard drive always uses one head at once and i guess it compensates misalignment and eccentricity a little during rotation. But it's just my guess. I believe tracks are too dense to be able to make hard drive perfect mechanically.
you have to use a high contrast background to help your camera focus something black and white for instance with crisp edges
the reason its scraping or making that sound when you're turning the disk with it powered off and the head is on the disk, is that when its powered up the air creates a path inbetween the head and the disk which makes it kind of float. kinda like an air hockey table.
Not true. Some small percentage of the data is gone, but chances are you can restore most of it in a lab. At least 80%.
Exactly, and he is just destroying customer data. If you cant repair, why screw it more? hand it to someone more experienced.
To take the heads arm out you have to remove the little rubber tube that prevents the head arm to move out of the heads rest (yellowish teflon peace).
have a disk with me to know what happened to it and it no longer works and I want to fix it in the strongest coefficient where it is, I want what is inside it, it is very important to me, Can you show me the strongest coefficient for it
This is why most folks should be getting SSDs, they are not 100% indestructible (You shouldn't be really throwing a SSD like a Frisbee LOL but they could 95% take a drop and still run like a champ.
Hi Abraham. You sound like RUSSIAN. FOREVER YOUNG. Thanks that you show on the humankind the real.
Maine khub magnet jama kiye hain hdd khol khol ke... Ab bade chotey aatey ...pehle kaphi badey hotey the... Lekin hotey badey powerful hain. Do ko jod dogey toh itni aasani se hilenge nahin. Haan alag karna muskil ho jayega unko. 😀
With what you just did to the thing, I'll need to hire a Decepticon to retrieve the data.
That grinding noise made me make a squished face!
The best explanation for this process I have seen so far!👍👍
Please talk about the tools used so we can do this ourselves.
At 8:26 he says spinning it "Counter Clockwise" while he is spinning it Clockwise
They said the heads don't touch the surface of the disc while spinning because the air friction slightly lift it up but at 5:35 I can hear noise when it reaches the scratch area which means the heads are in contact with the disc while reading data.
1) The cover is off, as the guy said (one of the few smart things he said in this video) it might mess up the air flow which is required for the heads to fly above the platters - at an extremely small distance though.
2) The deep scratches alter the platters' surface, creating irregularities which look small with the naked eye but are enormous compared with the heads' size and the distance at which they normally fly over the platters - just imagine a Formula 1 car driving on a volcanic landscape...
I just want to make a little correction that HDD is a western digital caviar green.They are used in USB devices and regular PC's i have one of these Hard drives.
I'm wondering why you did not try to recover any data? I had the exact same HDD shown here. It stopped reading any data. So I opened it the same as you. No visual damage was there, but I did make the mistake of turning it on to see if it spins. It did, and the heads went crazy. I put it back together and was able to recover 90% of the data. Somehow opening it let it work again for enough time to copy/paste data to another drive.
Great video! I wonder those geniuses who disliked this video what found wrong with it.
Cuz they didn't expect to get that much views. Good video
Thanks for this vid. Gives me a better understanding of harddisks.
now he can use it as a miror
Do you have baby IQ?
Hahaa
Appreciate what you took time to show us.
What do you do if the hard drive does nothing at all? No sound whatsoever? It just doesn't work. Thank you for great information!
you are a legend... thankyou sooo much, i recovered my DATA, oh the excitement, it was all pictures and memories of my children... i'm super super excited, thanks heaps for this video
How could _this_ video help you recover data in any way ? O_o
The heads look like a great keychain holder once its out.
Hi. You say that there is no problem removing the top of the hard drive. I always thought that unless this was done under clean room standards it will damage the platter(s). I watched another video which said that it can be done without clean room standards but you would be taking a risk. Just to be clear would you say that it is risk free regarding particles landing on the platter? Thanks, and thanks for posting this video.
Some say that only time you should even try to open HDD is when you try to save not important data from it. I would not even try, as normal room is always full of dust and tolerances inside HDD are too tight for any particles.
I opened up one drive that was much worse! Other techs walked by seeing it and were amazed. 🤦🏻♂️
Fortunately, it was part of a RAID Array. 🤓
as long as the platter is not terribly tempered with like you did in the video...theres alswyas some data that can be saved
With the exception of very very important data - most aren't willing to send it out for professional recovery as it is nearly prohibitively expensive. It sounds like the heads are toast. When she starts up she has a track with smart data, etc on the drive that she must be able to read, if she can't she codes out and the integrated controller will give up. This particular drive looks like it was dropped while still spinning - an expensive mistake. Platter replacements are impractical - you have to be so precise that it is damn near impossible for home users. The higher the data density the less likely you are to get it working again.
Yep, the MyBooks do tend to get knocked over and this is a great video to describe what happens inside them when this happens.
I much prefer the 2.5" externals anyway.
That drive isn't history by the way, you could repartition it until it doesn't use that sector
Tell me more man... I have a 1TB drive,which shuts off,as it cannot start up properly like in the video. Then no partitioning at all. If you have solution step-by-step,i'll listen,cause i could use those 900GB happily.
Thank you so much, absolutely fascinating, . Now I can reasonably know what the hard drive on my laptop would have looked like after it crashed some years ago. That too clicked.
Cheers
Hi Abraham,
I just few videos on how to repair laptop's internal hard drives , sounds like you're the best person who can slove my issue.
Can you help me with my laptop issue ?
Thanks.
Noticed the head and players, question would it be possible to replace ( the same) players upside down as it appears only one side damaged??????
It's gonna damage the other side as well... lol
what have i to do if my hard drive is clicking and when it clicks the Pc didn't finds it?.... please help me my hard drive is a toshiba 720gb
Surely a head replacement would have helped get some data off the disc though? The head had scratched the disc yes so that data is gone obviously. However the head was also visibly damaged so replacing it (assuming the damage isn't on an important part of initialisation) should surely work in recovering some data? Or does any scratch to any part of any disc make it completely unreadable ?
Thanks for sharing - although I am late to the party. I have a the Western Digital Caviar Green Power 500GB External Hard Disk Drive": It crashed in the year 2525 [ha got carried away in reference to a song] - it actually crashed in 2015! A local shop tech told me that the only way I could recover my data is by obtaining a identical enclosure controller board to read the data? I still have my WD 500GB external hard - I removed the case, but I didn't disassemble the drive itself. I guess I could give it a try again because my toolbox has improved - I own a Thermaltake - BlacX Duet Hard Drive Enclosure Docking Station - Black. any advice?
Hi.
My needle/head goes back and forth and it looks like the disc doesn't spin at full speed. I can't read the harddrive on my PC. Any ideas? Regards
Maybe swap controller board (pcb) with one from donor drive of same manufacture and factory.
8:04 sound like an old telephone ringing. Those turnable dials
Quick question. My heads look good. the platters have no rings or signs of damage. when I turn it on the heads start to move into the reading position and half way there they stop and pull back and a beep is made. i repeats this about 5 times and then turns its self off. any help? please and thank you!!!
Danielle Becerra he just told you in this video to NOT turn your disk on when the lid is off :/ how do you know they was in that position when it was on? you kind of screwed this one up :(
+Danielle Becerra may be the control, board
+Thomas Matikainen That it's a bad idea to turn it on with the lid off doesn't mean that the contents are necessarily destroyed in the process - merely that the risk is greater.
A serious data recovery company will charge an extra fee just to thoroughly and carefully clean the platters in a case like this, when the cover has already been removed in a dusty environment... Attempting a recovery with dusty platters is a recipe for disaster.
Resp Sir! Same Hardisk SMD Capacitors Shorted Sir and 25 Values Desplyaed with Beep Sound Sir and IC was Heated Sir. Sir IC Fail Sir or Not Sir. Please Advise Sir. Thank U Sir. Ur Each and Every Vedios I am Seeing Sir. -- ChinnaRao Paderu Andhrapradesh, India.
It's hard to believe all that mechanical marvel is being replace by SSD chips with no moving parts.
I've had a number of this type of drive fail on me. The SSD is supposed to last about 10 years maybe if you keep plenty of free space on it so it doesn't rewrite the same sectors all the time.
what if you turn the disk upside down and reassembly it, could it read the data?
lol.. "the hard says something is horribly wrong here and ill just turn myself off" I enjoyed this.
The hard drive motor can be used as a stationary grinder. Done that several times.
Rather pessimistic, there's only a small part of the surface damaged, if platters are moved to something that can read them a lot of data should be able to be recovered.
Nice job guys, do I have got questions. Will it work if I swap the head using the same model, size, first 3 digits of serial number and same firmware version?
If it will work, can I use hddsuperclone to clone the hard drive or I still have to use PC3000??
I had the same problem with my 1.2TB seagate. I did lose stuff, but you just have to move on. I had two rings like that, one on the outside, and one in the inside.
Tip: use your next hard drive as a backup.
Interesting clean room you have and disassembly of the HDD platter. I didn't know you don't have to use gloves...
the heads are ment to be parked on the ramp area when the drive is off, that noise u are hearing is the heads rubbing on the platters because it is not getting the correct lift to read .
The Platters make wonderful wind chimes
IKR such a clear silver ring!!!
That's why we should use SSDs these days
Exact same thing happened to an external hd that was knocked over that someone wanted me to look at today. Scratched platter created by the head during impact while the platter was still spinning, except on the inner portion rather than the outer portion. It had click, click, click symptoms. Zero hope for it. Be more careful with your externals people. Ive seen many externals completely destroyed in this manner, just from being tipped over.
my windows vista is trying to load. It fell on its side a few months ago. it's going chhh chh chhh chh chhh chhhhhh chhh chhh
I'm just 12,what the crap should I do... I've used this PC since I was 6 and I play roblox on it... I feel like a loved one is in the hospital dieing. beep beep beep beep beeeeep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep 😢😥😞😩😦🙍😿😭💓💜💛💚💙❤💔💀
does it make a clicking sound?
+Todd Stewart ya but the cliçk is a scratching sound.
if it is coming from the hd then it is screwed
I watched a guy do it with scotch taping the drives together as he moved them over to the new drive and he got it to work.
I saw the same vid. The guy made it clear that the platters must stay aligned and that his lab had special equipment to do it. He said the Scotch Tape would not work with many other drives because of clearance problems.
Nice Video !. I have a pair of bad HDD and I wonder how to make them spin and also make the actuator moves back and forth, my intention is to put it on a display without the cover without connecting to a computer just power, and then see the disk spin and the actuator moves . thanks
Mine was clicking, scratching and beeping. Attempted to reset the head placement but it didn't need that as the heads were in place. Looking at the top platter #1 of 3, I see that there are at least 9 scored rings around the top platter going down about 1 inch to the center from outside edge. There are a few metal shavings on the platter too. When I look at the heads. I can see that there is a bent one. Looking at the other heads I one of them looks like a preying mantis at the side waiting for it's prey. It's literally 5 mm off the heads and touching the bottom of the HDD case.
Needless to say I'm not very optimistic in getting this fixed!
Enjoyed watching it taken apart but it appeared to me that you could still retrieve a large part of the data that wasn't scratched. Isn't the large unscratched sections still recorded data? Or is the only data on the disc the smaller outer section from where the scratch occured? I'm just curious if there is a way to recover SOME or the undamaged data, and if not, should we hang on to our platters or hard drives incase technology comes up with a way to do so. Thanks for the learning lesson on damage and disassembly.
Way after anyone probably cares given SSDs but the answer is a big "Well..." The fact is there are companies that do computer forensics and have the equipment to do this. It is astronomically expensive and what you get out of it is going to usually be underwhelming. A few things complicate it aside from what is mentioned in the video. Big one is that as this head was swinging back and forth desperately trying to find the FAT or whatever, it was also sandpapering the surface of the disc. While it might look undamaged there are probably unreadable sections scratched all over each track. Some types of files like images may be at least partially recoverable.
@@tee2567man you’re completely delusional, after a head crash you can easily recover the data, you only wont be able to recover the data on the small portion of the platter where the head smashed, guys at ontrack do that on a daily basis
8:20 "Just spinning it counter-clockwise" he says spinning it clockwise.
My hard drive sort of clicks and doesn't recognize, so I opened it up and the platter looks super clean and fine. However, the end of the thing (IDK the name, I think you call them disks) that goes over the platter is cracked at the head. I assume this is very very bad and that means it's over.. The head of the "disk" the very pointy part on the end, is like cracked and almost bent.
You can see the platters are warped, clear as day.
I am quit sure forensic will recovery the undamaged part of disk and rebuild the fs