Customer Asked Me To Recover Data From An Old Dead Hard Drive (Does Not Spin)
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- A customer asked me if I could recover his data from an old external USB Hard drive. But the drive does not spin up, so can I fix it?
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Thank you
Richard
"Highly valued data ...but not valuable enough to make a back-up copy !!!" ...what a great line.
Turn it by hand than 😁
Yup or the data is not valuable enough to pay for data recovery costs.
This customer is lucky he knows you. Most computer shops are not able to diagnose or repair a harddisk circuit board. They simply tell you data is lost and try to sell you a new harddisk.
@@monad_tcp Do you know a computer shop having those tons of hdd circuit boards in stock ? It is simply not cost-effective. It takes someone who can diagnose in the first place the problem is on the hdd circuit board, and in the second place can repair it on component level.
You are joking?
@@monad_tcp That can work also, but then there are many HDD that have specific firmware on each drive so you have to desolder the eprom from the bad controller card and resolder it on the replacement one and then there are the ones that have some special firmware in the QFN controller chip with a couple of hundred very narrow pins to solder. Swapping the controller card may have worked back in the 90s and a little later but as with everything else it has got a lot more difficult that that in later years. Of course the fix in this video only works for a specific type of damage also
im guilty by this since i dont have enough knowledge to know if it is still possible and dont have the proper tools, but by this simple yet effective diagnose, one by one i will learn more.
When I worked on testing hard drives many years ago I made a linear power supply with LM7805 and LM812 just to power up drives. Pretty bullet proof against shorts and I didn't have to worry about my ATX power supply trying to dump 20+ amps into the wires and possibly shutting down the whole test computer. The 1.5 amp limit of the linear regulators was plenty enough power to spin up a good drive.
Where do I buy such a device
The same situation happened to me once with an old 500gb drive... it had a lot of valuable por... erm... information that needed to be extracted and the drive wouldn't wanna spin... so, I took the lid off, and while powered on, I gave it a little "push" and whadaya know... it spin up! ... extracted the "info" while being absolutely mesmerized at how hard drives read info from the platters, and then dissasembled it to salvage the magnets... no burnt diodes though... xD Cheers!
These protection diodes are really useful. Once I had a wrongly wired power cable which reversed the voltage to the drive. The diode went short and as there was no fuse on my drive this short prevented the ATX power supply from working. Replacing the diode solved all problems no other damage on the HDD. What a luck or better good design!
Not every time. I had one where the TVS died but well after all the other regulators fried. In mine, 5V was fed 12V though.
Nice that you know a few Dutch words. I was actually wondering if there are many Dutch people on Gran Canaria, as I've never been there myself.
Yeah there are loads of Dutch here - one of my good friends here is originally from Holland and there are a whole load of Dutch bars in one area (kip sate, neon windmills and all 😉) There are some signs around Playa del Ingles that say 'Bertje Doen' or something like that which I understand means something like 'let's do a beer'
Loved this. But it's given me a problem - well, given my wife a problem. After 65 years of collect things I might need, I had come to the conclusion that I can safely throw equipment and parts away. That idea is short lived. Thanks.
Great video. I'm pretty sure I have a similar problem. Time to open it up and take a look.
You can get unidirectional TVS diodes too, I guess they are faster than ordinary zeners - you can also get TVS thyristors which clamp to 0v(rather than the tvs diode voltage) and latch while the current flows.
Great video as always! For what I understand, TVS diodes are not necessarily bidirectional. On this board, we can see a line showing the catode. For example, Littlefuse datasheet for the 1.5KE series shows both unidirectional and bidirectional TVS diodes. I have read that TVS diodes are made to support larger surges than Zener diodes and to have a faster crowbar effect time, but I am not sure about that...
Yes these ones appear to be zener diodes are far as my diode mode meter test tells me. TVS (at least the ones I know) read open circuit in both directions if they are good. They are much more similar to a VDR (MOV) in operation. MOV also read open circuit on a multimeter
@@LearnElectronicsRepair Only bidirectional TVS read open circuit on both directions. For example, a SMAJ14A reads like a diode (0.6V) in one direction, I just checked. a SMAJ14AC would be a bidirectional TVS and read open on both directions. I also checked a P65SMB51A ordered from Reichelt : it reads 0.6V in one direction!
@@LearnElectronicsRepair Those transil diodes that have OC on both sides propably are build from two diodes serially connected with cathodes or anodes like this:
---|>|---|-
Great video, thanks. Always wondered how the components for the Power on an HDD were setup so thanks for clearing that up.😀
I wish drive board repairs were this easy. I have some humdinger issues with a couple drives that I am still not able to trace down, but I’ll keep at it the more can I learn about diagnosing hard drive board issues.
Of course they are not always this easy. But that is just how this repair turned out (I have no idea when I start a job) and a worthwhile video also, as i have seen this sort of failure on numerous occasions 😉
Yep, this was a very common fault on certain mechanical drives.
I had to remove the TVS a fair number times over the years, and a few times when I last worked at a PC shop (2008-2009).
I think the TVS just degrades internally if there has been even a small voltage spike from a failing ATX PSU, or some noise that go through via the mains.
Maybe the threshold voltage of the TVS was set a bit too low or something, so even a moderate voltage spike of 16V or so could damage it?
Or perhaps back-EMF from the spindle motor could slowly damage the TVS over time, until it eventually shorts?
excellent video. i hope i never personally need t, but i wish i knew the sacrificial component for all my gear...
Nice easy fix - no messing around with platter swaps 😮 A 2.8GHz Pentium D system - good way to keep warm 😅
I like your videos and find them very helpful, but I have a couple of issues with this one:
1. Firstly, although the drive is potentially scrap, you appear to have an apparent disregard for ESD protection. I appreciate you may have many years experience but ESD damage is not a case of it either works or it does not and may not manifest itself for some time until suddenly it does.
2. The second issue is the use of a Windows-based system to check a hard drive. I would never connect an unknown storage device to a Windows system because Windows always has to try to read and write data to a drive and therefore is far more prone to transferring viruses and also preventing recovery of previously deleted files. There is also another issue, as shown in the video, that Windows will always attempt to build a cache of data which in this case is a thumbnail cache of someone else'e photos and therefore potentially in breach of Data Protection regulations.
When I am asked to look a hard drive I always use a Live Linux USB stick as it avoids all these pitfalls, allows full access to a storage device for much better data revovery possibilities than Windows and because nothing is stored, because everything happens in the host computer's RAM and therefore is safely gone entirely when the system is powered down, it is much safer and secure for all parties concerned. My personal choice is Fedora Linux with the Mate Desktop because it runs well on older hardware and has a disk utility built-in that will read SMART data from the drive as well as intructing a drive to do various self-diagnostics (which is something I've used to get a drive to repair itself).
I have a £5 USB to 40 PIN 5 1/4 IDE / IDE 3in and SATA all in one Adapter. I can read and write to any drive. The adapter came with a mains 3A PSU.
Should also add, try a bootable Linux Clonezilla USB thumb drive, would be a great addition to your tools for this sort of thing.
Linux is your best friend when it comes to data recovery and backup. DD the drive to an image that way you don't have to worry about whether or not you copied all their data and didn't miss hidden files!
Nice gig. I still have several ide to USB controllers from portable HD cases, can never toss them.
Heya, yes an high electric surge is not good for those elektrics good they have some protection which is repaireble
Great videos Richard! You make this look easy. What thermal camera do you use on your phone? I did not see it in the video description.
I was going to suggest if you have people bring you dead drives to backup often, I suggest keeping a few of the hdd circuit boards.... I've been able to swap them out and get the drive to spin up instantly and perform backups with no headaches whatsoever.
I've also repaired drives that way - but I never needed to do so if there is a short TVS diode or MLCC capacitor on the controller board as they are easy to fix, just locate and remove the shorted part and they will work, at least for backing up the data. Another consideration is that more recent HDD usually have an eprom on the controller board that you have to remove from your bad one and solder to the replacement one. And some drives are even more difficult than that to replace the controller board.
@@LearnElectronicsRepair there are few hdd brands seagate,wd,toshiba and etc what brand today does have that kind of controller board?
I remember having a similar problem years ago on a hard drive. Unfortunately though, besides the protection diode shorting out, a number of other components went up with it as well and it just wasn't worth the effort to mess with it. Luckily I did have the info on a back up drive at the time. Win some, lose some I guess. Sometimes you CAN get lucky IF you can find the exact same motherboard on a different scrap drive and replace the fried one, but this does NOT always work because each board is "fine tuned" to each drive. I think I had success maybe once by doing this in the past. Best just to ALWAYS have backups of your important data, now especially since hard drives are so cheap compared to years ago.
With USB drives and SD cards having such large capacities now and being relatively inexpensive, I just use them for backing up important phots and such. I do have a couple of old 2.5" SATA SSD drives from computers I upgraded from, I always save the SSD drives and buy USB adapters for them that convert the into external drives.
Nice and easy one BUT only if you know what to look for and that is genuine experience. Great vid 😁😁
You should have pixelated customer's data and photos ;) hope he'll not be angry because of that :)
I think I was fairly careful only to show pics that had no personal information - for example the carnival and the scenic view 😉
Saw this video and it inspired me to get out an old IDE hard drive of mine that died around 2002 due to a power surge. Most of it was backed up, except a large project I was working on that I couldn't afford the cost of backing up. A couple years later when I had some money, I even paid a data recovery firm to have a look at it and they said they couldn't get it to spin up. I paid $120 for the privilege I seem to remember. Anyhow, sure enough I check it and there's a short between one of the voltage pins and the ground. However it's a more recent drive than the one you show. Which pin is 12 and which is 5 volts are not labeled. I do see a little black box like the diode you show, but only one, not two. And indeed there is a short across it. Any reason you can think of I shouldn't try removing that box and see if I can get the drive to spin up after all these years? The drive is a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 8 30GB. Not sure what 'model' but the 'code' is NAR61590 if that means anything.
The writing is tiny and I don't have a microscope, but the black box seems to have a logo I can't really make out and "BUX C231" printed on it, if that helps.
@@ghohenzollern Remove it and see if the short has gone. If not you can always put it back on again. If the short is gone then power up your drive and let us all know the outcome 🙂
@@LearnElectronicsRepair Here's what happened. So far I've not managed to get any data off it. Constant I/O errors, but it may be my IDE to USB adapter. Or do you see me doing anything wrong?
ruclips.net/video/4XKtYGApSqk/видео.html
Those crappy USB bridges are a total nightmare.
i use Linux on usb stick for jobs like these
great video easy fix for anyone with a multimeter and a soldering iron! a suggestion, do not show customers data (even if it's just a folder list).
You know, a lot of people are getting very over sensitive about that. Sure if a folder list contains personal information (phone numbers, address etc) but I don't believe there was any info on that HDD, that I showed, which could cause any harm to anyone.
Thanks for sharing that Richard
How do you know the resistors what their resistance is because I think they are not listed on the printed circuit and the diode is not listed either, is it possible to connect normal diodes and resistors? What is the power that can go through them? Thanks
I did this for a mate who had his entire life on it and dropped it clearing the garage out. He was is so000 much touble with his wife. All their wedding photos, growing up photos. He couldn't believe it when I 'fixed' it. I put a new diode in. I reckon somebody probably plugged a different power supply before he droppedit but he thought it must have been the drop. Anyway, he put it all on icloud now lol.
You are certainly allowed to have an easy one for a change ☺
Valuable data .. No backup .. “YEAH!”
Legacy boot for the "win"
I have a barely used MIG 155(110v/220v) 4 in one welder I would appreciate some help repairing. I thought ide recorded the locations of all the wires connected to the circuit boards but I’m having trouble getting it connected correctly. The seller off Amazon quite selling this model and doesn’t seem to give a crap. The user manual is one piece of paper front n back so it’s of no help either. Searching online hasn’t shown anything helpful enough for me to resolve this problem.
1:40 - “Many, many years.” That would be “old,” yeah?!
You could have fooled me, a capacitor of 125 F, they spin it up somewhere in the Philippines and then it runs for ever and a day.
If you have it saved in one place then you don't have it saved at all.
Hahah I thought that was my Iron going to slee
I have an older IDE hard drive with windows XP and the drive spins up, clicks 5 times, then shuts down. Trying to figure out if it's a bad ide controller board on the HDD or if the drive had a head crash.
fantastic Richard :)
Why don't use a USB to IDE and connect it to a modern computer?
thanks 🙂
ooohi ooh ooh. thermal camera. Ali express?
I have the same lga 775 motherboard that i ordered from ebay back in 2019 same cpu same cpu cooler too lol but for some reason when i try to boot it takes like 1 hour to get past the post screen
1:40 - Pulling on the wires instead of the connector - true pro.
Are these needle probes different from ones linked in the description?
Nice done!i've a question,what's this dongle onto a phone,or custom one?
IR camera
@@michaelb7071 yes i know! but where to find it?brand?
I have a USB to IDE adapter. Would connect it up to a Linux computer and DD an image of the hard drive.
Also, you want to be ready to copy the data immediately once you bring the drive up and not have to shut it down again to connect another drive to back the data up to because I have seen instances where the drive came up ONE LAST TIME ONLY and if you didn't get the data copied that one time, you lost it for good!
USB to IDE adapters have slow speed. So it depends on the amount of gigabytes of data that need to be copied. Hook up the HDD to an ide or sata port on a motherboard and things go much faster.
@@seeithappen1 There are fast USB 3 to IDE adaptors, but some are fake and only the plug is USB 3...
I Need Your Help Sir,
my pc keeps restarting...I found the fault..It's My DVD drive..Without my Dvd Player plugged in PC Boots Fine Works..
My Dvd Player also don't Read anything...It Opens Closes..spins inside..but it Don't reads anything in PC...But I am 80% sure that the lens is Ok...I never Abused it With Scratchy Discs...Must be something with Connectors terminals or something.
I am afraid to give my Dvd drive to a repair shop I am afraid they will not fix it and they will rather Salvage its parts and Pay me some amount..I dont have any money to buy a New DVD RW.. wanna fix it myself..I have a working Multimeter that I can use and Soldering Tools.And Screw Drivers to open stuffs..thats all...I am poor Please give me any Instructions how to fix it.....😔😔
What did I miss , can't you just replace the diode and give it back to him ?
Of course you can. IF the drive still works when the customer gets it back.
Cool...
Is it OK to sit the HDD either side up while in use?
Got the answer from internet, apparently you can have them mounted sideways as well from some manufacturers
Bet you're glad it wasn't Gary Glitter's HDD 😂
why did you have to but the data onto another drive ? when that drive was now working
Because I did what the customer should have done in the first place. Made a backup copy on a new USB HDD and charged him for it. Plus he get's his original drive back as well with the data on it. The customer was happy with that
No sane person would consider a 20+ years old drive that just came back from the dead as a safe to use and entrust data to it :D
Old drive is now close to 20 years old, and a drive that old will fail at any time without warning. Hard drives are precision items, and that precision comes with very little between working and not working. Here it was just luck that he had a drive with both the fuses and the diodes, as later on models those got cost cut out, saving a half cent per drive, which adds up, if you make a million drives a quarter, to a big chunk of change as cost saving.
@@LearnElectronicsRepair Good job
I would not trust that drive.
👏👏👏👏
Obviously you are very smart, but using Windows to recover or even connect to someones drive is not good. Windows CAN and WILL delete files on any drive if it doesn't like the file !
Electronic repairs unless you do it for a living is not worth the effort unless you get satisfaction from it. I have watched you repair various items and with all the little drawers of components you have around you, you never seem to have the right component and have to order. There are just to many components and they keep bringing out new ones every year.
Yeah I often don't have the correct replacement part and have to order, but I do charge the customer for that. I also order a few extra ones for my own stash of stuff, which I also add on the bill, unless they are expensive parts. Electronic repair can be very worthwhile financially, especially industrial electronics and similar, but I totally agree, I generally do it for the satisfaction I get from it and those who do it for the same reason are often the best techs out there 😉
OMG sir at least blur them out.
Use linux damnit