Sol

Me again with the harddrive that went to shit.


Yesterday I tried a somethin' to figure out WHY exactly my old harddrive isn't working. Basically I plugged it back in and turned the machine on, and listened to see if the platters were even spinning at all.

What I heard was... strange. Kinda like... okay, I got the impression that it was trying to spin, but sounded like it was labored in doing so. And the only way I can really describe it would involve shitty ascii art and would require changing font sizes, which I'm not sure is even possible in here.

My impression is that one of the platters is stuck to another one, and by "unsticking it" via the manual rotation thing, it'll potentially work fine again.

Questions are 1) is this a realistic expectation, 2) which way do I rotate it, 3) does any of this sound right anyway

>figure out WHY exactly my old harddrive isn't working. Basically I plugged it back in
That's about the worst thing you could have done. Enjoy your even moar badly damaged drive and next time make your fucking backups.

>>2
then how the fuck am I supposed to diagnose the fucker?

Open it in a dust free room with expensive tools, diagnostic devices and shit. Iow hand it over to the pros if your data is that valuable. Otherwise move on and MAKE FUCKING BACKUPS.

1. Take the drive in hand and spin it back and forth vigorously in the plane of the drive and platters.  This will use the inertia of the platters to move them independently of the casing.  It may help to unstick the hub for whatever reason it may be stuck.

2. Put the drive in a plastic bag, suck out the air fairly well, and put it in the freezer for a couple of days.  Take it out and leave it in the bag while it warms up to room temp.  This may unstick the hub.

3. Open the drive to expose the platters.  Carefully move the hub in order to move the platters without touching the platter surfaces directly.  Try to do it quickly and replace the cover after you're done.  PREPARATION:  Make sure your hands are washed and AIR DRIED (do NOT use a towel) after rolling up your sleeves.  Hold the drive on its side to minimize the chance of a piece of dust (even a liquid droplet from your breath) landing and sticking to the platters.

If you end up going through each of these steps and the drive still doesn't spin up, then it's dead.