Hitachi HDD 2.5 - not spinning

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Henk1234

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May 30, 2014
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Hi there,
Have a Hitachi 2.5 HDD which stopped working without any signs of having failures/ errors, etc. Managed to get a second, working HDD with the same specifications, production date, PCB etc. Changing the PCB did not work either. Any ideas? Would that be possible to change the head from the working unit? Thanks for any ideas..
Henk
 
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Hitachi PCBs contain adaptive data in NVRAM. AIUI, if you swap boards without transferring the adaptives, then the contents of the NVRAM on a non-native PCB may be rewritten, rendering the data inaccessible. I don't understand why this happens, but it is frequently mentioned at the HDD Guru forum. Other HDD brands do not appear to suffer from this problem. Also, I can't be certain if all Hitachi models are similarly affected.
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fricklesmn

fricklesmn

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Feb 22, 2014
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Hello,

Hate to say it, but you are probably out of luck - do not remove the cover of either drive as ANY contamination inside will be catastrophic.. It must be done in a clean room environment... Unless you want to fork out hundreds of $$$ (maybe even thousands) for professional data recovery your data is probably gone forever.
 
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Saberus

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Aug 23, 2013
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Modern drives store some metadata on the PCB, and will not work unless they have their original. The heads are not swappable and are too small to be accurately placed without special gear, and even so much as a speck of dust can ruin the drive, as the dust particles are huge compared to the read head. It's called a head crash, and it can be nasty.

If you can't get the drive to spin, you can try giving it a sudden twist while trying to start up to get the motor to unstick, and if that works you should get the data off ASAP, and what luck, you already have a functional drive to transfer it to!

If you can't get it to spin up or be recognized by the computer, yeah, out of luck like Fricklesmn said.
 
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Henk1234

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May 30, 2014
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Dear both,
Thanks for the prompt answers. the drive not just doest spin but also completely silent, so no strange sound or other strange noise. Nothing. However, attaching the PCB to the other hard drive makes that spins, but of course as the pcb is different the hard drive will not be visible. As the data on the "dead" one is not so important, I have decided to continue the experiment. My next question would be that assuming that the PCB is OK as it spinned the other hard drive - in theory - could I swap the disc (platter) AND the PCB to make it work? What other components are inside what could have gone wrong? Many thanks,
Henk
 
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fzabkar

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Measure the resistances between the motor terminals. there should be 3 windings, and their resistances should be of the order of 1 or 2 ohms.

The other thing to check would be the load resistances on the preamp supply rails. The preamp is on the headstack and can be damaged by an overvoltage. If you place a business card between the PCB and the preamp terminals on the donor drive, does it still spin up? If not, then this would suggest that the PCB looks for the preamp before it attempts to spin the motor.
 
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Saberus

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Changing the platters without a clean room might get you access to your data, but it's ultimately going to kill the drive from contamination. The heads on a hard drive are tiny, a speck of dust to a read head is like a large bus or a small house to a human... now imagine running into it at near-sonic speeds. This is what the head will experience... a head crash. And since it's on a platter, it can smack into the same dust particle several times a second.
 
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Henk1234

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May 30, 2014
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Thanks again for the great info. After same preparation and checks I exchanged the platters. I have put in the platter containing the data to the donor hdd and also changed the PCB. After assembling, the HDD spins up normally, no strange sound, however I do not see the drive coming up (not even in computer management in windows as a drive with no associated letter.) So platter and PCB moved, drive spins up, but nothing visible.
Any last ideas? Did I forgot to change also something else from the damaged one? Thanks and regards, Henk
 
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fzabkar

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Sep 22, 2010
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Hitachi PCBs contain adaptive data in NVRAM. AIUI, if you swap boards without transferring the adaptives, then the contents of the NVRAM on a non-native PCB may be rewritten, rendering the data inaccessible. I don't understand why this happens, but it is frequently mentioned at the HDD Guru forum. Other HDD brands do not appear to suffer from this problem. Also, I can't be certain if all Hitachi models are similarly affected.
 
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