- Feb 24, 2014
- 13
- 0
- 4,510
Hi Tom's brilliant community,
Normally I tend towards avoiding doing stupid things, but if I make a mistake and try to repair it (considering it is something that I'm not experienced at), I often worsten it, and it gets deeper and deeper until I destroy something so important that my mind stops for a bit and recap all that I've done. Making me realize the sheer amount of unnessessary destruction I've just made. Yeah, I do that and I'm aware that this is NOT the way to behave with broken stuff. I'm getting better now.
Anyway, I accidentally dropped my 2TB Western Digital external HDD on the floor. My computer chair's wheel got over the power cord and when I rolled away... BAM :
Hey Oli, remember thoses nice pictures of you and your friends from the past 10 years, your 7 years worth of music gathering, oh... and all your school stuff... yeah they're gone man. Have a nice day!
- sincerely, your external HDD
I read some posts on how to troubleshoot thoses kind of accident and ended up doing a bit of what I was talking in the first paragraph. I then sat and meditated to remove the anger and to think about how I could retrieve the data. The disk where still looking intact and the head was about as good has a pile of sh*t sitting in a field on a hot summer day. Many spokes have lost their little reading chip... not to talk about the alignment of the spoke itself.
So I underwent deep studies of the subject on repairing broken HDD. I got some cheap HDDs to practice my newly acquired knowledge on removing heads and disk platters.
After I felt confortable enough, I underwent the swap of the disk from my broken HDD to a brand new internal WD 2TB HDD, both caviar green but with slight difference in the DCM number and on the look of the sticker itself. I plugged the new one and it was working flawlessly. I crafted some tools out of a pill container and felt to keep the heads from touching themself when they where away from the platter and also to put them back to the position they where originally without effort (BTW I removed the parking ramp to remove the platters). Everything went well, the heads are intact, the disks where swapped and everything was ''screwed'' back in. I red about applying correct pressure when your put the screws back on the platter spindle but I didn't have any torque tools. So I just used my screwdriver and did a triangular screwing pattern so the disk would sit squared to its place. After I retightened the screw on a circular pattern. I plugged the adaptor to the newly built HDD and plugged it in my PC. It clicked three time, then stopped, then clicked three time again, then the disks stopped spining.
The disks are intact (to my untrained eye) and I used a little blowing device to blow off the very very very low amount of dust that as fallen on the platter (thoses little pear shaped thing to blow off dust on an expensive camera). The heads where NEVER touched during the process (except for the surgically precise installation of the aforementionned tools).
My questions are:
-After all I've done, what would this precise clicking noise means?
-I thought maybe I could swap the PCB too. Do you think that's necessary, and that the head unit can work with another PCB?
-Is there anything that I may have forgotten to do?
-...and finally, what would be the best actions to take with that situation?
My final try would be to wait until next time I go in China, and to ask professionals to try and recover the data for me (Because in China it doesn't cost 1000 freaking $!!!).
Don't mind my poor english writing, it's not my native language.
Above all else, thank you Tom's community for your professional level of knowledge!
I will be awaiting your much appreciated enlightenment...
- Oli
Normally I tend towards avoiding doing stupid things, but if I make a mistake and try to repair it (considering it is something that I'm not experienced at), I often worsten it, and it gets deeper and deeper until I destroy something so important that my mind stops for a bit and recap all that I've done. Making me realize the sheer amount of unnessessary destruction I've just made. Yeah, I do that and I'm aware that this is NOT the way to behave with broken stuff. I'm getting better now.
Anyway, I accidentally dropped my 2TB Western Digital external HDD on the floor. My computer chair's wheel got over the power cord and when I rolled away... BAM :
Hey Oli, remember thoses nice pictures of you and your friends from the past 10 years, your 7 years worth of music gathering, oh... and all your school stuff... yeah they're gone man. Have a nice day!
- sincerely, your external HDD
I read some posts on how to troubleshoot thoses kind of accident and ended up doing a bit of what I was talking in the first paragraph. I then sat and meditated to remove the anger and to think about how I could retrieve the data. The disk where still looking intact and the head was about as good has a pile of sh*t sitting in a field on a hot summer day. Many spokes have lost their little reading chip... not to talk about the alignment of the spoke itself.
So I underwent deep studies of the subject on repairing broken HDD. I got some cheap HDDs to practice my newly acquired knowledge on removing heads and disk platters.
After I felt confortable enough, I underwent the swap of the disk from my broken HDD to a brand new internal WD 2TB HDD, both caviar green but with slight difference in the DCM number and on the look of the sticker itself. I plugged the new one and it was working flawlessly. I crafted some tools out of a pill container and felt to keep the heads from touching themself when they where away from the platter and also to put them back to the position they where originally without effort (BTW I removed the parking ramp to remove the platters). Everything went well, the heads are intact, the disks where swapped and everything was ''screwed'' back in. I red about applying correct pressure when your put the screws back on the platter spindle but I didn't have any torque tools. So I just used my screwdriver and did a triangular screwing pattern so the disk would sit squared to its place. After I retightened the screw on a circular pattern. I plugged the adaptor to the newly built HDD and plugged it in my PC. It clicked three time, then stopped, then clicked three time again, then the disks stopped spining.
The disks are intact (to my untrained eye) and I used a little blowing device to blow off the very very very low amount of dust that as fallen on the platter (thoses little pear shaped thing to blow off dust on an expensive camera). The heads where NEVER touched during the process (except for the surgically precise installation of the aforementionned tools).
My questions are:
-After all I've done, what would this precise clicking noise means?
-I thought maybe I could swap the PCB too. Do you think that's necessary, and that the head unit can work with another PCB?
-Is there anything that I may have forgotten to do?
-...and finally, what would be the best actions to take with that situation?
My final try would be to wait until next time I go in China, and to ask professionals to try and recover the data for me (Because in China it doesn't cost 1000 freaking $!!!).
Don't mind my poor english writing, it's not my native language.
Above all else, thank you Tom's community for your professional level of knowledge!
I will be awaiting your much appreciated enlightenment...
- Oli
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