Servo Sector bad..?

[nlmiller1975]

I have a hard drive that seems to have gone kerplooey on me. After several different attempts at diagnostics on my end and taking it to a comp tech office, it has been "determined" that the servo sectors are bad. What does that mean for me in terms of fixing it? Is my only option at this point a clean room? Thank you.

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

Drives reserve a small part of the disk that is called the servo or system area. It's not normally accessible to the end user. If bad sectors develop in this area it can make your drive go as you say kerplooey.

If the drive is recognized in BIOS and/or disk management there may be hope.

If not you will need to send it to a full service data recovery shop.

 

[fzabkar]

Assuming you have reported it correctly, a diagnosis of "bad servo sectors" is just technobable.

Can you be a bit more specific than just "kerplooey"?

 

[nlmiller1975]

Well, it stopped recognizing in the windows explorer window. The bar will go almost all the way to the right but stops right at the end and I get an I/O error or a "you may need to reformat this hard drive". I ran several diagnostics on it and one of them said that there was an error every 512 mb. That's when I took it in to some techs. They said that the servo sectors were bad. The guy I spoke with said that the servo sectors are the sectors that support all of the other sectors... <shrug> Does that help?

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

The servo area holds the p-list and g-list plus other info the drive needs to operate. So if the servo area is damaged you can expect problems.

However if you are able to clone the drive onto another drive you may be able to recover data. HDClone is good for this.

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

 

[nlmiller1975]

I can't even get the drive to populate... =/

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

You do not need it to populate in Windows.

HDClone runs from it's own boot CD it is independent of Windows.

 

[fzabkar]

I'm wondering if you are confusing "servo sectors" with "Service Area" or "System Area". AIUI, this is the hidden area on the platters where the defect lists and firmware zone are located.

See this article for an explanation:
http://forum.hddguru.com/newbie-info-from-and-for-newbies-about-firmware-etc-t6562-20.html

 

[nlmiller1975]

I had the guy spell it for me and then I had him explain it to me. Other than that, I don't know anything about it. All I know is that he said my only option at this point is a clean room. <shrug>

 

[vvhocare5]

I think what we are all struggling with is the diagnosis of servo sectors being bad.

The reason is USUALLY one platter is reserved for servo positioning information. It is filled with a specific data pattern and that information is fed into a feedback loop so that the other heads are kept in the center of the magnetic field allowing the best signal to noise ratio possible.

To diagnose that requires some very specific equipment - which I have a hard time believing any PC store tech would ever have or even know how to operate.

It may be possible to have some sort of extended diagnostics from the drive report that the servo information is bad.

I would try an HDClone type of product and if that doesnt work replace it and move on.

 

[nlmiller1975]

Hmm.. interesting information. Thank you so much for the clarification. It sounds like if this were to be sent to a clean room, they could use a different platter? Or if the "servo" stuff is bad, is it impossible to duplicate that in order to view/open or whatever the actual information?

I'm waiting on the hd to come back from the tech and will try the clone thing when I get it back. As for replacing it, I have plenty of extra hard drives now; but, unfortunately, I need to get this information off of it as it has home videos and pictures of my children on it that I have nowhere else. I waited entirely too long to try to back it up. Thanks for the info.

 

[fzabkar]

Actually, there is no specific servo platter in modern drives. That ceased to be the case in the early 1990s when drives began to use embedded servos. That is, servo data and read data coexist on the same track, on every platter.

See this article for an explanation:
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html