1 terabyte Hard Drive Broken :(

1. Buy another identical HDD

2. Hire some time in a clean room

3. Swap the platters, or the arm & head assemblies, whichever is easier. Presumably, with that size of drive, it's a multi-platter assembly(?), so getting everything lined up won't be easy in either case.

Or (safer) pay someone to do it for you - but it won't be cheap. Depends how much value you put on the data.

I gave you a BA.

If it was intended as a fun jokey thing, then Ha Ha.....

Nobody, even one who knows a lot about hard drives should attempt this, only a company that specializes in such recovery should do this.....

Kinda reminds me of the old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket".

Search the web. There are companies that do this very successfully. One of those companies recently recovered data for NASA from a hard drive found from the Shuttle Columbia after it perished upon reentry.

Step One: Do not under any circumstances disassemble the drive yourself.

Ooops, sorry about that.

Step Two: Next time keep your eggs in more than one place.

The part that people don't seem to realize is that, it is not a matter of IF your hard drive will fail, it is only a matter of WHEN. When, can be anywhere from 0.000001 second to ? after you put the data on it. Feeling lucky?

Bite the bullet. If you really value your data don't touch the hard drive yourself unless you know what you're doing and are experienced in it (though you seem to have done so already).

Next time save your files to CDs. Depending on how much you value your data, make two copies and keep one somewhere safe (a vault?).

regards,

Vulcan

It is a terable loss. Get help.

Guys! as a software engineer...of course I know i shouldnt put all my eggs in one basket , so all those comments dont really help. I actually just transferred those files less than an hour before the tragedy happened. I had class and I was hoping on completing the backup afterwards immediately. I also know what I am doing opening the harddrive and all. I just havent done something of this magnitude in a while. the last hard drive i recovered was the 100GB drive, so I was just trying to get more opinions about it due to my external hardrive's newer technology. I have opened it already, so I cant send it to any company or any professionals at the moment. I am just concerned how to attach the "arm" so it would stay. i found the piece that was broken off. At least if i can find a way to reattach the arm so it works for just enough time to get back my data. that would be great. it is so small. i though about what adhesive to use and if it would work afterwards and also trying not to destroy the platter. the information on the disk is very valuable! what i need now is steps from after opening it up to successfully re-attaching the broken piece. i ll wait for one more day to hear responses before i go ahead and do what i think is best. hopefullly it will work. I'm one of those daring, you would say software engineers that do everything themselves and would never give it to anyone else to fix :)

Sorry rexeken, but with your original post it's not possible to know if you're an experienced software engineer.

I don't know what adhesive would work. Besides, getting the arm back in the exact position is going to be very difficult (but you already knew that). A quick acting adhesive means that you have to be on the money at the first shot. A slower acting adhesive means that you have to secure the arm somehow while waiting for it to set. Not to mention the fumes from the stuff that may affect the disk's surface.

With a broken arm (or head, proper term I believe), it's also possible that some of the surface of your disk has been scratched. It may not even be readable.

I still suggest you go to someone who has experience with this type of drive. You say you have experience but not with a terabyte drive.

regards,

Vulcan

You seem to be living in a dream world, you cannot do ANYTHING to repair this drive.

Did you know that for example cigarette smoke particles are up to 100 times larger than the gap between the platters and the read write heads.....that the gap is maintained by the air MOLECULES rolling like ball bearings between the head and platters, keeping the gap between 1.5 - 2.0 microns.......

Either pay a company big bucks to do it for you or write it off to stupidity and experience.

Even opening of the drive will have allowed microdust (at best or even normal dust!!) in there, they should only be opened by a professional in a class 1 clean room AFTER the drive had been cleaned externally.....

Only a complete idiot copies data into one place and then erases the source before making a backup!!!

Accept that and you are halfway to understanding that your data is most likely gone, gone, gone........or can only be recovered at a cost of probably 10 x what a new drive costs.....look on the internet for your area for such a company.......

Thanks Andy, I considered weighing in on the absurdity of what was being proposed but I grow weary of such things. Usually evokes some idiotic response by someone who is sure all things are possible. But then who knows, he is a software engineer. I mean what could he not know about hardware. It just never seems to get any better. I have given up.

By the way, how hard would you think you would have to smack it to cause the "arm" to break off??!!

I'm willing to bet it was broken during disassembly and he didn't even realize it.

You get a GA from me, I know EXACTLY where you are coming from, me too.

I have seen the inside of many HDs (opened them up to look at when they were no good for anything else!), broken and not broken, I have never seen a broken arm.

These arms can move with the speed of a rifle bullet, not a lot can break them, so if it was already broken, then there was probably a failure of the hard disk, bad manufacture. If he hadn't opened it, he would have had a guarantee........

Basically, he has not put a foot right, only screwed up from beginning to end.....

"These arms can move with the speed of a rifle bullet"

Which is why glue won't work, it will disassociate on the first track seek (mechanical engineering 101).

Not that you have a chance of getting the critical alignment correct so that the head flies correctly.

And these are just a few of the reasons why this won't work. Ah, so many bad ideas, so little time...

Dear Andy,

As experienced Software Engineer, Systems Analyst/Engineer and Systems Programer (that is class of programmers that program at hardware level) I know that long ago it was possible to crash HD heads if given negative cylinder and track address to HD controler, as it was possible to beat onto HD axe of rotation.... Something like this sometimes happened when Master Boot record was destroyed by electric spike, and I was unfortunate enough (because it were my HD) to see one such HD with heads dangling on tiny wires (at least 3-4 of them out of 12) after they were broken off.... But it was an IBM HD and there were rumors how glue they used on this seria was temperature unstable and they put heads too close to surface. Unfortunately for me, somebody brought whole shipload of such HD's that they have bought cheaply, thinking they made deal of century......... It was rumored also that severall shiploads were dumped in ocean by IBM as it were cheaper than to open and repair them, even cheaper than opening them and disasembling for recycling of materials....... But our coleague do not say exactly what is broken, but in any case he could start thinking how to reconstruct his data from backups or same sources since he told he just loaded it all. With this IBM HD I also lost allmost 10 years worth of programs and some text data I was dictating and editing for 2 and half years....... Since I spent all my money to buy this HD, I had enough left for just one batch of floppies to backup it, and it unfortunately expired just after I reformated all backup floppies preparing them for new backup, so I was left with nothing, and company that were recovering data from such HDs were charging price of 25 such HDs, which of course I was unable to pay..........

In any case, our coleague could forget gluing of heads back, it was pain in the ass with gargantuan sized 325 MBy HD, and heads of terabyte HD must be microscopic dimensions, and so putting heads back so they would read same tracks they have written is practically impossible.

Nowadays I buy HDs in pairs at least, so I backup from one drive to another indenticall drive, and it is more easy to backup by program since HDs could be compared file by file and only changed and new files copied, which is much faster than copying all...........

If that is not possible, then backup on DVD disks is more effective than on CDs, but this is more complicated or ask more time, and for backing full terabyte one would need 250 DVDs anyhow, so it is cheaper to have two indenticall HD's..........

I hope soon USB sticks would have bigger capacity and greater speed of operations (that seems delibertedly handicapped), even if now allready there is 32 GBy sticks, if I m not wrong....... It amazes me how slow such memory work, where it should be faster than HDs by factor of at least 100 :-(( Then, without moving parts, our data should be safer, but I would still backup it.........

Regards from Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia, Europe!

Good post.

You know it now, but for every one else, one must always have 3 copies (at least!) of any backups. The old Grandfather, Father and Son method!

Never for one second have less than that.

I used to advise companies on how to keep their data safe.......sadly, often "after the event!"

The very simple answer is to refer to your back up data

Oh, I was going to do a backup tomorrow!

No backup? - a lesson to be learned.

I am surprised the arm broke; I feel it must have been a faulty drive. Most of these things are able to withstand considerable shock, after all who knows what abuse the devices are going to be subjected to between manufacturer and customer! However, as you have already dismantled the drive you can hardly take it back under warranty! Seems like you're going to have to buy another one. You claim to have spent only one hour loading your files, you haven't lost too much in terms of your time. Presumably you still have your original files?

Regards,

Tony Lee.

Oh I don't think anyone thinks you're stupid. Stupid would be repeating this behavior but it sounds like you have learned a couple of valuable lessons. Just like most all educational experiences, there is a cost. It would have been quite feasible, albeit expensive, to send it off unopened to have the data recovered. You might even still do that though you may have mechanically corrupted some of it. But redundancy is the best policy.

For the future, if you have important data on a broken hard disk, just give the complete unit to a specialist company, with between 1 and 2000 $$$$ and they will recover the data for you.....

Its cheaper to have backups.

Repeating the work will do some good, you will do it even better with the experience of needing to do it twice!!!

Have a great day in spite of us!!

Maybe you're going about this backwards, if you jest erase the data, and haven't low leveled the drive that the data came off of you should be able to restore the source drive. I am assuming being a software engineer that you already thought of this, but you never know, just in case you haven't tried this I'm including the link to software that I've tried before.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enUS299US299&q=restoration+software+free