[ILUG] Hard disk failure

[Niall O Broin]

On 14 Jun 2007, at 20:03, Michael Watterson wrote:

> Dunno, had more success warming a drive.

You're special :-) Your experience goes against all the wisdom you'll  
read about, and against the physics (as a drive warms up, and they do  
get rather warm, both electronic and mechanical parts will expand and  
this can lead to things going out of spec. It's not at all unusual to  
have drive problems which occur after a machine has been on for a  
little while - when the drive has warmed up.

> But I can't see how an external enclosure can help. If it needs to  
> be read on another PC a desktop with standard 3.5" to 2.5" IDE  
> adaptor is about 8 Euro.

In fairness, an external adapter IS clutching - though the problem  
might be down to the connection between the laptop and the drive. If  
the man is prepared to pay data recover frim prices, it's worth  
playing a little first.

> If it isn't visible at all, this is good, electronics fault and  
> easy to swap board (Check, Dabs, Komplett, PC World, Maplin and  
> eBay for same model).

IFF the exact model of drive is still available - by no means a  
certainty, and indeed if the drive is > 1 year old I'd say it'll be  
hard to find a replacement, and it's really unlikely from mainstream  
suppliers.

And I'd expect that replacing the electronics board on a laptop drive  
may involve some very delicate parts, and tools that the average  
person may not have. I just pulled out a 6 y.o. 60 GB Travelstar  
drive - the PCB is attached to the drive with TINY Torx screws - I'm  
guessing the hole is about 1mm. I have a driver which will fit it (or  
I would have, if my friend would have given the set back :-) ) but it  
won't be in the toolkit of the average household, or even of the  
average geek.


Niall