Discussion:
Opening a hard drive without destroying it
(too old to reply)
James Harris
2020-10-24 15:40:54 UTC
Permalink
You guys may be interested in this.

I've seen many people say that without special facilities one should
never open a hard drive - which is correct - but then going on
effectively to say that opening the drive renders it dead because of
particle ingress. So I was surprised to see this:



It's not a one-off. There are other videos of similar ilk. It seems that
one can open a hard drive to do something like unstick the heads -
including dragging the heads across the platters (eek!) - and still have
a good chance of getting a lot of the data back after doing so!

Naturally, once a drive has been opened it is unsafe to use for storage
so as much as possible of its contents should be immediately copied and
the drive never used again. But I found it fascinating that it was even
possible to do what the guy did without a cleanroom ... and still get a
lot of the sectors back.

As for software to get as many sectors as possible off the disk it looks
as though

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html

could be a good option.

Why did I look into this? Because I have a drive which beeps. And while
I have cloud copies of all the photos on the drive the cloud copies may
not the high resolution of the originals. So it's worth getting the
originals back, if I can. Also, the drive was a Windows 10 boot disk so
its licence (and key) may be worth keeping in case I ever want to
install win 10 again.
--
James Harris
Bernhard Schornak
2020-10-25 03:10:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by James Harris
You guys may be interested in this.
I've seen many people say that without special facilities one should never open a hard drive - which
is correct - but then going on effectively to say that opening the drive renders it dead because of
  http://youtu.be/F5Y7BniaRXg
It's a Seagate, so what did you expect? ;)

I opened the very first HDD I got in 1993 (it was a 5.25 inch
HDD with unbelievable 40 MB). It stopped to work after half a
year or so. I managed to rescue most data by booting DOS from
floppies, but thereafter it was a dead piece of junk.

Since then, I only bought IBM HDDs (swallowed by Hitachi, now
part of Western Digital), and never encountered any problems,
again - the extra reliability is worth the extra cost.

BTW: It is very unlikely this method might work with a recent
Helium filled drive, but you will have a funny voice, if
you inhale the gas... ;)


Greetings from Augsburg

Bernhard Schornak
James Harris
2020-10-25 10:18:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Bernhard Schornak
Post by James Harris
You guys may be interested in this.
I've seen many people say that without special facilities one should
never open a hard drive - which is correct - but then going on
effectively to say that opening the drive renders it dead because of
   http://youtu.be/F5Y7BniaRXg
It's a Seagate, so what did you expect? ;)
Hmm. So is my one which, I presume, also has stuck heads.
Post by Bernhard Schornak
I opened the very first HDD I got in 1993 (it was a 5.25 inch
HDD with unbelievable 40 MB). It stopped to work after half a
year or so. I managed to rescue most data by booting DOS from
floppies, but thereafter it was a dead piece of junk.
Since then, I only bought IBM HDDs (swallowed by Hitachi, now
part of Western Digital), and never encountered any problems,
again - the extra reliability is worth the extra cost.
I heard that with acquisitions and mergers there are now very few HDD
manufacturers left. Just three, maybe: WD, Seagate, Toshiba?

Printed comments are far from scientific but based on what I've read I
would be less inclined to trust Toshiba. Do you reckon WD is still more
reliable than Seagate, for a similar price point?
Post by Bernhard Schornak
BTW: It is very unlikely this method might work with a recent
     Helium filled drive, but you will have a funny voice, if
     you inhale the gas... ;)
:-)
--
James Harris
wolfgang kern
2020-10-25 16:02:31 UTC
Permalink
On 25.10.2020 11:18, James Harris wrote:
...
Post by James Harris
Printed comments are far from scientific but based on what I've read I
would be less inclined to trust Toshiba. Do you reckon WD is still more
reliable than Seagate, for a similar price point?
my experience is different, I always had problems with WD and Toshiba
but almost never with Seagate and Hitachi and my latest purchase was
a bunch from Samsung which didn't show any failure so far (5 years).
Post by James Harris
Post by Bernhard Schornak
BTW: It is very unlikely this method might work with a recent
      Helium filled drive, but you will have a funny voice, if
      you inhale the gas... ;)
:-)
:)

I once tried to recover data from a stuck HD, the result was pretty
fragmented and of no real use.
__
wolfgang
Rod Pemberton
2020-11-20 07:28:04 UTC
Permalink
On Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:02:31 +0100
Post by wolfgang kern
I always had problems with WD
Ditto.

I've mentioned this **numerous** times here in the past ...

So, I have only one working WD. It's new in the box. It may stay
that way forever ... All the other WD's have died. Well, one of them
still works, but is overheating. You have to put a pot of ice on it to
keep it cold, and then it'll melt all of the ice in about 15 minutes.
All other brands of IDE (not MFMs) drives still work, but my older
drives are not in use anymore.


Rod Pemberton

--
James Harris
2020-11-21 12:03:50 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:02:31 +0100
Post by wolfgang kern
I always had problems with WD
Ditto.
I've mentioned this **numerous** times here in the past ...
So, I have only one working WD. It's new in the box. It may stay
that way forever ... All the other WD's have died. Well, one of them
still works, but is overheating. You have to put a pot of ice on it to
keep it cold, and then it'll melt all of the ice in about 15 minutes.
You let ice melt on them and then you wonder why they stop working...?

;-)
Post by Rod Pemberton
All other brands of IDE (not MFMs) drives still work, but my older
drives are not in use anymore.
It's not just hard drives. I have an SSD which works sometimes but at
others seems to cause problems with the whole disk subsystem. Two
machines I've plugged it in to have had trouble reading any disk a short
while after the SSD is plugged in.
--
James Harris
Rod Pemberton
2020-11-22 11:42:39 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, 21 Nov 2020 12:03:50 +0000
Post by James Harris
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:02:31 +0100
Post by wolfgang kern
I always had problems with WD
Ditto.
I've mentioned this **numerous** times here in the past ...
So, I have only one working WD. It's new in the box. It may stay
that way forever ... All the other WD's have died. Well, one of
them still works, but is overheating. You have to put a pot of ice
on it to keep it cold, and then it'll melt all of the ice in about
15 minutes.
You let ice melt on them and then you wonder why they stop working...?
;-)
:-) Hey, I never said I wasn't crazy. I also once hot-swapped
(machine was powered) EEPROMs to redo/fix a bad BIOS update.

It did really scare me when lots of condensation starting forming on
the metal pot with the ice that sitting directly on top of the hard
drive ... I thought about freezing the drive instead, but I figured
the ice had greater cooling capacity.

After I saw the condensation, I was /seriously/ concerned about
damaging the _motherboard_ if the drive failed electrically from a
water short.

The setup for that was _really_ awkward/sketchy as the drive was the
only thing not in the computer case, had to be level for the pot to sit
on top and transfer heat, had short data/power cables, needed the drive
to sit on insulator to prevent electrical shorts, risk of water spill
causing electrical shorts, etc. But, the main thing was backing up the
data. So, I had to make it work. I aborted the first attempt as I was
too nervous. The second attempt the drive heated up way too fast and
starting get read errors before I got the data backed up. Third
attempt went cleanly, with much more water and ice in the pot. The
drive was still cool and working at the end.

I'm not sure what is wrong with that drive, but I think the spindle was
generating the excess heat and then locking up from a combination of
friction and metal expansion when hot from friction. I think the
spindle uses roller bearings, but it seemed as if lubrication failed,
much like a car engine seizing without oil or bad used oil. Yet,
AFAIK, the spindle isn't lubricated. Maybe, the bearings failed.
Post by James Harris
Post by Rod Pemberton
All other brands of IDE (not MFMs) drives still work, but my older
drives are not in use anymore.
It's not just hard drives. I have an SSD which works sometimes but at
others seems to cause problems with the whole disk subsystem. Two
machines I've plugged it in to have had trouble reading any disk a
short while after the SSD is plugged in.
...
Post by James Harris
cause problems with the whole disk subsystem
1) That reminds me of a cd-rom drive I had that was electrically
damaged. I didn't realize it was bad instead suspecting a hard drive.
It would eventually damage whatever motherboard it was plugged into.

2) That also reminds me of having two IDE hard drives installed, but
with one of them setup incorrectly via jumpers, i.e., one drive
incorrectly setup as a single drive but with two drives installed.
AFAIK, that shouldn't affect SSD as they don't have jumpers for SATA,
nor share a cable, unless maybe you're using IDE-to-SATA or
SATA-to-IDE adapters etc. BTW, are you on UEFI now?

3) That also reminds me of my floppy drive in this machine. It has an
old cable with a loose/damaged/broken wire somewhere. When it's not
working correctly, I loose my SATA cd-rom drives, which are not on
the floppy interface, but I don't lose my SATA SSD drive. (bizarre)


I don't see how #2 or #3 would apply as you tried out two machines.

The SSD in this machine (bought 2007, still haven't upgraded) would
intermittently not boot correctly about once a month for the 1st year.
A full power down and reboot would correct it.
Post by James Harris
Two machines I've plugged it in to have had trouble
Did your machines return to normal without it plugged in, after a full
power down and reboot? ...

Could it be a speed related issue? e.g., overclocking, wrong bus speed
in BIOS

Could it be a power issue? i.e., weak/underrated power supply just not
powerful enough for everything you've got installed

Could it be a loose cable? i.e., you likely just plugged a new device
in to the motherboard

Could it be a short from the motherboard to the case? i.e., you likely
were just pressing on the motherboard to plug in cable


Rod Pemberton

--
James Harris
2021-03-05 11:39:15 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sat, 21 Nov 2020 12:03:50 +0000
Post by James Harris
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:02:31 +0100
...
Post by Rod Pemberton
I aborted the first attempt as I was
too nervous.
I know the feeling. As mentioned in another thread I recently got back a
lot of data from a laptop drive but the whole process was seriously
nervewracking.

As a result of how difficult that was I am working on a more extensive
backup strategy but I have to say that setting up stuff like this is not
easy and it's no wonder good backups are often ignored.

In my case, I used Google for the free-but-lossy storage of photos. That
was suitable for use in extremis but not ideal if the extreme situation
happened - as it did.

Rather than the compressed copies I wanted to restore the
less-compressed originals which were on the failed drive. Fortunately, I
seem to have got most of them back.

For offsite backups of the most important documents and data files
(including OS and language source files) I use Dropbox but I have a few
terabytes of TV recordings which have no offsite backup because it would
be too expensive. If the house were to burn down then that stuff would
be lost. And I have no backups of system disks.

IMO OSes should make backups and restores easy for users. For data disks
I suppose they do (or can do) but if a system disk were to fail then the
user could be in all kinds of trouble.

I have some ideas on how an OS should make system backups easy but
that's another topic. What frustrates me is that the well-known OSes
still don't make full system restores easy.

...
Post by Rod Pemberton
Post by James Harris
It's not just hard drives. I have an SSD which works sometimes but at
others seems to cause problems with the whole disk subsystem. Two
machines I've plugged it in to have had trouble reading any disk a
short while after the SSD is plugged in.
...
Post by Rod Pemberton
Did your machines return to normal without it plugged in, after a full
power down and reboot? ...
Could it be a speed related issue? e.g., overclocking, wrong bus speed
in BIOS
Could it be a power issue? i.e., weak/underrated power supply just not
powerful enough for everything you've got installed
Could it be a loose cable? i.e., you likely just plugged a new device
in to the motherboard
This seems the closest. It could have been a dodgy data cable. I say
that because I went back to the drive again a while ago and found
reports of what seemed to be communication failures in the SMART error
log. Also, I gave the drive a thorough test (apparently with a different
cable) and everything was OK.

Unfortunately, the suspect SATA cable is now just one of many in a box. :-(
--
James Harris
Scott Lurndal
2020-10-25 17:17:37 UTC
Permalink
Post by James Harris
Printed comments are far from scientific but based on what I've read I
would be less inclined to trust Toshiba. Do you reckon WD is still more
reliable than Seagate, for a similar price point?
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html
Bernhard Schornak
2020-10-25 17:49:57 UTC
Permalink
Post by James Harris
Post by Bernhard Schornak
Post by James Harris
You guys may be interested in this.
I've seen many people say that without special facilities one should never open a hard drive -
which is correct - but then going on effectively to say that opening the drive renders it dead
   http://youtu.be/F5Y7BniaRXg
It's a Seagate, so what did you expect? ;)
Hmm. So is my one which, I presume, also has stuck heads.
Post by Bernhard Schornak
I opened the very first HDD I got in 1993 (it was a 5.25 inch
HDD with unbelievable 40 MB). It stopped to work after half a
year or so. I managed to rescue most data by booting DOS from
floppies, but thereafter it was a dead piece of junk.
Since then, I only bought IBM HDDs (swallowed by Hitachi, now
part of Western Digital), and never encountered any problems,
again - the extra reliability is worth the extra cost.
I heard that with acquisitions and mergers there are now very few HDD manufacturers left. Just
three, maybe: WD, Seagate, Toshiba?
Printed comments are far from scientific but based on what I've read I would be less inclined to
trust Toshiba. Do you reckon WD is still more reliable than Seagate, for a similar price point?
WD bought Hitachi's HDD business including the factories. They
used the technology to upgrade their production, as well. Only
HDDs produced under the still existing brand "Hitachi" are the
reliable drives. WD got better after buying Hitachi, but still
can't compete with them. Toshiba is the second best choice for
HDDs. Statistics about the reliability of mechanical drives do
exist - I'm just too lazy to search... ;)


Greetings from Augsburg

Bernhard Schornak
Rod Pemberton
2020-11-20 07:23:41 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, 24 Oct 2020 16:40:54 +0100
Post by James Harris
You guys may be interested in this.
I've seen many people say that without special facilities one should
never open a hard drive - which is correct - but then going on
effectively to say that opening the drive renders it dead because of
[link]
It's not a one-off. There are other videos of similar ilk. It seems
that one can open a hard drive to do something like unstick the heads
- including dragging the heads across the platters (eek!) - and still
have a good chance of getting a lot of the data back after doing so!
Naturally, once a drive has been opened it is unsafe to use for
storage so as much as possible of its contents should be immediately
copied and the drive never used again. But I found it fascinating
that it was even possible to do what the guy did without a
cleanroom ... and still get a lot of the sectors back.
As for software to get as many sectors as possible off the disk it
looks as though
[link]
could be a good option.
I tried ddrescue with a cd-rom that wasn't finalized properly, leaving
bad/unwritten tracks everywhere. Unfortunately, the drive(s) I used
kept erroring out after a certain number of failed reads. This was not
detected by Linux or ddrescue. The data would just be zero'd. So, I
ended up with lots of partial recoveries ... which needed to be merged.
Overall, I think dd by itself worked better. Perhaps, ddrescue would be
a better choice with hard disk or solid-state drive, as they probably
wouldn't stop reading tracks correctly after numerous failed read
attempts.
Post by James Harris
Why did I look into this? Because I have a drive which beeps. And
while I have cloud copies of all the photos on the drive the cloud
copies may not the high resolution of the originals. So it's worth
getting the originals back, if I can. Also, the drive was a Windows
10 boot disk so its licence (and key) may be worth keeping in case I
ever want to install win 10 again.
I've mostly opened drives that were dead.

However, I also opened up one that was failing. It was reading
intermittently. Somehow, one of the tiny drive read heads came loose,
flopping around, causing the read errors. Once it was put back into
place, the drive was fine to copy the data from. Usually, most hard
drives have a small hole, supposedly for air pressure equalization.
Also, they usually have a small internal pad, supposedly an air filter.
So, I'm not entirely sure about the truth behind the statements that
they are vacuum sealed and should only be opened in a clean room. When
they do fail, they are a good source of strong magnets (headphones too).


Rod Pemberton

--
James Harris
2020-11-21 12:21:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sat, 24 Oct 2020 16:40:54 +0100
...
Post by Rod Pemberton
I tried ddrescue with a cd-rom that wasn't finalized properly, leaving
bad/unwritten tracks everywhere. Unfortunately, the drive(s) I used
kept erroring out after a certain number of failed reads. This was not
detected by Linux or ddrescue. The data would just be zero'd. So, I
ended up with lots of partial recoveries ... which needed to be merged.
Overall, I think dd by itself worked better. Perhaps, ddrescue would be
a better choice with hard disk or solid-state drive, as they probably
wouldn't stop reading tracks correctly after numerous failed read
attempts.
One thing which puzzles me about ddrescue is that it says "Ddrescue does
not write zeros to the output when it finds bad sectors in the input"
which sounds as though the output file will contain whatever garbage was
there before ddrescue was run.

I assumed I'd need to zero (or otherwise fill with something
predictable) the output file before starting ddrescue but I've just
noticed a 'fill mode' which is rather complicated but sounds as though
it may be able to fill in any unwritten sectors with content

https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html
Post by Rod Pemberton
Post by James Harris
Why did I look into this? Because I have a drive which beeps. And
while I have cloud copies of all the photos on the drive the cloud
copies may not the high resolution of the originals. So it's worth
getting the originals back, if I can. Also, the drive was a Windows
10 boot disk so its licence (and key) may be worth keeping in case I
ever want to install win 10 again.
I've mostly opened drives that were dead.
However, I also opened up one that was failing. It was reading
intermittently. Somehow, one of the tiny drive read heads came loose,
flopping around, causing the read errors. Once it was put back into
place, the drive was fine to copy the data from. Usually, most hard
drives have a small hole, supposedly for air pressure equalization.
Also, they usually have a small internal pad, supposedly an air filter.
So, I'm not entirely sure about the truth behind the statements that
they are vacuum sealed and should only be opened in a clean room.
Cool. Good to hear.
--
James Harris
Scott Lurndal
2020-11-21 15:36:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by James Harris
Post by Rod Pemberton
On Sat, 24 Oct 2020 16:40:54 +0100
...
Post by Rod Pemberton
I tried ddrescue with a cd-rom that wasn't finalized properly, leaving
bad/unwritten tracks everywhere. Unfortunately, the drive(s) I used
kept erroring out after a certain number of failed reads. This was not
detected by Linux or ddrescue. The data would just be zero'd. So, I
ended up with lots of partial recoveries ... which needed to be merged.
Overall, I think dd by itself worked better. Perhaps, ddrescue would be
a better choice with hard disk or solid-state drive, as they probably
wouldn't stop reading tracks correctly after numerous failed read
attempts.
One thing which puzzles me about ddrescue is that it says "Ddrescue does
not write zeros to the output when it finds bad sectors in the input"
which sounds as though the output file will contain whatever garbage was
there before ddrescue was run.
I suspect they left holes in the output file (assuming linux). When
read, the holes return zeros (but there is no backing storage allocated
in the filesystem until data is written to the holes).
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