Insane resurrection time!

DanFraser · Jul 23, 2007

Tomorrow (well, today, but I need to sleep first) I shall be purchasing a 320-500GB hard drive. As some of you may know, a couple of months ago a very unfortunate power problem caused by workmen disabled four of my hard drives.

So in the next few days, I shall be working on recovering the data off these drives with extreme methods. Some of you will scream that I'm insane, some will just say 'dude...' and some will encourage this.

As of yet there are no pictures, as tomorrow I also buy batteries for the video camera which will take pictures and some cool/uncool moments.

The plan is as follows:

A plastic box will be constructed in a manner to have a clear window in it's lid.
The box shall also have three holes cut in the side, two for gloves to be attached, and another for a data and power cable for power on.
The box will also be spray misted inside and have silica gel packs added to aid drying. This should help reduce any amount of dust present, dependant on getting the silica packs to do this in the first place.
As one of two working hard drives match three of the dead ones exactly, I shall backup the data on to either DVD and/or the new drive. This drive then becomes the donor.
Said working and dead drives will be inserted in to the box.
The heads from the donor shall be carefully removed and inserted in to the first patient, and then proceed to power on and see what happens. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I shall report back when I have some more updates!

DanFraser · Jul 23, 2007

reserve 1

DanFraser · Jul 23, 2007

reserve 2

DanFraser · Jul 23, 2007

reserve 3

(um, sorry mods!)

IAmMoen · Jul 23, 2007

Good luck man. The issue I see is that as soon as you open the box to put the drives in they will bring in dust with them. Just a thought. I look forward to the updates!

nd4spdbh2 · Jul 23, 2007

i give you the best of luck man.

what is exactly wrong with the current hds to where you need to take em apart?

btw i have opend hds b 4.. heck i even made an acrylic window for one and in the process i wiped some dust off the platter with a qtip... and that hd works perfectly fine to this day lol. and i didnt even have like a dust proof chamber... i took the lid off put some friggin swran wrap over it and traced out the top and then put the newly made acrylic on, right on my desk with both windows open so i could see the beautiful sunset lol

yes there is a protective acrylic window on there

Automata · Jul 23, 2007

Keep us updated with pics and progress!! I want to see if this works!!!

Murdochs_mad · Jul 24, 2007

Yes you are mad, but when all else fails insanity . . um genius may prevail :attn:

good luck. Why not put all the hd's and tools you need into the box before you start to decontaminate the inside of the box? How are you gonna work with the drives inside the box, have you added some rubber gauntlets (like a proper isolation chamber)?

Sam__ · Jul 24, 2007

dude.....lol

Nice windows u got there nd4spdbh2.

gd luck.

DanFraser · Jul 24, 2007

nd4spdbh2 said:

It appears (or sounds) that the heads are knackered in all of them. They clearly spin up, but the clicking sound certainly points to dead heads.

Oh, and just completing the hard drive order now.

EmAn · Jul 24, 2007

dude you dont need to take the hdd's apart... all you need to do is switch out the pcb on the bottom and you dont need a dust free environment to do that at all!

but if you want to take them all apart then go right ahead and show us the videos of when you do it

Mr. Roboto · Jul 24, 2007

EmAn said:
dude you dont need to take the hdd's apart... all you need to do is switch out the pcb on the bottom and you dont need a dust free environment to do that at all!

but if you want to take them all apart then go right ahead and show us the videos of when you do it

Did you read what he said? If the heads are bad, swapping the boards won't do jack.

DanFraser · Jul 24, 2007

Mr. Roboto said:
EmAn said:

dude you dont need to take the hdd's apart... all you need to do is switch out the pcb on the bottom and you dont need a dust free environment to do that at all!

but if you want to take them all apart then go right ahead and show us the videos of when you do it

Click to expand...

Did you read what he said? If the heads are bad, swapping the boards won't do jack.

Board swapping, as it is incredibly easy to do has already been done.

nd4spdbh2 · Jul 24, 2007

ya i might try swapping out the boards before goingto more drastic measures... its super easy to do. and thnx for the complements on my old window lol.

UBERCOOL · Jul 25, 2007

This is just plain awesome! I have thought about doing this before when I lost some of my hard drives but in the end I decided that I didn't lose that much important data. I have also opened one up and put in a window, although it wasn't as sweet as that plexi top, I actually cut a window don't know why I didn't think of the plexi top. Anyway, what I did to cut the window was I went into the small guest bathroom in my house, turned the shower on full hot, and closed the door. Then I turned off the shower and went to work. Theory here being that the moisture would take all the dust out of the air. Not sure if it helped or not, but my drive came out working.

DanFraser · Jul 27, 2007

Slightly annoyed update...

The floods in England appear to be messing with delivery schedules, even though the route taken by the package doesn't get close to an affected area along the entire route.

DanFraser · Jul 27, 2007

Well, another update.

Upon the fourth time of exiting my apartment today, one of my neighbours declared they had accepted the package from the postman.

My 500GB drive is here! Another holdup though, I can't seem to find my small screwdriver tool set for taking the hard drives apart (come to think of it, I can't even find my favourite screwdriver...).

imposter · Jul 27, 2007

DanFraser said:
Well, another update.

Upon the fourth time of exiting my apartment today, one of my neighbours declared they had accepted the package from the postman.

My 500GB drive is here! Another holdup though, I can't seem to find my small screwdriver tool set for taking the hard drives apart (come to think of it, I can't even find my favourite screwdriver...).

Wow thats stinks. Anytime you want something you can never find it GRRR i hate that.

Good luck on this, if your successful perhaps you can charge 1k for data recovery =P.

nd4spdbh2 · Jul 27, 2007

DanFraser said:
favourite screwdriver...).

lol you are from england... just playin man.

I think the type of skrewdriver used on most hard drive are torqux head skrews.

Cheator · Jul 27, 2007

nd4spdbh2 said:
lol you are from england... just playin man.

They do that in canada too. We call it English.

lol

Insane resurrection time!

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