Overvolting for Data Recovery

Just another last-ditch trick for drives with fatal issues...

A customer recently brought in a drive that would not boot with data that they'd prefer not to lose. After doing the freezer trick and impacting the bearings, the best I could get was a squeeky groan followed by silence.

Since the customer didn't care enough about the data to spend for a data recovery center, I thought, "what the heck" and connected the drive (a notebook drive) to 7V, rather than 5V. Low and behold, it spun up with minimal complaint and I was able to copy off the data.

Disclaimer: Use this trick at your own risk; you're equally likely to fry the drive electronics or motor as get data back, but it may be worth trying for "damn the torpedoes" situations.

weird... so u use a 7v psu or what?

So this would be like +14v or +15v for a desktop drive? I could see this providing just enough extra torque to spin up the platter - but I doubt it would help with actuator issues or other IDE logic circuit failures...

I'll tuck this one away in the back of my brain - I'm sure I'll come back to it one of these years Cool tip...

What brand/model was the drive?

madhatter256 said:

What brand/model was the drive?

Click to expand...

It was a Toshiba drive. HDD2190.

nd4spdbh2 said:

weird... so u use a 7v psu or what?

Click to expand...

I used a standard ATX power supply and simply connected the red & yellow wires from the 12V rail to the power leads for the HDD.

Randyman... said:

So this would be like +14v or +15v for a desktop drive? I could see this providing just enough extra torque to spin up the platter - but I doubt it would help with actuator issues or other IDE logic circuit failures...

I'll tuck this one away in the back of my brain - I'm sure I'll come back to it one of these years Cool tip...

Click to expand...

Randyman... hit the nail on the head for this particular drive; the bearings were shot and provided too much drag for the motor to spin up at 5V. The extra voltage was enough to get it spinning and keep it so long enough to get the data from the drive. 14-15V would be about right for a desktop drive. A 15V notebook power brick would do the trick nicely.

Cool.

Randyman... said:

So this would be like +14v or +15v for a desktop drive? I could see this providing just enough extra torque to spin up the platter - but I doubt it would help with actuator issues or other IDE logic circuit failures...

I'll tuck this one away in the back of my brain - I'm sure I'll come back to it one of these years Cool tip...

Click to expand...

i dont think it would work on a desktop drive, looking at the pcb of one of me old drives theres a regulator on there. so its likely that it wouldn't work