hard drive repair

Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk (WD2000JB).
A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then about 10
minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to backup the
contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard drive recovery
services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk
with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator and
the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I know
its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can do. I
opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that the
platters couldn't be moved around by hand. I opened another similar hard
drive (with no data on it) and was able to move the platters easily, so I'm
assuming there must be something wrong with the bearings in the hard disk.
I've managed to get hold of another (almost) identical motor/bearing
assembly, and I'm going to have a go at swapping them over.

My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically like 2
CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I don't
know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I moved them
to the new spindle or not (imagine rotating the top cd around a vertical
axis by 10 degrees - the data would no longer be sychronised between the 2
platters). There are no marks or holes to tell the orientation of the
platters, so it would be very hard to take them both off one spindle, and
put them on to the new one and preserve this relationship exactly.

Does anyone know if I need to do this, or have any other advise?

Thanks,

Ben

Ben Galvin <asd RemoveThis @asd.com> wrote

> I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk
> (WD2000JB). A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise,
> then about 10 minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had
> forgotten to backup the contents of the drive (lesson learned). I
> tried a few hard drive recovery services but they were all quoting
> about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk with a mechanical fault - a
> bit steep for me.

> Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup up
> a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion
> generator and the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the
> dust down). I know its nothing compared to a professional one, but
> it's the best I can do. I opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds,
> enough to determine that the platters couldn't be moved around by
> hand. I opened another similar hard drive (with no data on it) and
> was able to move the platters easily, so I'm assuming there must be something
> wrong with the bearings in the hard disk.

Its very unusual for a modern hard drive to fail by bearing failure.

Hope you have only been touching the edge.

> I've managed to get hold of another (almost) identical motor/bearing assembly,
> and I'm going to have a go at swapping them over.

Your chances of success are very minimal indeed.

> My problem is that my hard drive has 2 platters inside it (basically
> like 2 CDs stacked on top of each other with a 1cm gap between them), but I
> don't know if I need to ensure that they stay perfectly aligned when I moved
> them to the new spindle or not

Yes you do. And that is very difficult to do.

> (imagine rotating the top cd around a vertical axis by 10 degrees - the data
> would no longer be sychronised between the 2 platters).

That doesnt matter in the sense that the two platters need to
have the same point on their circumferences perfectly aligned,
essentially because when reading a writing the system checks
to see when the sector its looking for has passed under the heads.

The bigger problem is to ensure that the tracks stay centered
when you move the platters from one axel to another.

> There are no marks or holes to tell the orientation of the platters, so it
> would be very hard to take them both off one spindle, and put them on to the
> new one and preserve this relationship exactly.

Yes, but that isnt necessary.

> Does anyone know if I need to do this,

No you dont.

> or have any other advise?

It may be possible to take the entire stack of axle and
platters out of the alleged bad bearing into the other.