I am a former data recovery engineer. AMA

[Pickles von Brine]

14 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

You're the expert here but I will say, I've found older drives much easier to repair. We're talking mid 90s-early 00s, few hundred mb through 120gb drives. Usually, as long as the density is lower than 40gb/side on a CMR platter, they're quite easy to open up and repair since a single piece of dust can't wreck the whole drive nearly as easily. In my improvised clean area and with a pair of cheap gloves I've fixed 4 or 5 drives with stuck heads, either to the platter or to some melted rubber bit. Anyway what I'm getting to is, the actual platters are about 33-50% thicker than a modern drive, likely having more coating. They were cut down in size to reduce costs, less weight = less motor power needed, same reason why HDD magnets are disappointingly small now. Old platters range in weight, the 800mb drive I have the platters feel like a soda can - that sort of material. A 40gb IDE drive yielded the heaviest platters I have, then the multi hundred GB drives are back to being lighter. The composition of the actual base material changes over time. The coating on the platter has also changed over time as well - there are 3 very distinct shades of platter in my collection.

 

A question I'd like to ask is, anything different about recovering SMR drives if you have to actually open it up? Does its, well, SMR nature complicate anything? 

I do agree the older drives are easier to recover from. The super old ones were pretty simple. And you are right they were more resistant to debris. The newer drives have all kinds of things going on with them. A lot of them have protected roms, some have some really silly ways they are put together. The worst are the helium drives. I have no idea what to do with those. A lot of the modern seagate drives have their tech mode locked and require their roms to be edited.. WD even has started signing their roms. 

I also want to say the platters were thicker back then but the media was close the same thickness as modern drives. Well, modern ones are likely even thinner with smaller particles.  But the material isn't going to be built up that much. It is far to fragile. Likely the reason the platters were so think was either to ensure more rigidity or the alloys used couldn't be made as think as modern drives these days. That is my guess. 

Also, what do you mean the the heads were stuck to some melted rubber bit?
Ramble below

Spoiler

But I will say, some of the older drives were HARD. I mean frustratingly hard to recover from. WD Zues drives come into mind. Actually, any WD drive that was all black with a white label can be frustrating. But if they are all black with black stickers over the screws... God help you. So many of those drives have multiple failures. Not just badly degraded. I mean mechanical failure, degraded surfaces but not user land surface but the service area (the service area is where the "OS" or firmware modules live. Bunch of other stuff lives there too. Because the service area is damaged, tracks are damaged, sometimes modules. Somtimes smart is screwed up. What is worse is when critical modules are damaged.  Then you gotta hop scotch between surfaces to HOPE you can get all the right modules. You can re-write the damaged modules if you find the correct ones on other surfaces. And to top it off sometimes the PCB dies right as you are recovering the drive... Lets not even start on microjogs and doing head exchanges either. I HATE old WD drives. 

Though WD drives can be recovered if you have a missing rom. Requires a hell of a process but it is possible . Hell, you can even get past high degree of firmware damage by hotswapping PCBs from identical drives. Enough that you even have access to the data. Though there are limits. 
https://www.deepspar.com/blog/Hot-Swap.html
https://www.deepspar.com/blog/Smart-Hot-Swap-Method.html

There is also a more advanced method. 
Only works on WD drives as far as I know. A PC3000 is required. 

But what I hate most? Seagate. They are cursed. Especially the damn rosewood family. Even more cursed when you are dealing with strange firmware issues or other silly crap. Media cache corruption is also a nightmare sometimes. Gotta issues scary firmware level instructions. 

Here is a list of some of those commands you can issue via the terminal on the drive:

[glow=red]SSHD Specific (Rosewood Drives):[/glow]

O>I (Clear NAND of Donor in preparation for PCB replacement w/ ROM transfer)

[glow=red]M Command Quick Reference:[/glow] (thanks to PCLab)
All commands issued at level T>

m0,6,2,,,,,22 (most commonly used to regenerate translator)

m0,2,1,,,,,22 ( To rebuilt slip list, V1 )
m0,2,2,,,,,22 ( To rebuilt G list, V2 )
m0,2,3,,,,,22 ( To rebuilt P list, V3 )

m0,5,1,10,3,,,22 ( To zero fill with slip list )
m0,5,2,10,3,,,22 ( To zero fill with G list )
m0,5,3,10,3,,,22 ( To zero fill with P list )

m0,8,1,10,3,,,22 ( To format with slip list )
m0,8,2,10,3,,,22 ( To format with G list )
m0,8,3,10,3,,,22 ( To format with P list )

Sorry fort he ramble

3 hours ago, Kotonoha said:

chkdsk fucked up my folder how do i retrieve data

i have disabled chkdsk ever since that day

Check disk happened because there are likely errors on your drive. Either the drive is failing or you have severe file system damage. Stop using the drive and replace it. Then you can attempt recovery. However, if you don't know what you are doing please send it to the pros. Dealing with potentially failing drive and file system issues is a pain. The data could be there but "lost". Sometimes it is put into found.xxx folders. other times they are just "gone" and can only be recovered with a raw recovery. 

When file system issues happen image a tree with its tree trunk, limbs, branches and leaves. When you get file system damage shear limbs and branches off. You are going to get leaves that will fall off, branches that will break multiple times, etc. Try reconstructing that. You cant. Thus, raw recovery. 

Though sometimes you can get lucky if you have the right tools. Also, you cannot do all of this on a failing drive. You must get an image of that drive then work from the image. Otherwise it is counter productive. There are tools out there like R-studio that can be helpfulp but there are limits to what can be done. 

3 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

@Pickles von Brine

Did you deal with many laptop drives with shattered spindles, and was the data ever recoverable?

There is no such thing as a shattered spindle. I have dealt with seized spindles. Those are a god damn nightmware. Nothing worse than a platter swap. BTW, in data recovery you don't do platter swaps. They are the LAST thing you ever attempt. Essentially a Hail Mary. If you have multiple platters and they get misaligned by slightly rotating out of alignment you are SCREWED. No recovery. Though I have heard there are ways you can take a drive completely apart to inspect and clean the platters then realign the platters. Never managed to get access to the method. If a drive requires that much work it will cost a fortune. 

Now, shattered platters? Yes I have dealt with those. What you do is push it off into the trashcan or use it as a paper weight. You are not recovering that. It is impossible. 

I have dealt with all kinds of issues. Most common with 2.5 inch and external drives for that matter are stuck heads. Heads get stuck on the platter. Hopefully this happens why the drive is off. Otherwise you can rip a head loose, platter damage and done. No recovery. 
If you ever hear a drive beep or a make a single groan when powering on you got stuck heads. 

[Dabombinable]

36 minutes ago, Pickles von Brine said:

There is no such thing as a shattered spindle. I have dealt with seized spindles. Those are a god damn nightmware. Nothing worse than a platter swap. BTW, in data recovery you don't do platter swaps. They are the LAST thing you ever attempt. Essentially a Hail Mary. If you have multiple platters and they get misaligned by slightly rotating out of alignment you are SCREWED. No recovery. Though I have heard there are ways you can take a drive completely apart to inspect and clean the platters then realign the platters. Never managed to get access to the method. If a drive requires that much work it will cost a fortune. 

Now, shattered platters? Yes I have dealt with those. What you do is push it off into the trashcan or use it as a paper weight. You are not recovering that. It is impossible. 

I have dealt with all kinds of issues. Most common with 2.5 inch and external drives for that matter are stuck heads. Heads get stuck on the platter. Hopefully this happens why the drive is off. Otherwise you can rip a head loose, platter damage and done. No recovery. 
If you ever hear a drive beep or a make a single groan when powering on you got stuck heads. 
 

I'll have to investigate further then. That's what my Mum was told years ago (drive is still in its return packaging, can find out the company when I next see it) and then quoted $2000 AUD. To get data off a 40GB 2.5" drive.

 

She dropped the laptop while it was running a few centimeters. So either way serious damage was done. I think the drive was a Seagate as well.

[Pickles von Brine]

7 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

I'll have to investigate further then. That's what my Mum was told years ago (drive is still in its return packaging, can find out the company when I next see it) and then quoted $2000 AUD. To get data off a 40GB 2.5" drive.

 

She dropped the laptop while it was running a few centimeters. So either way serious damage was done. I think the drive was a Seagate as well.

2k isn't too bad of a quote. Likely the drive had bad heads and probably a rather degraded surface. Maybe even stuck heads? Hard to say. 

[Bacfire]

@Pickles von Brine

Hi Mr. Pickles.

I'm hoping you can help me a bit.

So, i have a Seagate ST3000DM001 that got fried from using the wrong cable with a new PSU i installed a while back. I'm pretty sure this is the reason since that drive was working just fine before the initial boot of that new PSU.

I've tried ordering the exact same PCB from a vendor and swapping my ROM chip from the old PCB to the new PCB. Now the drive does spin, however it cant access my data. The drive is partially recognized by windows. What i mean by that is that it is listed but cant give me Firmware version, it also give me the wrong capacity and a few other shenanigans.

My question is. Am i on the right track poking around on the PCB side. Could the drive have been mechanically damaged from the wrong cables mishaps?

If you feel as if it require a professional. Could you recommend me anyone? Most website i found in Canada look sketchy so far. There is one place i tried to talk to the guy since he says he can fix PCB without having to have the whole drive in hand. But he could not bother to respond.

Thanks in advance!

[da na]

On 7/31/2022 at 5:33 AM, Pickles von Brine said:

Also, what do you mean the the heads were stuck to some melted rubber bit?

Had to work on a few drives where one of these little rubber stoppers has gone sticky with age and fused to another piece of the head mechanism, usually the end of the voice coil.

Example, this one on a Quantum drive. I usually find these to be melted on early 2000s drives, a bunch of mid-late 90s drives I have just have plastic pieces instead of rubber. They click quite a lot since the head hits them frequently

 

On 7/31/2022 at 5:33 AM, Pickles von Brine said:

I have dealt with all kinds of issues. Most common with 2.5 inch and external drives for that matter are stuck heads. Heads get stuck on the platter. Hopefully this happens why the drive is off. Otherwise you can rip a head loose, platter damage and done. No recovery. 
If you ever hear a drive beep or a make a single groan when powering on you got stuck heads. 

the way I got into working on HDDs was digging through the bin of drives my school's IT department chucked out to be shredded and seeing if I could fix any, since there was no penalty if I couldn't fix it - it was getting recycled anyway. Many of them worked fine but had tons of bad sectors, I fixed a few older drives and laptop drives with stuck heads. Now I have too many old hard drives...

Then I made a clear one, because I was bored.

Spoiler

 

 

 

On 7/31/2022 at 5:33 AM, Pickles von Brine said:

Now, shattered platters? Yes I have dealt with those. What you do is push it off into the trashcan or use it as a paper weight. You are not recovering that. It is impossible.  

Oh, so no jigsaw puzzles? /s

[Pickles von Brine]

4 hours ago, Bacfire said:

@Pickles von Brine

Hi Mr. Pickles.

I'm hoping you can help me a bit.

So, i have a Seagate ST3000DM001 that got fried from using the wrong cable with a new PSU i installed a while back. I'm pretty sure this is the reason since that drive was working just fine before the initial boot of that new PSU.

I've tried ordering the exact same PCB from a vendor and swapping my ROM chip from the old PCB to the new PCB. Now the drive does spin, however it cant access my data. The drive is partially recognized by windows. What i mean by that is that it is listed but cant give me Firmware version, it also give me the wrong capacity and a few other shenanigans.

My question is. Am i on the right track poking around on the PCB side. Could the drive have been mechanically damaged from the wrong cables mishaps?

If you feel as if it require a professional. Could you recommend me anyone? Most website i found in Canada look sketchy so far. There is one place i tried to talk to the guy since he says he can fix PCB without having to have the whole drive in hand. But he could not bother to respond.

Thanks in advance!

You don't have the tools to recover that drive. You are on the right track but I am suspecting when the drive got shorted it possibly damaged the head stack assembly too. Either that or there are other issues going on such as firmware issues within the service area. A PC3000 would be needed to see what exactly the drive is doing. Also, with seagate drives if you loose the rom you loose everything on the drive. What you did was risky. I don't like doing rom swaps if I can avoid it. With the PC3000 and a com terminal I can read and write roms on most PCBs. No soldering required.

Also, it is possible you didn't have to replace the PCB at all. First thing I would have done is check the TSV diodes on the board. If they are bad they have continuity. Simple solder work and remove them and you can get the drive running again... most of the time. 

 

DM series of drives are notorious of firmware issues and head failures. 

2 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

Had to work on a few drives where one of these little rubber stoppers has gone sticky with age and fused to another piece of the head mechanism, usually the end of the voice coil.

Example, this one on a Quantum drive. I usually find these to be melted on early 2000s drives, a bunch of mid-late 90s drives I have just have plastic pieces instead of rubber. They click quite a lot since the head hits them frequently

Oh, that is the head stop. That is why I got confused. Modern drives I have seen use plastic likely due to this issue. 

2 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

the way I got into working on HDDs was digging through the bin of drives my school's IT department chucked out to be shredded and seeing if I could fix any, since there was no penalty if I couldn't fix it - it was getting recycled anyway. Many of them worked fine but had tons of bad sectors, I fixed a few older drives and laptop drives with stuck heads. Now I have too many old hard drives...

Then I made a clear one, because I was bored.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Well done sir. 

[da na]

8 minutes ago, Pickles von Brine said:

DM series of drives are notorious of firmware issues and head failures. 

Oh, that is the head stop. That is why I got confused. Modern drives I have seen use plastic likely due to this issue. 

Well done sir. 

That's the second I made, the first almost worked but wouldn't read properly. Dust had gotten on the platter. This one, the head is only on the bottom side of the platter so there was much less risk of contamination. Still works somehow, it's just accumulating bad sectors...

 

Another question, ever had to do recovery on something like this?

[Pickles von Brine]

39 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

That's the second I made, the first almost worked but wouldn't read properly. Dust had gotten on the platter. This one, the head is only on the bottom side of the platter so there was much less risk of contamination. Still works somehow, it's just accumulating bad sectors...

 

Another question, ever had to do recovery on something like this?

Every one of those drives that came in had platter damage, shattered platters or I couldn't find parts. 

[Drama Lama]

@Pickles von Brine is there some "worst drive" that is horribly unreliable?

[Pickles von Brine]

7 hours ago, Drama Lama said:

@Pickles von Brine is there some "worst drive" that is horribly unreliable?

I just realized that I read this wrong. The worst drive is hard to really pinpoint as there are a bunch of them. Honestly anything that is an external drive, especially the fat WD and seagate drives. Those things suck. The early seagate DM series. WDs green drives from the Sadle 6G family, Zeus drives and other derivatives. 

But overall drives are drives. They are mechanical. I cannot pinpoint any one drive model that is worst than others. Some of them like the barracuda 7200.x series have issues like seized bearings, problems with their service area and other firmware/module related issues. They are also known for having some annoying head issues. 

Seagate DM series are drives like STX000DMxxx series. The ones between 2011 through 2013 were an especially bad batch. All kinds of head failures. 

I also do not like super high capacity drives. Doing a full surface scan on a 10TB drive takes 18 hours. A lot of the time you don't know there are bad sectors as the drive never finishes a smart long scan or only report when detected. Numerous 8TB+ drives I have recovered show smart is okay but have had10s of thousands of bad sectors. 

Also, here are some drives that had died a bad death. 
Sure. I have some pictures. 

WD drive, 2.5 inch. 

Seagate drive. Notice the really bad ring around the center of the drive. Also the filter is black. 



These 2 drives had such catastrophic head failure the heads got ground off and that proceeded to just destroy the surface. I have never seen any drives do any worse than these 2. The first image notice how black the filter is. The image with black dust on the magnet is a 15k drive. 

This is an old hitachi/IBM drive. They use to use glass for their platter substraight. Unfortunately what would happen is the magnetic medium that held the data would... flake off or get polished off from catastrophic head failure. There 2 platters in this drive and you can see all the way through them to the bottom of the drive. 

[Bacfire]

4 hours ago, Pickles von Brine said:

You don't have the tools to recover that drive. You are on the right track but I am suspecting when the drive got shorted it possibly damaged the head stack assembly too. Either that or there are other issues going on such as firmware issues within the service area. A PC3000 would be needed to see what exactly the drive is doing. Also, with seagate drives if you loose the rom you loose everything on the drive. What you did was risky. I don't like doing rom swaps if I can avoid it. With the PC3000 and a com terminal I can read and write roms on most PCBs. No soldering required.

Also, it is possible you didn't have to replace the PCB at all. First thing I would have done is check the TSV diodes on the board. If they are bad they have continuity. Simple solder work and remove them and you can get the drive running again... most of the time. 

 

DM series of drives are notorious of firmware issues and head failures. 

 

Would you recommend i swap the ROM back on the original board? I've poked around and found what i think is a TVS diode to be shorted on my original board. I'll attach a picture so you could confirm. I am new to board repair but like it so far. The joy of bringing something back to life is neat.

Also, i went the ROM swap route because it seemed to be the easiest way according to the internet. Guess they were wrong.

Thanks for the help!

https://imgur.com/a/TYL3nJC

 

Cant seem to attach picture using the forum tool. Keep getting a server error and code 200. Ill edit and try again if you don't want the Imgur.

[Pickles von Brine]

5 hours ago, Bacfire said:

Would you recommend i swap the ROM back on the original board? I've poked around and found what i think is a TVS diode to be shorted on my original board. I'll attach a picture so you could confirm. I am new to board repair but like it so far. The joy of bringing something back to life is neat.

Also, i went the ROM swap route because it seemed to be the easiest way according to the internet. Guess they were wrong.

Thanks for the help!

https://imgur.com/a/TYL3nJC

 

Cant seem to attach picture using the forum tool. Keep getting a server error and code 200. Ill edit and try again if you don't want the Imgur.

Try swapping the rom back and remove the TSV diodes and see what happens. 

Also, did you remove anything else from the board? You only removed the rom?

Also do me a favor and send me photos of both back and front of the OG board and new board. A simple rom swap should have worked if a TSV diode was bad and nothing else had issues. I do need to emphasize the word "SHOULD" as any number of things could have happened. Additionally the Law of Unintended Consequences may rear its ugly head. 

BTW I take no responsibility with loss of data. This is your responsibility. 

[Pickles von Brine]

@Drama LamaCheck my reply I edited it. I misread your post. 

[Bacfire]

48 minutes ago, Pickles von Brine said:

Try swapping the rom back and remove the TSV diodes and see what happens. 

Also, did you remove anything else from the board? You only removed the rom?

Also do me a favor and send me photos of both back and front of the OG board and new board. A simple rom swap should have worked if a TSV diode was bad and nothing else had issues. I do need to emphasize the word "SHOULD" as any number of things could have happened. Additionally the Law of Unintended Consequences may rear its ugly head. 

BTW I take no responsibility with loss of data. This is your responsibility. 

Only removed the ROM from the original board. Just so i'm sure i read that right. I should remove both the diode and try it without em on the board right?

 

Right now i've swapped the rom back to the OG board and changed one of the diode. So on the Picture of the "new" board there will be a diode missing and the old ROM i had to take out to put mine on.



And of course you are not to blame for anything if data cant be recovered. It's my mess and having you guide me a little is pretty dang neat!

Also, if i cant do it on my own. Could you recommend a good place in Canada that could handle this?

[Pickles von Brine]

22 minutes ago, Bacfire said:

Only removed the ROM from the original board. Just so i'm sure i read that right. I should remove both the diode and try it without em on the board right?

 

Right now i've swapped the rom back to the OG board and changed one of the diode. So on the Picture of the "new" board there will be a diode missing and the old ROM i had to take out to put mine on.



And of course you are not to blame for anything if data cant be recovered. It's my mess and having you guide me a little is pretty dang neat!

Also, if i cant do it on my own. Could you recommend a good place in Canada that could handle this?

Good you have matching boards. You don't change the TSV diodes. Just completely remove them. They short to ground when they are bad. If removed you loose protection but the board should work fine for data recovery purposes. 

 

Also, to avoid confusion write D on the donor board and O or C for original or client. This way you can keep track of what board is what easier  You can just write on the board with a permanent marker. It won't cause any issues. Otherwise you can also just put a piece of tape on the old board. 

[da na]

9 hours ago, Pickles von Brine said:

I just realized that I read this wrong. The worst drive is hard to really pinpoint as there are a bunch of them. Honestly anything that is an external drive, especially the fat WD and seagate drives. Those things suck. The early seagate DM series. WDs green drives from the Sadle 6G family, Zeus drives and other derivatives. 

But overall drives are drives. They are mechanical. I cannot pinpoint any one drive model that is worst than others. Some of them like the barracuda 7200.x series have issues like seized bearings, problems with their service area and other firmware/module related issues. They are also known for having some annoying head issues. 

Seagate DM series are drives like STX000DMxxx series. The ones between 2011 through 2013 were an especially bad batch. All kinds of head failures. 

I also do not like super high capacity drives. Doing a full surface scan on a 10TB drive takes 18 hours. A lot of the time you don't know there are bad sectors as the drive never finishes a smart long scan or only report when detected. Numerous 8TB+ drives I have recovered show smart is okay but have had10s of thousands of bad sectors. 

Also, here are some drives that had died a bad death. 
Sure. I have some pictures. 

WD drive, 2.5 inch. 

Seagate drive. Notice the really bad ring around the center of the drive. Also the filter is black. 



These 2 drives had such catastrophic head failure the heads got ground off and that proceeded to just destroy the surface. I have never seen any drives do any worse than these 2. The first image notice how black the filter is. The image with black dust on the magnet is a 15k drive. 

This is an old hitachi/IBM drive. They use to use glass for their platter substraight. Unfortunately what would happen is the magnetic medium that held the data would... flake off or get polished off from catastrophic head failure. There 2 platters in this drive and you can see all the way through them to the bottom of the drive. 

Chiming in here with a little of my experience - again, you're the expert here but this is what I know. 

As you were saying, any drive can fail but I've had very good luck with Hitachi/HGST Ultrastars. Have several with a perfect record and over 6 years of flying hours. They accumulate strange read errors after a while though but they just seem to slow down minutely, no data corruption that I've ever seen. Can't find a definitive answer on what a "Read Recovery Attempt" is, but it shows in HWInfo and one of my Ultrastars has 30,000 of them. I assume it's just what Hitachi calls some form of read error, do you have any idea?

Ah yes, seized spindles on Barracudas. Something I've seen frequently. And I've also seen some head crashes, but usually not as graphic as what you've shown. A ring or so around the platter where the head parks, if it's a landing zone drive. (Any opinions on load ramp vs landing zone?) But wow, yours are just... painful.

Final question, any clue why IBM would have made a drive like this? Because I can't think why.

And then this Maxtor drive, built upside down... top comes off, but head is on the other side.

[Pickles von Brine]

14 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

Chiming in here with a little of my experience - again, you're the expert here but this is what I know. 

No reason for you to feel that way. I am enjoying the back and forth. You got some experience under your belt.  To be honest I haven't been an engineer since 2018. So I have forgotten so much. You asking questions and adding your bits here and there are jogging my memory!

As you were saying, any drive can fail but I've had very good luck with Hitachi/HGST Ultrastars. Have several with a perfect record and over 6 years of flying hours. They accumulate strange read errors after a while though but they just seem to slow down minutely, no data corruption that I've ever seen. Can't find a definitive answer on what a "Read Recovery Attempt" is, but it shows in HWInfo and one of my Ultrastars has 30,000 of them. I assume it's just what Hitachi calls some form of read error, do you have any idea?

I agree with you on Ultrastars and honestly most Hitachi drives. I have had some oddball cases where the spindle actually seperated from the head stack. You could stick a screwdriver into the platter stack and rock the entire thing back and forth. I have managed to recover from those drives before. However, a single movement of the desk or table, picking up the drive, etc and platter damage. You are done. Only seen that issue 3 times. Recovered once. Other 2 times failed during recovery. Once because I bumped the table. Second because I accidently moved the drive (slight bump). 
As far as read recovery attempt I would say it is rather self-explanitory. The drive made an attempt to read from the bad sector but it possibly caused some kind of instability and the drive attempted to recover. 

Ah yes, seized spindles on Barracudas. Something I've seen frequently. And I've also seen some head crashes, but usually not as graphic as what you've shown. A ring or so around the platter where the head parks, if it's a landing zone drive.
Most platter damage cases you could see the damage but other times you could only see it using a green flash light. I have also had platter damage on surfaces I couldn't see. Those pictures were the most extreme I have seen. 
(Any opinions on load ramp vs landing zone?) 
I prefer head ramps vs landing zones. The landing zones require special tools and increase a chance for something to happen while exchanging heads. 
 

Final question, any clue why IBM would have made a drive like this? Because I can't think why.
I canno think of why either. That is really weird. It clearly a manufacturing decision but weird one. That drive is OLD. Any chance you want to part with it?

For the maxtor I have seen that before. a fucking nightmare for recovery as you have to remove the platter. The head has to be in its landing zone too.

And then this Maxtor drive, built upside down... top comes off, but head is on the other side.

q

[Pickles von Brine]

@BacfireI would recommend these guys. The owner really knows his shit. 
https://www.youtube.com/c/hddrecoveryservices/featured
1.613.366.4232 HDD Recovery Services 391 Bank St, Suite 201 Ottawa, ON K2P 1Y3 Canada
 

 

[Bitter]

@Pickles von Brine

Not a question, just an amusing story.

So many many years ago I needed a way to transport large amounts of data between a PC at my fathers house and a PC at my mothers house. I had a 4GB drive possibly a WD, the one PC had been upgraded to 40GB. Anyway, turns out the drive fit right into my leather CD case really nicely so I just carried it around through school and I'd chuck it into the PC I was using and play my games off it and have my music with me without having to have everything copied onto both PC's and different save files, so on and so forth. So the one time I plug it into my father's PC which at the time was this AT/ATX monstrosity of a desktop non tower PC from a university research facility made of steel about 3x thicker than needed and weighing enough to make it uncomfortable to move around a room. I had the top of the case slid off, connected the drive just laying PCB up, booted up, and started to use it when suddenly I hear a loud SNAP, look over, and THERE IS A FLAME JETTING OUT OF THE PCB ON THE DRIVE. I slap the big red AT power paddle switch round the right side of the case and blow the flame out which by now had petered down to a small birthday candle sized flame. Of course everything on it was gone but luckily I did have backups of the data. Looking at it more closely it appeared it was a mofset for the spindle motor, I think something locked up suddenly and the controller was just like SEND IT BILLY and gave it all the amps. I luckily have not had any PC components catch fire since then.

[da na]

14 hours ago, Pickles von Brine said:

q

Sorry, parted with that drive months ago moving out of my dorm. Wish I had kept it, as it's quite a fascinating drive.

I do have this terrible YouTube video about it I made before I was very good at editing, though...

Spoiler

 

Drive didn't work allegedly, didn't have SCSI hardware at the time. Didn't feel too bad about it at the time, but now they're 2x as expensive on ebay...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/382675896002?hash=item591942c6c2:g:dIkAAOSwl7dcFnXP

 

Ever had to do any recovery with these 5.25 HDDs? 

Spoiler

 

[Bacfire]

@Pickles von Brine

 

Hi pickle! Just to let you know i've made a request and will have the drive sent to HDDRecoveryService like you told me to. Watched him on youtube and im confident.

Also, question about yourself, since i kind of hijacked the thread.

How do somebody get into Data Recovery? I'm assuming you did not just wake up one day and went. "Data Recovery" let's do this!

[Pickles von Brine]

2 hours ago, Bacfire said:

@Pickles von Brine

 

Hi pickle! Just to let you know i've made a request and will have the drive sent to HDDRecoveryService like you told me to. Watched him on youtube and im confident.

Also, question about yourself, since i kind of hijacked the thread.

How do somebody get into Data Recovery? I'm assuming you did not just wake up one day and went. "Data Recovery" let's do this!

For me it was something that fell into my lap. I had a friend of mine who took a job in data recovery at a new lab (he had 10 years of experience) and told the owner about me. Owner had me come in asked me how much I knew at the time. Also asked me other things about tech. He also asked several questions about how teachable I am and well, I got the job. Ended up becoming the top producer and had the highest recovery rate (80-90%). A lot of data recovery places will teach you how to recover drives. But not everyone has the aptitude for it. 

[Pickles von Brine]

BTW, if anyone is interested I can try to go into some detail on some previous recoveries.