current/voltage peak: HD & PD drive dead

[Tim]

Hi everyone,

We must have had a peak in the current or electrical charge and the
power supply of the computer gave out. Big time, the motherboard, and
CPU are dead, as are the 2 hard disks and the CD-ROM/PD drive. I have
no idea on the expansion cards.

All data was on those hard disks, with a (fairly old) backup on the PD
drive. For those that don't know a PD (phase-change dual) drive, the
cartridges can hold 650 MB and the technology can be compared to
DVD-RAM.

We lost a lot of data (especially my sister's thesis work), so apart
from a lot of broken hardware that I'll have to replace, I'd like to
recover the data from the HD and the PD drive. Neither starts when
powered (chip burnt on HD).

The options I know of:
- sending the HD to a data recovery lab (to expensive)
- putting the electronics of another (similar) HD on the board and
copying everything (has anybody ever done this? Succesfully? Does
similar mean exactly the same?)
- buying a new PD drive to read the PD cartridge (does anybody know
of a drive that is still sold?)

Do I have other alternatives?


Thanks a lot,
Tim

 

[~misfit~]

Hi everyone,

We must have had a peak in the current or electrical charge and the
power supply of the computer gave out. Big time, the motherboard, and
CPU are dead, as are the 2 hard disks and the CD-ROM/PD drive. I have
no idea on the expansion cards.

All data was on those hard disks, with a (fairly old) backup on the PD
drive. For those that don't know a PD (phase-change dual) drive, the
cartridges can hold 650 MB and the technology can be compared to
DVD-RAM.

We lost a lot of data (especially my sister's thesis work), so apart
from a lot of broken hardware that I'll have to replace, I'd like to
recover the data from the HD and the PD drive. Neither starts when
powered (chip burnt on HD).

The options I know of:
- sending the HD to a data recovery lab (to expensive)
- putting the electronics of another (similar) HD on the board and
copying everything (has anybody ever done this? Succesfully? Does
similar mean exactly the same?)

Yes and Yes. Excatly the same, right down to revision if there is one. It
worked for my friend once, I found him the donor drive. It was a 20GB and I
advertised in the local computer NG that if anyone had the exact same drive
he'd swap it for a brand new 80GB. Had one in a few days. It's amazing what
a little incentive can do. The data was important to him and the 80GB he
paid for was about one tenth of what a data recovery place wanted to charge.
I fitted the board and copied off the data for him.

I've seen people advertise in similar predicaments to you but the make the
mistake (as I advised my friend) was they're all too cheap, even though they
say the data is *so* important, and advertise like: "Has anyone got XXX
drive, rev X.X sitting around, maybe with bad sectors but a good circuit
board that they want to part with cheaply?". Nobody's gonna even bother
looking in their drawer, yet alone their case, if there's nothing in it for
them. This is assuming that the drive is an older model. If it was bought in
the last six months you may have a chance of buying a donor HDD new.

- buying a new PD drive to read the PD cartridge (does anybody know
of a drive that is still sold?)

Is that like a magneto-optical drive? I have an old SCSI IBM one here. Only
128MB unfortunately. Excellent long-term storage solution other than
capacity, the most stable/long-lasting media ever. The surface of the disk
(which is enclosed in a cartridge) has to be heated by a laser before it can
be written to magnetically (So no scratches and no danger of data corruption
by stray magnetism as they have to be heated before the magnetic particals
can be re-aligned). The disks are said to be good for 100+ years. The only
problem is there is pretty much zero chance of getting a drive to read it in
100 years, (Mine was made in 1991 and I haven't seen another one for years)
unless the original drive is removed and stored in a
temperature/humidity/electrostatically controlled environment. I have no
idea if they are still available, I'd never even heard that term (PD drive)
before and I thought I knew hardware ;-)

Do I have other alternatives?

Find someone who owns a PD drive and a CDR drive and get them to copy your
PD disks to CDR? As for the HDD, as I said, I know of one instance where
replacing the circuit-board worked, otherwise it's off to the data recovery
lab with your credit-card. It can be a fiddly job replacing the
circuit-board, I did it for him as I'm used to working on hardware and have
a set of torx/"security" screwdriver-bits.

A bit late, but sorry, I've gotta say this, back-ups of critical data are
*so* important, preferably to a media that is easilly read on another drive
(CD-R, DVD-R). There's an old saying in the IT industry which I forget the
exact wording of, but it essentially says that home-users/small business
users never do back-ups until they've been burnt. I have all my irreplacable
stuff on two HDDs, in seperate machines, and also burn it to CDR, burning a
new set of CDRs every year (in case of degradation, I keep the newest
back-ups off-site, and I keep the old back-ups too, and I'm just a home
user. Call me paranoid if you want but I'll never lose my data, short of a
major disaster that would probably leave me dead <g>).

Also, a good-quality UPS would have stopped that power strike dead, maybe
costing you a fuse. (Unless it came through the phone line)

Good luck.

 

[Toshi1873]

We must have had a peak in the current or electrical charge and the
power supply of the computer gave out. Big time, the motherboard, and
CPU are dead, as are the 2 hard disks and the CD-ROM/PD drive. I have
no idea on the expansion cards.

All data was on those hard disks, with a (fairly old) backup on the PD
drive. For those that don't know a PD (phase-change dual) drive, the
cartridges can hold 650 MB and the technology can be compared to
DVD-RAM.

We lost a lot of data (especially my sister's thesis work), so apart
from a lot of broken hardware that I'll have to replace, I'd like to
recover the data from the HD and the PD drive. Neither starts when
powered (chip burnt on HD).

The options I know of:
- sending the HD to a data recovery lab (to expensive)

Shop around?

- putting the electronics of another (similar) HD on the board and
copying everything (has anybody ever done this? Succesfully? Does
similar mean exactly the same?)

I've heard rumors of it working... so long as you don't
open up the drive, it might work. Would have to be
exact same drive model, possibly even from the same run
(sometimes the manuf changes electronics partway through
a production of a particular model).

- buying a new PD drive to read the PD cartridge (does anybody know
of a drive that is still sold?)

Try ebay... bet you can find a few for sale there.

 

[Tim]

Yes and Yes. Excatly the same, right down to revision if there is one. It
worked for my friend once, I found him the donor drive. It was a 20GB and I
advertised in the local computer NG that if anyone had the exact same drive
he'd swap it for a brand new 80GB. Had one in a few days. It's amazing what
a little incentive can do. The data was important to him and the 80GB he
paid for was about one tenth of what a data recovery place wanted to charge.
I fitted the board and copied off the data for him.

I've seen people advertise in similar predicaments to you but the make the
mistake (as I advised my friend) was they're all too cheap, even though they
say the data is *so* important, and advertise like: "Has anyone got XXX
drive, rev X.X sitting around, maybe with bad sectors but a good circuit
board that they want to part with cheaply?". Nobody's gonna even bother
looking in their drawer, yet alone their case, if there's nothing in it for
them. This is assuming that the drive is an older model. If it was bought in
the last six months you may have a chance of buying a donor HDD new.

Thanks for the tip, that's a great idea!

Is that like a magneto-optical drive? I have an old SCSI IBM one here. Only
128MB unfortunately. Excellent long-term storage solution other than
capacity, the most stable/long-lasting media ever. The surface of the disk
(which is enclosed in a cartridge) has to be heated by a laser before it can
be written to magnetically (So no scratches and no danger of data corruption
by stray magnetism as they have to be heated before the magnetic particals
can be re-aligned). The disks are said to be good for 100+ years. The only
problem is there is pretty much zero chance of getting a drive to read it in
100 years, (Mine was made in 1991 and I haven't seen another one for years)
unless the original drive is removed and stored in a
temperature/humidity/electrostatically controlled environment. I have no
idea if they are still available, I'd never even heard that term (PD drive)
before and I thought I knew hardware ;-)

The unit we have is from Teac and PD is written all over the drive and
the cartridges. It is indeed an MO drive and it was at that time very
cheap (IDE model), just a little more expensive than an ordinary CD-ROM
drive (the unit we have/had was a combo). Strange that they don't exist
anymore, they were far more robust than CD's are.

Find someone who owns a PD drive and a CDR drive and get them to copy your
PD disks to CDR? As for the HDD, as I said, I know of one instance where
replacing the circuit-board worked, otherwise it's off to the data recovery
lab with your credit-card. It can be a fiddly job replacing the
circuit-board, I did it for him as I'm used to working on hardware and have
a set of torx/"security" screwdriver-bits.

Anything I should look out for?

A bit late, but sorry, I've gotta say this, back-ups of critical data are
*so* important, preferably to a media that is easilly read on another drive
(CD-R, DVD-R). There's an old saying in the IT industry which I forget the
exact wording of, but it essentially says that home-users/small business
users never do back-ups until they've been burnt. I have all my irreplacable
stuff on two HDDs, in seperate machines, and also burn it to CDR, burning a
new set of CDRs every year (in case of degradation, I keep the newest
back-ups off-site, and I keep the old back-ups too, and I'm just a home
user. Call me paranoid if you want but I'll never lose my data, short of a
major disaster that would probably leave me dead <g>).

You are absolutely right and I keep telling people to take backups and I
do it for the PC for work (backups at home and everything). And we even
backupped fairly well on the PD drive, but I didn't count on it dying
together with the disks.

Also, a good-quality UPS would have stopped that power strike dead, maybe
costing you a fuse. (Unless it came through the phone line)

I've seen this on lots of UPSes as well, but of course we didn't have
one. I always thought the power supply would break, but protect the rest
of the electronics. Apparently it doesn't always.

Good luck.

Thanks, I'll need it ;-)

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it,
Tim

 

[Tim]

We must have had a peak in the current or electrical charge and the

Shop around?

I can try, but I'm afraid the data wasn't *that* important :-(

I've heard rumors of it working... so long as you don't
open up the drive, it might work. Would have to be
exact same drive model, possibly even from the same run
(sometimes the manuf changes electronics partway through
a production of a particular model).

Jus as a side note, we once opened up a drive and it continued to work
(until there was dust between the heads and the platters).

Try ebay... bet you can find a few for sale there.

No luck so far...


Thanks a lot,
Tim

 

[~misfit~]

Thanks for the tip, that's a great idea!

Thanks, it was my idea originally and it worked well for my mate.

The unit we have is from Teac and PD is written all over the drive and
the cartridges. It is indeed an MO drive and it was at that time very
cheap (IDE model), just a little more expensive than an ordinary
CD-ROM drive (the unit we have/had was a combo). Strange that they
don't exist anymore, they were far more robust than CD's are.

Cheers, thanks for that. Maybe they didn't make it to New Zealand (although
just about everything does, [except Tivo, yet]) or maybe that was during my
two year period I went through where I didn't buy PC magazines or do much at
all PC-related.

Ok, ok. I was in jail for growing a bit of pot. :-( (Don't do that stuff
anymore, the funny thing is, I was just in the process of giving up, I found
that after smoking it for years it just made me feel self-conscious and
dumb.)

Anything I should look out for?

Just take it slow and steady. Identify all the ribbon cables/connectors
before undoing the screws and pulling off the PCB. Be very gentle with the
connectors, they aren't made for repeated use and can be fragile, make sure
you suss out how they lock before you pull 'em out. Take the board off the
damaged drive first, so if you do hurt anything (except the ribbon/s of
course) it won't matter so much. Take anti-static precautions, something I
don't always do, must admit. However, when I did my friend's drive I did, I
didn't want to go through trying to find the PCB again.

You are absolutely right and I keep telling people to take backups
and I do it for the PC for work (backups at home and everything). And
we even backupped fairly well on the PD drive, but I didn't count on
it dying together with the disks.


I've seen this on lots of UPSes as well, but of course we didn't have
one. I always thought the power supply would break, but protect the
rest of the electronics. Apparently it doesn't always.

No. I used to think that too. I have a friend/aquintance who has his own
data recovery business on the side, mainly for older drives, mainly SCSI
stuff (and a few IDE drives as well). He is a systems builder/contract
sysop. (For small businesses that can't afford a full-time sysop, he used to
do that but prefers to work for himself these days) and has been for years.
He has kept hundreds of PCBs/drives over the years, drives that have simply
been replaced as a precautionary measure. He used to format and write 0's
and 1's to them and then sell them second hand as a side-line. Then one day
it dawned on him that he could have more fun (his main motivation, he's a
genuinely nice guy, he likes to save people money when he can) by
stock-piling all the drives and cataloguing them and doing basic
data-recovery. He *does* open drives as well as just replace boards, however
he stresses that he's a 'cheap' option (Far, far cheaper than a lab, he does
it for the challenge and because he's a helpful guy, he also has a few
recovery software packages that cost him a bit) and if the data is *that*
important to go to a proper lab. Anyway, I *do* have a point. <g>, he uses
and tells everybody else to use UPS's. He has shelves and shelves of older
HDDs, all labeled and stored in those plastic cases OEM drives come in, he
gets them free from a big OEM builder.

Did you know that if it's a 'stuck' drive (bearing) problem, often just
puting the drive in a zip-lock bag and placing it in the freezer for an hour
or two and then hooking it up while still cold can sometimes get it running
for long enough to get the data off it? Often the balls in the bearing-races
contract/shrink just enough to allow the drive to spin up for a while.

Oops, got a bit sidetracked there, anyone would think I still smoked pot.

Thanks, I'll need it ;-)

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it,

You're welcome Tim. I hope you succeed. You will be backing up a bit better
from now on huh? <g>.

 

[~misfit~]

Just as a side note, we once opened up a drive and it continued to work
(until there was dust between the heads and the platters).

I've done that too. Actually I used to work in a place that used sheet
acrylic and I fabricated a clear cover for one and swapped it in an
environment that was as dust-free and humidity-free as I could make it. It's
one thing pulling an old HDD apart to see how they work but I just *had* to
see one running. It still only worked for a few months though. It was a SCSI
drive and I had it running externally, sitting on my desk next to a PC.
HDDs fascinate me. I've just dismantled an old Maxtor SCSI 1.2GB full-height
drive that was giving too many errors. (I keep a few old PC's around to play
with, I hate throwing anything away that is still working). Man that drive
was a work of art, so much more so than today's drives, a real pleasure just
to examine the internals of. I bet it cost more than three modern PCs when
it was new. It was a 5 1/2" drive and had *eight* platters/16 read/write
heads. The machining in it is awesome to look upon. The spindle motor still
runs as freely as the day it was made, no side-play or sloppiness in it.
I've kept the actuator/head assembly and I just look at it now and then (it
sits on top of my monitor, I admit it, I'm a geek).

Sidebar: The platters make good wind-chimes, especially if you have a
variety of sizes/brands. My fiancee is going to start making
*art*/craft-stuff from old PC compoments and try selling them at a PC shop
or two. Geek chic. <g>. She used to make bead necklaces but they aren't a
money-making (or should I say 'recovering') hobby and she's a bit *crafty*.

 

[Tim]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, I've been to a conference and couldn't answer.

The unit we have is from Teac and PD is written all over the drive and
the cartridges. It is indeed an MO drive and it was at that time very
cheap (IDE model), just a little more expensive than an ordinary
CD-ROM drive (the unit we have/had was a combo). Strange that they
don't exist anymore, they were far more robust than CD's are.

Cheers, thanks for that. Maybe they didn't make it to New Zealand (although
just about everything does, [except Tivo, yet]) or maybe that was during my
two year period I went through where I didn't buy PC magazines or do much at
all PC-related.

There's no Tivo over here either, but you can buy your own box if you
want. At least, that's what I want to do

Ok, ok. I was in jail for growing a bit of pot. :-( (Don't do that stuff
anymore, the funny thing is, I was just in the process of giving up, I found
that after smoking it for years it just made me feel self-conscious and
dumb.)

I tried it once, nothing special, so I had more money to buy cmputer
stuff ;-)

Just take it slow and steady. Identify all the ribbon cables/connectors
before undoing the screws and pulling off the PCB. Be very gentle with the
connectors, they aren't made for repeated use and can be fragile, make sure
you suss out how they lock before you pull 'em out. Take the board off the
damaged drive first, so if you do hurt anything (except the ribbon/s of
course) it won't matter so much. Take anti-static precautions, something I
don't always do, must admit. However, when I did my friend's drive I did, I
didn't want to go through trying to find the PCB again.

Thanks, I just hope I don't have to do any soldering. Last time my
soldering iron exploded, really have to get our power supply sorted out

No. I used to think that too. I have a friend/aquintance who has his own
data recovery business on the side, mainly for older drives, mainly SCSI
stuff (and a few IDE drives as well). He is a systems builder/contract
sysop. (For small businesses that can't afford a full-time sysop, he used to
do that but prefers to work for himself these days) and has been for years.
He has kept hundreds of PCBs/drives over the years, drives that have simply
been replaced as a precautionary measure. He used to format and write 0's
and 1's to them and then sell them second hand as a side-line. Then one day
it dawned on him that he could have more fun (his main motivation, he's a
genuinely nice guy, he likes to save people money when he can) by
stock-piling all the drives and cataloguing them and doing basic
data-recovery. He *does* open drives as well as just replace boards, however
he stresses that he's a 'cheap' option (Far, far cheaper than a lab, he does
it for the challenge and because he's a helpful guy, he also has a few
recovery software packages that cost him a bit) and if the data is *that*
important to go to a proper lab. Anyway, I *do* have a point. <g>, he uses
and tells everybody else to use UPS's. He has shelves and shelves of older
HDDs, all labeled and stored in those plastic cases OEM drives come in, he
gets them free from a big OEM builder.

I've been a sysadmin for a short time and am practically doing the same
at home now. Apart for the scale difference, there's far less money at
home ;-(

Did you know that if it's a 'stuck' drive (bearing) problem, often just
puting the drive in a zip-lock bag and placing it in the freezer for an hour
or two and then hooking it up while still cold can sometimes get it running
for long enough to get the data off it? Often the balls in the bearing-races
contract/shrink just enough to allow the drive to spin up for a while.

Oops, got a bit sidetracked there, anyone would think I still smoked pot.
<g>. I don't.

Yes, I've done it before, but with varying succes. On another sidetrack,
you can use that freeser for batteries that run out too soon as well

You're welcome Tim. I hope you succeed. You will be backing up a bit better
from now on huh? <g>.

The funny thing is, I have been looking for a good way for some time. I
was thinking of using rsync to back up from the different PC's, but then
I don't know how to get them on a CD in a semi-automated way. Especially
how to split the data up if it should span different disks, how to do
incremental backups,...


Cheers,
Tim

 

[Tim]

I've done that too. Actually I used to work in a place that used sheet
acrylic and I fabricated a clear cover for one and swapped it in an
environment that was as dust-free and humidity-free as I could make it. It's
one thing pulling an old HDD apart to see how they work but I just *had* to
see one running. It still only worked for a few months though. It was a SCSI
drive and I had it running externally, sitting on my desk next to a PC.
HDDs fascinate me. I've just dismantled an old Maxtor SCSI 1.2GB full-height
drive that was giving too many errors. (I keep a few old PC's around to play
with, I hate throwing anything away that is still working). Man that drive
was a work of art, so much more so than today's drives, a real pleasure just
to examine the internals of. I bet it cost more than three modern PCs when
it was new. It was a 5 1/2" drive and had *eight* platters/16 read/write
heads. The machining in it is awesome to look upon. The spindle motor still
runs as freely as the day it was made, no side-play or sloppiness in it.
I've kept the actuator/head assembly and I just look at it now and then (it
sits on top of my monitor, I admit it, I'm a geek).

Yes, you seem to be. I can't help smiling (and feeling a bit jealous)
when reading this.

Sidebar: The platters make good wind-chimes, especially if you have a
variety of sizes/brands. My fiancee is going to start making
*art*/craft-stuff from old PC compoments and try selling them at a PC shop
or two. Geek chic. <g>. She used to make bead necklaces but they aren't a
money-making (or should I say 'recovering') hobby and she's a bit *crafty*.

Sounds cool. Can't help on the money making part though, if I try to go
for the money, it turns out bad, so I try to stick to fun ;-)


Cheers,
Tim