Dead Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rich @ Ultima Thule
  • Start date Start date
R

Rich @ Ultima Thule

Hi,

I have a linux box with an old 30gb Maxtor drive in. It has been recently
removed from an ISP and transported to my new office. I tested the box when
it arrived here and it appeared to boot up without problem. I therefore shut
the box down and left it over the weekend before dd'ing the drive to a new
one, upgrading the kernel and putting it on a faster box.

The problem is now that the machine wont boot. The bios detects the drive
however when the next screen appears (the one with the table describing the
PC's components) the drive is not displayed. I have tested it by putting
either the bios on autodetect or doing a manual entry of the settings. I
have also tried anther drive in the machine (it was fine) and putting this
drive in another machine (same problem). I have tried putting the broken
drive as a slave, doesn't work.

Does anyone have any suggestions other than the freezer technique as a last
resort as this machine has some really important scripts on which would be a
mission to re-code.

Cheers

Richard.
 
Rich @ Ultima Thule said:
Hi,

I have a linux box with an old 30gb Maxtor drive in. It has been recently
removed from an ISP and transported to my new office. I tested the box when
it arrived here and it appeared to boot up without problem. I therefore shut
the box down and left it over the weekend before dd'ing the drive to a new
one, upgrading the kernel and putting it on a faster box.

The problem is now that the machine wont boot. The bios detects the drive
however when the next screen appears (the one with the table describing the
PC's components) the drive is not displayed. I have tested it by putting
either the bios on autodetect or doing a manual entry of the settings. I
have also tried anther drive in the machine (it was fine) and putting this
drive in another machine (same problem). I have tried putting the broken
drive as a slave, doesn't work.

Does anyone have any suggestions other than the freezer technique as a last
resort as this machine has some really important scripts on which would be a
mission to re-code.
Click to expand...


the freezer method *does* work occasionally you should give it a try...

one thing i have observed with such drives however

is that if you keep trying from time to time

and possibly tapping on it slightly ....it may just get detected and boot
up
 
one thing i have observed with such drives however

is that if you keep trying from time to time

and possibly tapping on it slightly ....it may just get detected and boot
up
Click to expand...

However, if this is the case backup immediately cause it might not boot up
again...
....for the OP - just out of curiosity is the drive spinning up when powered?
 
Alceryes said:
However, if this is the case backup immediately cause it might not boot up
again...
...for the OP - just out of curiosity is the drive spinning up when powered?
Click to expand...

Yes the drive is spinning up, it makes two little "meep meep" noises (sorry
about the desription!!) as it starts and then sounds to spin up. I have
tried tapping it but to no avail!

Cheers

Richard.
 
Rich @ Ultima Thule said:
Yes the drive is spinning up, it makes two little "meep meep" noises (sorry
about the desription!!) as it starts and then sounds to spin up. I have
tried tapping it but to no avail!

Cheers

Richard.
Click to expand...

keep trying you may eventually get lucky...
but you should consider the freezer method

one other thing i have done with success *once* was to open the
drive and very *gently* free-up the stuck arm
that particular drive worked for some time after that
but this is clearly a total last resort!
 
Rich said:
Yes the drive is spinning up, it makes two little "meep meep" noises
(sorry about the desription!!) as it starts and then sounds to spin
up. I have tried tapping it but to no avail!

Cheers

Richard.
Click to expand...

Meep, meep, eh? This is obviously the rare Acme Corp. brand - sorry I
couldn't resist! ;o)
 
Bastet said:
Meep, meep, eh? This is obviously the rare Acme Corp. brand - sorry I
couldn't resist! ;o)
Click to expand...
I was waiting for a reply like that! But yeah, a good desription of the
sound would be a quiet road runner.

I might try the head movement as a last resort, but a VERY last resort!

The other thing i wondered about was getting an identical drive (from
somewhere??) and then swopping the board over. Is that likely to have a
chance of working?

Cheers

Richard.
 
The other thing i wondered about was getting an identical drive (from
somewhere??) and then swopping the board over. Is that likely to have a
chance of working?
Click to expand...


that could *theoretically* work if the drive has no mechanical
problems
 
I was waiting for a reply like that! But yeah, a good desription of the
sound would be a quiet road runner.

I might try the head movement as a last resort, but a VERY last resort!

The other thing i wondered about was getting an identical drive (from
somewhere??) and then swopping the board over. Is that likely to have a
chance of working?
Click to expand...

I had a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 60 that made the meep-meep sound.
Luckily it kept working, only froze the system after tring to access
it but was still usable after power off/on. The Maxtor diagnostics
generated an error code and the drive was RMA'd, it's replacement
still works fine.

I could be wrong but suspect this is a mechanical problem, that
changing circuit boards won't help. I wouldn't try opening the drive
to play with the head, it's not likely to do much other than crash the
heads. You might try a mild cooling of the drive, not in the freezer
overnight (yet), just get the drive down to a little above freezing
then try to copy off data.


Dave
 
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