Strange Screws

[James Sweet]

My drive is clicking, and one important partition has a very bad
directory structure. I'm not sure I can copy over even the good
partitions before it "fails". If I open it, what would I want to do
to stop the clicking, or to keep the clicking syndrome from preventing
me from copying the data to a good drive.

There's nothing you can do by opening it. If it's clicking that means
it's unable to read the disc due to a hardware failure. I've had some
luck placing the whole drive in the freezer for a couple hours and then
copying the important stuff off immediately but if that doesn't work
either pay the $ for professional recovery or throw away the drive
because I can guarantee you won't fix it by opening it.

 

[Rob B]

[I've been taking them apart to play with the magnets--- not as strong as I
expected in the newer drives]

magnets? in a hard drive?

Hard drives have very powerful neodymium magnets in the servo actuator
for the read/write head assembly. You have to be careful not to pinch
your fingers between them but they're cool to play with.

has anyone ever pinched the fingers ? i bought some of these neodynium
"warning extra strong" magnets from hardware store and skeptical i tried to
pinch my fingers and have had no luck, well if that is the label to give
such actions

 

[mm]

There's nothing you can do by opening it. If it's clicking that means
it's unable to read the disc due to a hardware failure. I've had some
luck placing the whole drive in the freezer for a couple hours and then
copying the important stuff off immediately but if that doesn't work
either pay the $ for professional recovery or throw away the drive
because I can guarantee you won't fix it by opening it.

Well, they want 1000 dollars or more.

What about putting it in the freezer while I use it?

Would't the heat of the drive and the coldness of the freezer, or
fridge, which I could adjust if someone gave me some guidance, keep it
at a steady rather cold temp?

The flat wire is long enough, and the power wire can be any length I
want it to be.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.

 

[mm]

has anyone ever pinched the fingers ? i bought some of these neodynium
"warning extra strong" magnets from hardware store and skeptical i tried to
pinch my fingers and have had no luck, well if that is the label to give
such actions

I've practically tried to glue my fingers together with super-glue,
and had no luck there either.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let
me know if you have posted also.

 

[Isaac Wingfield]

In my opinion, someone should be arrested for using these things.

They're not used to make it difficult for you to get inside, but because
it reduces manufacturing cost. Those screws don't slip off the bit, and
you don't have to apply any pressure to the driver to prevent "cogging".
They're just perfect for torque-limited power drivers in high-volume
manufacturing situations.

And as others have mentioned, they come out very nicely using a
properly-sized flat blade. Sometimes a hex wrench will fit, too.

Isaac

 

[Isaac Wingfield]

[I've been taking them apart to play with the magnets--- not as strong as I
expected in the newer drives]

magnets? in a hard drive?

Take them out, give them to a child to play with, and the child will be
bleeding inside five minutes.

NO! Do NOT do that.

Some of those magnets can crash together fast enough to shatter. If they
shatter, the small pieces (also sharp), do not have enough mass to be
strongly attracted to whatever is left of the magnet. They can fly away
at very high velocity, and cause serious injuries (to eyes, for example).

Isaac

 

[Isaac Wingfield]

Definitely correct. For anti-tamper there is Torx with a pin
in the middle that needs a Torx driver with a hole.

Or a little work with a strong, small flat blade, to bend it back and
forth until it breaks off.

Isaac

 

[Joshua Putnam]

NO! Do NOT do that.

Some of those magnets can crash together fast enough to shatter. If they
shatter, the small pieces (also sharp), do not have enough mass to be
strongly attracted to whatever is left of the magnet. They can fly away
at very high velocity, and cause serious injuries (to eyes, for example).

Also can cause death if ingested, google for the recent news reports
of a toddler killed by magnets from Bionicle if I remember correctly,
attracted to each other through neighboring bends in the child's
intestine.

 

[Chris Lewis]

Just any unrecoverable read error (which isn't necessarily a physical one,
it can just be a bad write, ie a logical error).

Yes you _can_, for the logical bad blocks.

Not by opening the drive... About the only thing that someone that
doesn't have major equipment can accomplish by opening it up is to
replace the drive electronics. Some of our support people are quite
good at resurrecting drives by swapping the electronics (they keep
electronics sets from head-crashed drives). But the OPs problem is
not the electronics.

Perhaps most of these types of failures (drive clicking - retries)
can be "fixed" by causing the drive to write on the bad blocks, and
then doing a fixdisk or equivalent. I'm familiar with somewhat
older gear under UNIX, where you take the sector number from the error
messages and use "dd" or write a small program to write a single
block over the bad sector. Then run the file system repair utilities
(ie: fsck) to clear/reclaim it.

These days with smarter controllers, they sometimes automatically
self-repair (spare out the bad sector), or a simple low-level reformat
of the drive will fix or spare it out. You might find a suitable
procedure on the manufacturer's web site.

 

[Chris Lewis]

That would be like making digitial tv the standard, and non-digital
tv's dificult to use.

You did know that the US Congress was mandating digital-only TV
(I think) April 2009 didn't you?

Think of all the screwdrivers that would have to go on welfare.

Screwdriver smugglers.

 

[Rob B]

I've practically tried to glue my fingers together with super-glue,
and had no luck there either.

i suppose i am luckier than you for i have super'd my fingers together

but i was not trying

 

[Rod Speed]

They're not used to make it difficult for you to get inside, but
because it reduces manufacturing cost. Those screws don't slip off
the bit, and you don't have to apply any pressure to the driver to
prevent "cogging". They're just perfect for torque-limited power
drivers in high-volume manufacturing situations.

Doesnt explain why they used the tamperproof
and hard to get 5 lobe format.

 

[Dr. Hardcrab]

If you want to buy Torx Plus tools you must, in theory anyway, be a
legitimate user as defined by Textron although if you know anyone who
works with them they should be pretty easily obtained at the cost of a
case of beer. ;-)

http://www.stanleysupplyservices.com/product-group.aspx?id=7957

 

[Doug Miller]

The same to you.

Try again.

Yes it is, as someone else showed from the Wiha page.

No, it's not. This is a five-pointed star. Torx screws have six points.

 

[J. Clarke]

http://www.stanleysupplyservices.com/product-group.aspx?id=7957

No Torx Plus in that set, just Security Torx. Torx Plus is different from
Torx, and Torx Plus TR is different from either.

 

[chrisv]

has anyone ever pinched the fingers ? i bought some of these neodynium
"warning extra strong" magnets from hardware store and skeptical i tried to
pinch my fingers and have had no luck, well if that is the label to give
such actions

You haven't tried big/strong ones, then. I have some that are 1"
diameter and 1/4" thick, and I guarantee you that they'll give you a
pinch you will not soon forget! They are also extremely difficult to
seperate, once locked-together.

 

[chrisv]

To avoid this problem in the future

Ignore the SCSI troll.

 

[Rob B]

You haven't tried big/strong ones, then. I have some that are 1"
diameter and 1/4" thick, and I guarantee you that they'll give you a
pinch you will not soon forget! They are also extremely difficult to
seperate, once locked-together.

well the ones i tried were small button type maybe 1/3" diameter and 1/8"
thick they certainly were strong they hold more to the fridge than those
crap magnets and prettier too

but i could not pinch anything with those

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

There's nothing you can do by opening it.

If it's clicking that means it's unable to read the disc

due to a hardware failure.

Nonsense.
If it's clicking it means it does a rezero every time it retries a read operation.
It does that on ECC errors and also on CRC errors on the interface.
Neither is necessarily caused by a hardware failure.
Bad power supply, overheated drive or bad data cable can cause this too.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

According to Folkert Rienstra (e-mail address removed):

Please, do not use Reply-To addresses in attribution lines. Get a decent newsclient, or change your attribution line, like everyone
else.

Not by opening the drive... About the only thing that someone that
doesn't have major equipment can accomplish by opening it up is to
replace the drive electronics. Some of our support people are quite
good at resurrecting drives by swapping the electronics (they keep
electronics sets from head-crashed drives).

But the OPs problem is not the electronics.

Who says.

Perhaps most of these types of failures (drive clicking - retries)
can be "fixed" by causing the drive to write on the bad blocks, and
then doing a fixdisk or equivalent. I'm familiar with somewhat
older gear under UNIX, where you take the sector number from the error
messages and use "dd" or write a small program to write a single
block over the bad sector. Then run the file system repair utilities
(ie: fsck) to clear/reclaim it.

These days with smarter controllers, they sometimes automatically
self-repair (spare out the bad sector),

Only if the sector is readable with retries.
Unrecoverable read error bad sectors are only reallocated on writes.