On 2018-04-21 02:40, Paul wrote:
The big-name companies are listed here.
https://support.wdc.com/warranty/dat...ericas&lang=en
Thanks, I will look into those "official" recovery centres.
And you can find sites with chit-chat about recovery.
https://www.data-medics.com/forum/wd...re58-t746.html
Interesting, he's accessing the drive RAM and fiddling with reading only
from 1 head at a time etc. The things you can do :-)
And there is gear people hint at, but don't describe in detail.
I even found a site in India, selling things like "head stack
holders" for when you change out a head stack. If you want to
get into the business, there's always someone selling the
bits and pieces needed.
Yeah, I know there are things like head "spreaders" etc making it easier
to rebuild drives, but of course I don't have any of that here ;-)
http://www.acelaboratory.com/pc3000.udma.php
One interesting tidbit, is there is a three wire TTL level
serial port on the controller board. Which accepts a cryptic
language of some sort (parameter list, comma separated), There
is at least one web page, which describes temporarily
interrupting some electrical connections on a drive,
issuing a couple commands into that serial port, and actually
recovering a drive where the firmware has damaged a data
structure stored in the Service Area. That was the first hint
I got, that a hard drive has an interface like some home
routers do. And it's not a port that responds to "help" either :-)
Lol, yeah I'm not going there. Either I fix it physically or I have it
recovered; not learning hard drive controller language.
An industry practice seems to be "no charge unless I
recover your data". You'd probably have to pay for shipping
in cases where you want the carcass back, if they fail
at the task.
Yeah but like I said to the other dude, that doesn't impress me as much
as people telling me they are a good experience with so and so. All it
means is: if I break it, so that you can not EVER recover from it, then
I won't charge you. It is better than nothing, it is an incentive to the
vendor to recover, but it doesn't make me all warm and fuzzy inside as
much as you'd think.
I've never used data recovery myself, so have not gone through
the selection process of picking a repair/recovery facility. My
phone book has three entries, claiming to be local service, but
my guess is they just mail your drive to a larger facility somewhere.
The listing for Florida, had maybe 30-40 providers. That's a lot
of basements, with glove boxes in them...
I got a few in my city here, but don't know how reputable they are which
is why I asked around here.
They should really be using a Class 100 or Class 10 Clean Room or
Air Curtain for this work. But there are also glove boxes with
HEPA air supplies, for doing the work. I think you could only get
away with sloppy cleanliness, on the old drives (the ones with
10u flying height).
If I do it myself dusty air is going to have to do. It is quite an old
drive, I think it could survive colliding with a few particles, all I
need is to read it once...
And I think it'll be interesting, when someone asks this question,
and he has a Helium drive. Who can handle one of those ? That
will take a rocket scientist, as the HDA has a seal to keep the
Helium in. What a mess that's going to be. Do they use a can
opener on those ? :-) Conventional air-filled drives with breather
holes, are a lot easier to open up (the breather hole has a HEPA
filter underneath the cover). There is no "vacuum" inside
a hard drive, as the heads actually "fly" on a cushion of
some gas, whether it's 1 ATM air, or it's helium.
Well the helium is to make sure it's easier to spin the platters and the
temp doesn't go up. Maybe they can just run the drive in an
appropriately cold room, provided the rotor can take the extra drag...
Regards,
--
! _\|/_ Sylvain /
! (o o) Member
avid-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/SPCA/Planetary-Society
oO-( )-Oo Friends don't let friends use Windoze.