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Fixing an External Harddrive

J

Jahan Penny-Dimri

Jan 1, 1970
0
hello,
i have a Lacie 500GB external harddrive that's been sweet and i've
stored a lot of stuff on there. Essentially what's happened is that
it's stopped working and the usual sort of spinning sound of the disk
in the hard drive has stopped and now makes a repetitive tzz tzz tzz
sound that's relatively quiet. What i assume is that the data is all
there and recoverable and that it's just some other mechanisms that
have screwed up. What can I do?
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jahan said:
hello,
i have a Lacie 500GB external harddrive that's been sweet and i've
stored a lot of stuff on there. Essentially what's happened is that
it's stopped working and the usual sort of spinning sound of the disk
in the hard drive has stopped and now makes a repetitive tzz tzz tzz
sound that's relatively quiet. What i assume is that the data is all
there and recoverable and that it's just some other mechanisms that
have screwed up. What can I do?


It might be possible to replace the motor driver chip, or swap the
circuit board over from an identical drive. I've fixed a drive once by
replacing a mosfet driving the motor but that was an old drive with
discrete parts while most today use one big IC to do that stuff.

This is precisely why backups are so important.
 
A

Art

Jan 1, 1970
0
You will need exactly the same drive board from exactly the same size, type,
speed of drive you're trying to recover the data from.
If the data is valuable to you the consideration of commercial data
retrieval may be recommended.
 
K

Ken

Jan 1, 1970
0
Art said:
You will need exactly the same drive board from exactly the same size, type,
speed of drive you're trying to recover the data from.
If the data is valuable to you the consideration of commercial data
retrieval may be recommended.

All good suggestions if the logic is the cause of his disk motor not
working. His comment regarding the "Tzz, tzz, tzz" sounds a lot like it
might be the heads sticking to the platters. If this is the case, a
jarring of the drive into the palm of your hand while power is applied
might free up the heads. Older drives encountered this type of problem
frequently. It is true that newer ones encounter this less, but it
might still be the problem rather than bad logic.
 
M

Meat Plow

Jan 1, 1970
0
It might be possible to replace the motor driver chip, or swap the
circuit board over from an identical drive. I've fixed a drive once by
replacing a mosfet driving the motor but that was an old drive with
discrete parts while most today use one big IC to do that stuff.

This is precisely why backups are so important.

Has the OP verified that the power supply is delivering the proper
voltage/current to the drive? I have a Seagate 300 gig in an external case
and the it will make sounds like the OP described if the 12 volt supply
isn't of adequate current. I have a 12 volt 800ma and 2000ma supplies that
look similar and tried to use the 800ma mistakenly with the drive and it
made that noise.
 
J

Jamie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ken said:
All good suggestions if the logic is the cause of his disk motor not
working. His comment regarding the "Tzz, tzz, tzz" sounds a lot like it
might be the heads sticking to the platters. If this is the case, a
jarring of the drive into the palm of your hand while power is applied
might free up the heads. Older drives encountered this type of problem
frequently. It is true that newer ones encounter this less, but it
might still be the problem rather than bad logic.
I remember a series of Samsung Drives, after about 1 mouth of operation,
you didn't want to turn them off! other wise, you would have to bump the
drive in side to get it to start up.
I got my hands on a bunch of these defective drives (new) and had them
put in servers, i found that if you kept them running for at least 4
months or so, they corrected them self's!
something to do with the bearings not machined correctly in the platter.
 
W

William R. Walsh

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi!
What i assume is that the data is all
there and recoverable and that it's just some other mechanisms that
have screwed up. What can I do?

I think that's a good assumption. First, check your power supply to see that
it is working properly.

If the power supply checks out, the hard drive is probably suffering from
so-called "stiction" problems. Stiction happens when the drive's heads
somehow adhere themselves to the platters and the spindle motor isn't strong
enough to break the bond and start the drive. Gently shaking or rotating the
drive casing while turning it on may solve the problem. Setting the drive
casing in the sun or in a cool place (be very careful if you put it in the
freezer--condensate forming on the drive platters as it warms up may really
ruin things!) may also cause the heads to loosen up.

If the drive starts and runs, it may be fine. Still, it would be a very good
idea to have another drive handy for backup purposes. If there is a failure,
you may only get a few chances to read your data!

William
 
J

James Sweet

Jan 1, 1970
0
All good suggestions if the logic is the cause of his disk motor not
working. His comment regarding the "Tzz, tzz, tzz" sounds a lot like it
might be the heads sticking to the platters. If this is the case, a
jarring of the drive into the palm of your hand while power is applied
might free up the heads. Older drives encountered this type of problem
frequently. It is true that newer ones encounter this less, but it
might still be the problem rather than bad logic.


Nah, I haven't seen this in drives made in the last 15 years or so. It
took the old oxide coated platters to stick in any reasonable amount of
time.
 
K

Ken

Jan 1, 1970
0
James said:
Nah, I haven't seen this in drives made in the last 15 years or so. It
took the old oxide coated platters to stick in any reasonable amount of
time.
Could be, but it is worth the try.
 
L

Lionel

Jan 1, 1970
0
hello,
i have a Lacie 500GB external harddrive that's been sweet and i've
stored a lot of stuff on there. Essentially what's happened is that
it's stopped working and the usual sort of spinning sound of the disk
in the hard drive has stopped and now makes a repetitive tzz tzz tzz
sound that's relatively quiet.

Sounds like the spindle's failing to spin up.
What i assume is that the data is all
there and recoverable
Maybe.

and that it's just some other mechanisms that
have screwed up. What can I do?

500GB sounds relatively recent for an external drive. Have you tried
calling LaCie themselves? Their stuff is high priced & intended for
non-technical people, so I'd hope that they'd provide good support in
this sort of situation.
 
L

Lionel

Jan 1, 1970
0
All good suggestions if the logic is the cause of his disk motor not
working. His comment regarding the "Tzz, tzz, tzz" sounds a lot like it
might be the heads sticking to the platters.

Stiction /usually/ (not always) makes drive go "clunk!" on power-up,
then stay silent. A repeated 'whirrrr' (with a rising, then lowering
pitch) generally indicates a bad motor tacho sensor or unreadable
servo data.
If this is the case, a
jarring of the drive into the palm of your hand while power is applied
might free up the heads.

I used this method successfully a number of times back in the old MFM
days, but the odds of it working are pretty slim with modern drives.
If you've tried *every* other option unsuccessfully it's worth a try,
but if it doesn't work, it'll likely ruin the drive permanently.
 
L

Lionel

Jan 1, 1970
0
Does anyone remember what brand hard drive it was?

The OP didn't say. (LaCie makes the box, not the drives)
I used to most often see stiction on Seagates & Miniscribes.
 
L

Lionel

Jan 1, 1970
0
Has the OP verified that the power supply is delivering the proper
voltage/current to the drive? I have a Seagate 300 gig in an external case
and the it will make sounds like the OP described if the 12 volt supply
isn't of adequate current. I have a 12 volt 800ma and 2000ma supplies that
look similar and tried to use the 800ma mistakenly with the drive and it
made that noise.

Good suggestion. (All my external drives use custom power sockets, so
I didn't think of that possibility.)
 
W

William R. Walsh

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi!
The OP didn't say. (LaCie makes the box, not the drives)
I used to most often see stiction on Seagates & Miniscribes.

Probably Seagate. I have 250 and 160 GB versions of these drives. Every one
so far has been a Seagate on the inside.

William
 
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