[TriLUG] Hard drive recovery

[Brian Henning via TriLUG]

The rotation-axis flick after applying power has helped me get a fussy drive spinning.  Shay says "rotate the drive".  It's an action a bit more vigorous than the word implies; a "flick of the wrist" might give a better suggestion of the actual move involved (you want to impart some rotational momentum to help the drive get turning).  Definitely once the drive is spinning and detected by the host, get the bits somewhere safe as quickly as possible.  ddrescue is a very good tool.

I also agree with the folks who say don't try the freezer trick, for a couple reasons:
1. Stiction - This happens when the lubricant sealed inside the drive motor becomes thick with age, resulting in too much friction at startup.  Cold makes this worse, as most lubricants thicken at lower temperatures.   
2. Condensation - Drive enclosures are not sealed from the atmosphere; in fact, they have breather holes that must never be covered.  Breather holes by which humid air can reach an icy-cold platter and condense.

If the drive is not mounted in an enclosure, it's easy to tell if it's spinning or not by testing for gyroscopic precession.  Power up the drive, hold it flat, and very gently rock it side to side.  If the drive is spinning, you'll feel a slight force at a right angle to the rocking motion (the drive will feel like it's trying to twist in your hand).  A non-rotating drive will not have this effect.  This test is useful if you're not sure you can hear the motor or not.

Giving the drive any sort of lateral shock is a dangerous idea.

HTH,
-Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: TriLUG <trilug-bounces+bhenning=pineresearch.com at trilug.org> On Behalf Of shay walters via TriLUG
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2019 11:36 AM
To: Keith Woodie <kwoodie at gmail.com>; Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Hard drive recovery

    If it's actually not spinning up, in the past something that has worked for me is to connect the drive with cables that give you a little slack, and manually rotate the drive along the spin axis just as you apply power.
(Be careful not to get too enthusiastic and cause any of the cables to come
unplugged.)  :-)  Many, many years ago I had a computer that I had to do this with any time it got powered off, but once it was running, it was fine, and I ran it for years.
    I've seen some videos of opening up a drive that had the head stuck to the platter, and manually rotating the platter while retracting the head, but once you break that seal, you're just asking for trouble, unless you have some sort of clean environment to do the work in.

-Shay


On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 11:28 AM Keith Woodie via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> I have a friend with an old hard drive from a computer that they said
> stopped working.   The drive isn’t visible via fdisk and I don’t think it
> is even spinning up.   Any ideas on something I could try to get the data
> off?
>
> Thanks
> --
> Keith Woodie
> --
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