I'm A+ certified and have worked in the IT industry for over 25 years...I never would have thought of this fix. Goes to show you that there's always something to learn regardless of your experience
I cant believe this worked perfectly. I had 1.5 TB of data on a Samsung desktop drive that had all of my lifes work family photos and music on it. I was at the point of just throwing it all away. Please like and subscribe to this channel he is actually giving good acurate information in a way anyone can understand. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks very much, most appreciated. I went and saw many Technicians here in S. Korea and they said that nothing could be done about this problem, but for a fee they could try and retrieve some of the data from off the HDD, but no guarantees! Thanks again for sharing & God Bless!
Thank you sooo much!!!! I have saved loads of precious work and also fixed my old hard drive which was sat in the drawer for ages and was quoted £750 to fix by specialists a while ago. You are a legend!!!
I saw an old IT fellow who spinned the intact drive on the floor couples of times and fixed the defective drive. No sure if it actually moved the head back to sitting position. But it did work that time.
Stumbled across this video accidentally. Had a Samsung 500g drive beeping. Opened, moved heads to home position and fixed. So simple. I was about to throw it away. Many thanks
@@diyconstruction1147 with the sort of repair shown in this video, I'd never consider that drive to last any longer than required to get the data off of it. (Maybe not even that, that's why he gave all the warnings.) Buy a fresh new drive to put your data onto and never open it up.
@@andrewjokbalan6267 I can’t see clearly in the video what screw heads he’s got but they look like they could be torx heads on the screws. So you just need to go and get one of those little screwdriver sets with multiple removable bits that go in the end of the driver and make sure that it has torx bits of different sizes in it If that is the type of bit that you need for yours (Torx bits have a star cross-section)
Thanks for the video! I have several “crashed” hard drives in a drawer in my desk. All of them have been pronounced DOA at some point in the past. Now looking forward to seeing if the dead can be revived. I also want to compliment the quality of your microphone, which brought very subtle sounds to life, like screw extraction, and hard drive case cracking. Awesome!
One of my laptop harddrives was doing the same thing I never threw it away it's been just sitting there for almost a year I saw this video and tried it and works now I had pics of my father-in-law who past away on it moved them to another harddrive. your awesome thanks for the video👍
Is their a special screwdriver or is it just the normal star screwdriver? That we use to open the hard drive. Glad to hear you recovered your data back.
I'm glad to see that you are not afraid to do this. I know many many people who are willing to spend $1,000 to recover data instead of regularly backing it up and restoring from a good image. I have done this for a few people more than a few people and charge them a hefty fee because I first asked them where is your backup and they point to the dead Drive says it's not backed up all my data is right there.
Ran across this today. I have a 500 gig external HD that looks identical to this one except for the connector. My HD froze several years ago and I have some good stuff on it that I can't get off. I tried this and opened the cases and sure enough, the arm was stuck as in the video. I freed the arm, put the cases back together and it worked. It took 3 attempts for my laptop to repair the HD functioning and now it functions very well. Only problem was finding the 7th hidden screw under the label in order to open the case top. Thanks for the remedy you provided.
There are no words! Exactly what I was looking for and makes sense in my particular scenario where I had installed a new battery and in the process of calibrating battery cycle.
You are the man! Lenovo ideapad. 4.5 years old. Found the head in the same location as yours when you opened it. I ruined some screws getting it open and didn’t have a clean room but I think this will at a minimum get my data saved off this drive. Thank you for putting this up!!!
Thank you SOOOOOO MUCH!!!!! It helped me sooo much and not only saved me money but also let me keep my info which the manufacturer had told me had to be formatted. My computer was not even recognizing the disk but now it works again THANKSS!!!
I am by no means some kind of PC expert but i have worked in field service for 32 years and I would do a repair like this in a heartbeat, I would then copy the image and replace the drive. Over the years not only have I but many of my fellow techs have done some crazy things to get a drive working again,. You do what you have to do. Thanks for your video
I've had drives in the freezer, tried to setup a clean area to work on them etc, this video shows roughly what you can get away with if you just want to pull the data. Saves spending the $$ that the experts want ;-)
I have asked people at computer store and they say: YOU HAVE to have a clean room... OR : if you do this the drive is is trash and it won't work, OR the drive will NOT last a day because it is now contaminated. What do you think, Are the full of carp and how long have you had a hard dive last after doing this?? Thank you if you reply.
My father and I did a drive that lasted 5 years until it was thrown out... On the flip side there is a decent possibility that opening the disk will kill it on the spot, if you don't have the $$ to pay a data recovery specialist you don't have much to lose ;-)
The head is supposed to park off to the side of the platter. After some time the head can get stuck in one position because of wear on the bearing shaft from the many millions of movements of the head arm. The bearing shaft starts to have some uneven surface (in microns of tolerance). It is like the bearing surfaces hit a sort of a burr and got stuck. By moving the head assembly the burr may be cleared, but will eventually come back because of the wear. After freeing up the head, it may actually operate for a fair amount of time before it gets suck again. Best to get the data off the drive and then bin it. The position of the head is sensed. The head position is sensed because it knows (reads) the track number it is sitting on as soon as the power is applied. If in the event the head is out of position while the drive is powered off, the program in the firmware will know the position of the head and is supposed to zero it back to its start point when the drive is re-started. The start point is first to park, and then immediately go to to track "0" to start reading at sector "0". My take, is to make sure you have an image of the drive on a USB or another internal drive unit. In the case of failure you simply swap out the drive and re-image back to the new drive. These small laptop drives are usually fairly dependable, but do have a higher frequency of failure than the full height full size drives. They are also mechanically more fragile. If you are replacing a boot drive it is best to replace it with an SSD. The SSD will outlast any mechanical drive and are is a lot less fragile.
Thank you so much for this video. I have been doing computer repair and tech support for over 10 years now and I NEVER knew we could open these hard drives. Amazing! You truly learn something new everyday!
Only for a short time, if your lucky enough time to make an image. The drive is sealed and letting atmosphere in creates friction when the platters spin and the heat builds up.
@@thadtheman3751 nope, they are not. well, there are drives which are sealed, some special helium drives, but most of the normal hdds are not sealed and even have a hole to pressurize. you should open them in clean room conditions, because of all the dust and specs flying around. the read heads fly so low over the platters (they fly, because the disc creates a cushion of air throught he spin), that even a small dust particle can crash and damage the head.
Tell us after 2 months if it's still running properly. The HDD was filled with the inert superclean gas with practically 0 dust particles. After opening, you contamined it. So make sure it will get rusty soon.
Jaromír Anděl most consumer grade drives aren't gas filled but have small breather holes to allow filtered air to circulate through them. Opening it outside of a clean room isn't a good idea, but it won't brick the drive right away.
My Dell 380 desk top failed to reboot after a power failure last night. All day with tech support trying different things. There answer was bad hard drive. Technically correct however this procedure fixed my problem.. You are awesome !!!! Thanks !!
Use to work in this industry. Sound like what they would call a "stiction" problem where the heads adheres to the disks. Basically lack of lubricant..supper thin. The disks are dipped and allowed to dry vertically. Also good to mention to turn it the right way, or the heads will be ripped off or bent. You can hear the sticking as the disk is turned. Lastly, some designs have the heads parked at the inside diameter. Good video!
You should have showed up the monitor screen to see the hdd responding to processing programmed information to see if there's some errors or not until it gets to the Windows Operating System. One time, back in late 1990s I opened up one hdd that was not responding but it's spinning quietly. The arm head pin was stuck up in the center of the hard disk. I just move like the way you did and put it back together. There you go, it works. I wonder why most hard drives happen that getting stuck up in the center. This like DIY is the best way to experience which saves you money and precious memories then get another new HDD to duplicate/clone in case happens again. Good video, thanks for sharing.
When I saw you removing the screws I was sure this was a video on how to destroy your hard drive in five minutes, I always believed the moment you expose the platter to air and dust that it will never work again. You proved me wrong
You should open harddrives in dustfree areas (airfiltered room/hood). Dust inside the case is very bad for the lifespan of a HDD. However if you just want to rescue the data and dispose the HDD afterwards(or use it for nonimportant datastorage until it kicks the bucket), doing this in a normal room with a bit of care is fine unless you are are a very unlucky fellow and a grain of dust finds itself between plate and head right away.
I don't know who you are, but I thank God that you exist! By using your method, I have fixed my old laptop HDD! And recovered all my data! Thanks again!
I've had Hard drives die that were 3 months old. This started when they went to 500gb. I just replace them with an SSD and then a portable back up. Works great.
I am surprised those tiny specs of dust right after you opened it didn't cause an issue. Maybe there is some small filter inside the drive to catch those? Would it have been better to give it a quick blast of spray air before closing it back up? (Not sure if that would do more damage or help.) You can get a cheap PM2.5 counter and some even show number of particles per liter of air. (Basically a sub-PM2.5 amount.) With such an air quality meter, you should be able to get "pretty close to clean room". Don't forget that moving clothing, moving hair, etc can cause more dust particles to shed. Also don't forget to control humidity.
That works sometimes. An opened HD is promised to die soon. So the best is to recover the data immediately. Never rely at 100% on a lone HD. In fact, the best is to do is to have two external disks with all your data backup. With the price of HDs nowadays it is a fairly cheap and rather fast solution. It's best to do that backup with a linux OS as it is far more robust than Windows for reading and writing data, and it is not bothered by Windows viruses.
OMG!!!!!! Thank you so much move my hdd from transcend to ugreen hard disk case and face this problem too omg follow your tutorial i fixed it!!! thanks again and again ~!!!!!!
If this permits the hdd to be accessed for long enough to copy it's data to another hdd then that is all that matters. He is not saying this is a long term solution, but a possible technique to permit you to read the disk and save your precious memories. 👍🏻
and what everyone else is saying is congrats numb nuts if there ever was a chance of recovering that data youve just halved that and potentially fucked it up so that even a proffesional might not be able to get it back
Online Identity: Excellent advice. If the drive has an operating system and programs, try cloning the problem drive to another HD. I now keep clones of the HDs in my desktop and two laptops BEFORE I have problems. If I have a drive failure, I just swap out the problem drive and insert the clone. That way I am back in business in 15 minutes or less. Then, when I have the time, I run the recovery software on the problem drive. To make this even quicker, I partition all my HDs into several logical drives and keep data off Drive C, usually drives E and F. That way, even if drive C has problems, I can still access the data on drives E (work) and F (personal). Of course to access the data I must place the problem HD in an external case and access it by USB cable.
Leaving dust particles on the platter can potentially cause more damage. Also when you slide the Head Stack Assembly across the platters, you can potentially develop surface damage. If you are going to follow the advice in this video, here's a few tips. Wear latex or similar gloves, also try not to open the drive in a dusty area. If you have air in a can, press the trigger lightly over the platter to remove dust. Here's what can happen if you don't, you can touch the platters and oils from your skin will transfer onto the platter surface (not easy to clean, platters should not be cleaned, wiped or come into contact with anything foreign). Leaving dust particles can get trapped between the platter surface and reading head and create more damage that will eventually render the drive unrecoverable. Pressing the air duster trigger to full blast can expel "mist" onto the platter leaving residue on the surface. Also this doesn't always work, different hard drive models respond differently. If you do manage to access the data after a procedure like this, COPY, IMAGE, or CLONE the data immediately, Don't assume the drive will continue to work. Trying to "fix" stuff yourself can make a difference between a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. You can go to the hospital or to the doctor that works from his basement.
MY DEAR SINCE THE VIDEO IS FOR A HD THAT DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF INFORMATION AND JUST FOR HELP AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY I WOULD DO IN LABORATORY YOU STUPID!!
Copy everything from it to a safe place and then forget that hdd. If you open it and dust gets inside (which inevitably happens if you don't do it in a specialized dust-free clean-room) the dust from the air will stuck between the head and the plates, will scratch the plates and the hdd will not work anymore and data will be lost. Good for a fast data recovery, but the opened hard drives even fixed by professionals with specialized equipments and lab are not guaranteed to work for long time.
Hello sir. Thank you very much for sharing this video with us. I was having the same problem for 2 months. But now I fixed it thanks to you. really thank you so much 🙏🙋🏼♂️
Now I feel I shouldn't have thrown out my hard drive a few years ago. I kept my broken hard drive for a decade, hoping someday I would be able to recover its data. Eventually, I gave up hope and let it go. Wish I hadn't. There were no such videos on CZcams back then. My HDD had this same problem. It's so sad. I am never gonna get my data back now...I had made peace with it. But nowadays I feel I made a big mistake. It even feels worse than losing the data itself. Life sucks.
Most reasons for unparked heads is sudden loss of power.....I.e. Battery dies before shutdown...then you leave it without recharging battery and rebooting within a day or two.....
Xenon777 Most of the time, that is what happens. However, the inevitable can and sometimes do occur when the read/write heads does a hard touchdown often referred to as a crash when it lands on an occupied area or does not glide to a safe zone.
In my area we get power loss all the time, my couple of hdds are going off power like 400 times a year and yet this never happened to me. btw I need an ups cuz I bought ssd . Got power loss on it couple times and no errors for now. Bit late for a comment but I wanted to share my experience. Maybe this is just samsung hdds firmware fault. (I never had samsung hdd)
When you do something like this and fix it in this manner the next thing you should do is clone that drive or backup whatever you have on it that you want. Unless you're doing this in a clean room, you run the risk of getting dust or other foreign material in your HDD and that can really mess the heads up even more.
Your right about a clean room, however I have done this several times successfully without a clean room. What you have is what they call "the click of death". The read/write head is stuck. A person has to take the drive apart, rotate the data platter and move the heads back to the park location. From there you will need an external hard drive to recover the data. When you plug the hard drive back in the computer with the cover either on or off you plug a USB hard drive in the computer. If things go right you will see the computer boot up as normal. From that point you start copying files from the defective hard drive to the USB drive or thumb drive you have plugged in. Hope this helps.
@@beeman596 You got it. How big is the hard drive? Does it fit in a desktop computer or a laptop? I purchased some 500gig refurbished WD Blue 3.5" drive from Technocycle here in Houston for $14 each. technocycle.com/ The best thing to get now is solid state hard drives. They aren't that expensive and there is no moving parts.
Thanks for this video. I have three computers that simply stopped over the last few years. I'm going to give this a try. I'll get back if it works on even one.
I have close on 20 failed hard drives since I commenced with PCs in the X86days. Obviously, they are not laptop drives like this but this is worth a try on all of them. Many thanks👍
Excellent video and tutorial, I hope everyone knows that you should do this to get your data off your drive onto a new drive and no longer use the drive, and you should also run a DOD 7 pass secure wipe on the failed drive before donating it to a e-recycler.
Precision data it's recommended to to a professional saying that there is a price to pay... I my self use this solution because I have everything backup so there is no great loss.. And this solution like you say it's 5 minutos...... Thank you for your videos..
Same thing happened to my Seagate 2TB 2.5, it beeped with no spin. Luckily it was still under warranty so I sent it in and got a new one back, pain in the A about the data but I have an external I back up to so all of it was not lost. EDIT: Great video BTW Thanks...
Thank you very much for the easiest way you have shown on the video. I just revived a few hard drives that have been sitting idle in the house though its not my trade.
288 / 5000 Wyniki tłumaczenia I don't think he knows what he's doing. He said nothing about the fact that the hard disk should be opened in a laminar chamber. Additionally, dirt from the plate should be removed. If you want to play with the disc like a toy, this is a good method, but it definitely doesn't fix anything as the author suggests in the title.
If you manage to get it working, copy everything you want off of the drive whilst it is still working (temporarily). If it is a boot drive, clone it, so you also get the boot info.
not ecessarily "save" a hard drive, it is more like a LAST CHANCE effort, only to save whhat you can as fast as you can... that´s it. I have been repairing/ building computers for over 20 years and I would never EVER give an opened drive back to a customer... never
The same exact thing happened to me on the exact same drive I own. I fixed it in 10 minutes. Works great. The Head Stack assembly would not allow the platter to turn on startup. The question is why does the Head Stack get stuck out on the platter?
Thumbs up. i solve my harddisk problem with this way. Everything is the same except model (Seagate.). Windows 7 on this HDD working. Now I am trying disk repair because my opening may cause on HDD.
I appreciate that you post this with good intentions, but you missed some things in your explanation, such as inspecting the heads to ensure that they aren't damaged or contaminated with debris. You should also inspect the surface (at least the top that you can see) to verify that there are no head slaps or scratches from the heads landing down. The first step after closing the drive is to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive, avoiding the heads from thrashing and compounding any surface damage. As a data recovery professional, we get these drive almost daily. If unopened by user, 95% of the time, we recover the data without a head change for $350CAD. But, of the drives that are previously opened, we usually need to change heads on about 80% of the cases, making for a more expensive recovery and a less than perfect recovery result.
$350 C to image and clone data off a $20 outdated, and obsolete piece of hardware? Do you at lest provide your customers with lube and kiss them on the neck before you stick it in them or ya'll just raw dawgin' these suckers?
I have a double SATA dock for 3.5" and 2.5" HDD's. Since I'm only running on a docked laptop these days, it's great to access the HDD's I used to have in the desktop. I'd like an eSATA cable for my blu-ray drive tho.
Older drives used to have a problem they called stiction. The head would land on the platter while the drive was warm, then stick to it when the drive cooled. I was visiting our IT department one day when they had a drive exhibiting the problem. The tech shocked the hell out of me when he took the drive in his hand and slammed it down flat, quite hard, on his work bench. He plugged it in and it worked perfectly. Sometime later I had a similar problem with a piece of equipment and tried the trick myself. It worked! I wouldn’t recommend putting the drive back in service again after doing that but the one I smashed worked for years after.
Put mine in a plastic bag then bubble wrap and placed it in the freezer for about half an hour, got the heads released so I could extract the data, surprisingly it still works 5 years later!
Exposing the platter and other internal hard drive components to open air will result in eventual (if not immediate) hard drive failure. This technique should only be done as a last resort and if successful any readable data should be extracted from the drive immediately afterwards. If the data is valuable, the drive should be handed over to a professional so that any attempted hardware repair of the hard drive in a clean room.
100% agree as this should have been done in special clean room hint reason why data recovery so expensive and should always back up your important files so don't ever have worry about this or even cloud now.
Finally something useful. I kept telling people i Just want to recover the data onto a new drive and they're telling me about software and all this crap and that it's "Too risky" to take it apart and they refused to help. I have 2 laptop drives that I know the heads are stuck. Thing is, now I have to find a screw driver for them lol
Glad I watched this at work, and not while I was in front of my crashed hard drive. . . three minutes in you say "Is a clean room needed, yes." I've been wondering that since the first screw turned. :-/
I wish I had paid more attention when trying to get the cover off the drive. He knew there was a screw hidden under the label. You have one area normally that is raised, and another area indented on the cover. The screw is under the label in that inward dimple. But, unknown to you...is there is another silver round piece of thick foil that is stuck over the screw head in the indention under the white label with black writing . In my haste...I nicked the surface of the platter trying to twist off the cover. Sad lesson learned. Hope you paid attention.
Well this method does work but you have to be really careful that no dust particles get in the drive. After this operation you should not trust the drive i.e you should not store any important data on the drive from there on because sometimes the read head could scratch the platters and you will not be able to ever recover data out of it.
I'm A+ certified and have worked in the IT industry for over 25 years...I never would have thought of this fix. Goes to show you that there's always something to learn regardless of your experience
I have an MCSE and I have never considered it....not once.
..there are things they need to be touched...😅
Finally Someone Who goes straight to the point 👍🏼👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Such a rare moment of experience, when a youtuber is actually really useful and makes all the difference - thank you very much!
I cant believe this worked perfectly. I had 1.5 TB of data on a Samsung desktop drive that had all of my lifes work family photos and music on it. I was at the point of just throwing it all away. Please like and subscribe to this channel he is actually giving good acurate information in a way anyone can understand. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks very much, most appreciated. I went and saw many Technicians here in S. Korea and they said that nothing could be done about this problem, but for a fee they could try and retrieve some of the data from off the HDD, but no guarantees!
Thanks again for sharing & God Bless!
Another computer life saving youtube video. I don't know what I would do without you guys.
Thank you (and I already clicked thumbs up)
did not work for me.
Thank you sooo much!!!! I have saved loads of precious work and also fixed my old hard drive which was sat in the drawer for ages and was quoted £750 to fix by specialists a while ago. You are a legend!!!
You could buy another decent performing pc with £750 😂
I got a quoted of 1400 USD amazing!
@@poorpizzamonke7612 data can be worth more at times. i can get this stuff much cheaper here
I saw an old IT fellow who spinned the intact drive on the floor couples of times and fixed the defective drive. No sure if it actually moved the head back to sitting position. But it did work that time.
It takes 5 minutes to fix but the knowledge is gained after a few years of fixing PCs.
Stumbled across this video accidentally. Had a Samsung 500g drive beeping. Opened, moved heads to home position and fixed. So simple. I was about to throw it away. Many thanks
So it worked!! Good
how do i open the case bc i dont have the suitable screwdriver
Does your hdd last long?
@@diyconstruction1147 with the sort of repair shown in this video, I'd never consider that drive to last any longer than required to get the data off of it. (Maybe not even that, that's why he gave all the warnings.) Buy a fresh new drive to put your data onto and never open it up.
@@andrewjokbalan6267 I can’t see clearly in the video what screw heads he’s got but they look like they could be torx heads on the screws. So you just need to go and get one of those little screwdriver sets with multiple removable bits that go in the end of the driver and make sure that it has torx bits of different sizes in it If that is the type of bit that you need for yours (Torx bits have a star cross-section)
Thanks for the video! I have several “crashed” hard drives in a drawer in my desk. All of them have been pronounced DOA at some point in the past. Now looking forward to seeing if the dead can be revived. I also want to compliment the quality of your microphone, which brought very subtle sounds to life, like screw extraction, and hard drive case cracking. Awesome!
So far the only video that explains very well.. and in "English" big plus from me. Thank you
One of my laptop harddrives was doing the same thing I never threw it away it's been just sitting there for almost a year I saw this video and tried it and works now I had pics of my father-in-law who past away on it moved them to another harddrive. your awesome thanks for the video👍
Is their a special screwdriver or is it just the normal star screwdriver? That we use to open the hard drive.
Glad to hear you recovered your data back.
ㅂㆍㄷㄱ든ㄷㅅㄷㆍㄱㅈㄴㄷㅈㄴㅈㅅ늗ㄴ 2ㄴ듣ㄴㄷㄱㅌㄱ
@@NatBeez5430 Its is a special screwdriver that can be purchased at any hardware shop. Star (Philips head won't fit)
@@NatBeez5430 Depends on the make , they use different ones on different manufactures
Pleased to hear it worked for you and you have those photos back , well done
I'm glad to see that you are not afraid to do this. I know many many people who are willing to spend $1,000 to recover data instead of regularly backing it up and restoring from a good image. I have done this for a few people more than a few people and charge them a hefty fee because I first asked them where is your backup and they point to the dead Drive says it's not backed up all my data is right there.
Ran across this today. I have a 500 gig external HD that looks identical to this one except for the connector. My HD froze several years ago and I have some good stuff on it that I can't get off. I tried this and opened the cases and sure enough, the arm was stuck as in the video. I freed the arm, put the cases back together and it worked. It took 3 attempts for my laptop to repair the HD functioning and now it functions very well. Only problem was finding the 7th hidden screw under the label in order to open the case top. Thanks for the remedy you provided.
There are no words! Exactly what I was looking for and makes sense in my particular scenario where I had installed a new battery and in the process of calibrating battery cycle.
You are the man! Lenovo ideapad. 4.5 years old. Found the head in the same location as yours when you opened it. I ruined some screws getting it open and didn’t have a clean room but I think this will at a minimum get my data saved off this drive. Thank you for putting this up!!!
I never would have guessed there is a cover screw under the label. Nice video.
yes...there are hiddn retaining screws under the hdd label
its the warranty indicator if its opened before i think
It's interesting still, but once ya 1st SSD has been booted would ya consider apart from Caddie one, use to perform??????
That's common, as a warranty safety. If the label is damaged, you opened it, thus voided the warranty.
This helped me fix my hard drive that has been lying around for five years. Thanks a lot man!
unless you open them in a dust proof booth its likely to wear out now. So its recommended to just get everything off that you want , onto a new drive.
Thank you SOOOOOO MUCH!!!!! It helped me sooo much and not only saved me money but also let me keep my info which the manufacturer had told me had to be formatted. My computer was not even recognizing the disk but now it works again THANKSS!!!
I am by no means some kind of PC expert but i have worked in field service for 32 years and I would do a repair like this in a heartbeat, I would then copy the image and replace the drive. Over the years not only have I but many of my fellow techs have done some crazy things to get a drive working again,. You do what you have to do. Thanks for your video
I would use this fix only to retrieve data, then discard the drive.
I've had drives in the freezer, tried to setup a clean area to work on them etc, this video shows roughly what you can get away with if you just want to pull the data. Saves spending the $$ that the experts want ;-)
I have asked people at computer store and they say: YOU HAVE to have a clean room... OR : if you do this the drive is is trash and it won't work, OR the drive will NOT last a day because it is now contaminated. What do you think, Are the full of carp and how long have you had a hard dive last after doing this?? Thank you if you reply.
Zero Quanta I would do what ever it took to get the drive working, copy the data and replace the drive ASAP.
My father and I did a drive that lasted 5 years until it was thrown out... On the flip side there is a decent possibility that opening the disk will kill it on the spot, if you don't have the $$ to pay a data recovery specialist you don't have much to lose ;-)
The head is supposed to park off to the side of the platter. After some time the head can get stuck in one position because of wear on the bearing shaft from the many millions of movements of the head arm. The bearing shaft starts to have some uneven surface (in microns of tolerance). It is like the bearing surfaces hit a sort of a burr and got stuck. By moving the head assembly the burr may be cleared, but will eventually come back because of the wear. After freeing up the head, it may actually operate for a fair amount of time before it gets suck again. Best to get the data off the drive and then bin it.
The position of the head is sensed. The head position is sensed because it knows (reads) the track number it is sitting on as soon as the power is applied. If in the event the head is out of position while the drive is powered off, the program in the firmware will know the position of the head and is supposed to zero it back to its start point when the drive is re-started. The start point is first to park, and then immediately go to to track "0" to start reading at sector "0".
My take, is to make sure you have an image of the drive on a USB or another internal drive unit. In the case of failure you simply swap out the drive and re-image back to the new drive.
These small laptop drives are usually fairly dependable, but do have a higher frequency of failure than the full height full size drives. They are also mechanically more fragile. If you are replacing a boot drive it is best to replace it with an SSD. The SSD will outlast any mechanical drive and are is a lot less fragile.
Thank you so much for this video. I have been doing computer repair and tech support for over 10 years now and I NEVER knew we could open these hard drives. Amazing! You truly learn something new everyday!
Me too never knew they open hard drives
Only for a short time, if your lucky enough time to make an image. The drive is sealed and letting atmosphere in creates friction when the platters spin and the heat builds up.
You can't be serious
How did you not know as a computer tech that you couldn't open hard drives?
@@thadtheman3751 nope, they are not. well, there are drives which are sealed, some special helium drives, but most of the normal hdds are not sealed and even have a hole to pressurize. you should open them in clean room conditions, because of all the dust and specs flying around. the read heads fly so low over the platters (they fly, because the disc creates a cushion of air throught he spin), that even a small dust particle can crash and damage the head.
That did the trick! I dropped my little hard drive and wasn't recognized by my computer anymore but you are an IT God. Thank you so much!
Tell us after 2 months if it's still running properly. The HDD was filled with the inert superclean gas with practically 0 dust particles. After opening, you contamined it. So make sure it will get rusty soon.
Should use IT expert rater than IT God
Jaromír Anděl most consumer grade drives aren't gas filled but have small breather holes to allow filtered air to circulate through them. Opening it outside of a clean room isn't a good idea, but it won't brick the drive right away.
My Dell 380 desk top failed to reboot after a power failure last night. All day with tech support trying different things. There answer was bad hard drive. Technically correct however this procedure fixed my problem.. You are awesome !!!! Thanks !!
Did you buy a battery back-up yet ?
Really
Seen plenty of disassembled hard drives, but never seen anyone hand move the armature over by hand. Nice!!
Wow! My laptop drive failed...expert says no repairs, no recovery...but now I know how to fix it. Cool trick! Thanks.
Use to work in this industry. Sound like what they would call a "stiction" problem where the heads adheres to the disks. Basically lack of lubricant..supper thin. The disks are dipped and allowed to dry vertically. Also good to mention to turn it the right way, or the heads will be ripped off or bent. You can hear the sticking as the disk is turned. Lastly, some designs have the heads parked at the inside diameter. Good video!
Useful stuff, cheers mate.
Thanks - promising, along with the first rule of computing: always backup your important data files.
A life saver. Thank you very much for this great tutorial.
You should have showed up the monitor screen to see the hdd responding to processing programmed information to see if there's some errors or not until it gets to the Windows Operating System. One time, back in late 1990s I opened up one hdd that was not responding but it's spinning quietly. The arm head pin was stuck up in the center of the hard disk. I just move like the way you did and put it back together. There you go, it works. I wonder why most hard drives happen that getting stuck up in the center. This like DIY is the best way to experience which saves you money and precious memories then get another new HDD to duplicate/clone in case happens again. Good video, thanks for sharing.
When I saw you removing the screws I was sure this was a video on how to destroy your hard drive in five minutes, I always believed the moment you expose the platter to air and dust that it will never work again. You proved me wrong
You should open harddrives in dustfree areas (airfiltered room/hood). Dust inside the case is very bad for the lifespan of a HDD.
However if you just want to rescue the data and dispose the HDD afterwards(or use it for nonimportant datastorage until it kicks the bucket), doing this in a normal room with a bit of care is fine unless you are are a very unlucky fellow and a grain of dust finds itself between plate and head right away.
Don't attempt this repair if you have a pet nearby which is cleaning its fur ;)
Yea what I was always told or read 👀👀
Thanks bro when i saw this vid and open my hdd it looks kind a that thing too keep up the good work m8
i am not even sure if this will work but i like how straight up you get into the solution.
I don't know who you are, but I thank God that you exist! By using your method, I have fixed my old laptop HDD! And recovered all my data! Thanks again!
Thank you for the fix. Had a client with a dead laptop and important files. This fix did the trick. Happy client.
Ur the best
It worked a million times
I jx recovered 2 hard drives in 10minutes
So happy I ran into this in 2020 my jailbroken PS3 wudnt read the hard drive and ive been searching 4 ways to fix it and this worked out thanx alot
I've had Hard drives die that were 3 months old. This started when they went to 500gb. I just replace them with an SSD and then a portable back up. Works great.
I am surprised those tiny specs of dust right after you opened it didn't cause an issue. Maybe there is some small filter inside the drive to catch those? Would it have been better to give it a quick blast of spray air before closing it back up? (Not sure if that would do more damage or help.)
You can get a cheap PM2.5 counter and some even show number of particles per liter of air. (Basically a sub-PM2.5 amount.) With such an air quality meter, you should be able to get "pretty close to clean room". Don't forget that moving clothing, moving hair, etc can cause more dust particles to shed. Also don't forget to control humidity.
the drive has external dust emitters blows any loose dust away .
That works sometimes. An opened HD is promised to die soon. So the best is to recover the data immediately.
Never rely at 100% on a lone HD. In fact, the best is to do is to have two external disks with all your data backup. With the price of HDs nowadays it is a fairly cheap and rather fast solution. It's best to do that backup with a linux OS as it is far more robust than Windows for reading and writing data, and it is not bothered by Windows viruses.
Wow is the only word I will use. Thanks for sharing. Saved me years of headache. Respect
OMG!!!!!!
Thank you so much
move my hdd from transcend to ugreen hard disk case and face this problem too
omg follow your tutorial i fixed it!!!
thanks again and again ~!!!!!!
If this permits the hdd to be accessed for long enough to copy it's data to another hdd then that is all that matters. He is not saying this is a long term solution, but a possible technique to permit you to read the disk and save your precious memories. 👍🏻
I think the confusion is the title of the video. This is of course not a fix, but a procedure to allow the data to be rescued.
@@booboo699254 It "fixes" my problem, if all I want is just to have access to the data so I can move it or copy it to another disc
and what everyone else is saying is congrats numb nuts if there ever was a chance of recovering that data youve just halved that and potentially fucked it up so that even a proffesional might not be able to get it back
That what normal should be... Once harddrive gone bag... it don't worth the time using fail harddrive.
Online Identity: Excellent advice. If the drive has an operating system and programs, try cloning the problem drive to another HD.
I now keep clones of the HDs in my desktop and two laptops BEFORE I have problems. If I have a drive failure, I just swap out the problem drive and insert the clone. That way I am back in business in 15 minutes or less. Then, when I have the time, I run the recovery software on the problem drive.
To make this even quicker, I partition all my HDs into several logical drives and keep data off Drive C, usually drives E and F. That way, even if drive C has problems, I can still access the data on drives E (work) and F (personal). Of course to access the data I must place the problem HD in an external case and access it by USB cable.
Leaving dust particles on the platter can potentially cause more damage. Also when you slide the Head Stack Assembly across the platters, you can potentially develop surface damage. If you are going to follow the advice in this video, here's a few tips. Wear latex or similar gloves, also try not to open the drive in a dusty area. If you have air in a can, press the trigger lightly over the platter to remove dust. Here's what can happen if you don't, you can touch the platters and oils from your skin will transfer onto the platter surface (not easy to clean, platters should not be cleaned, wiped or come into contact with anything foreign). Leaving dust particles can get trapped between the platter surface and reading head and create more damage that will eventually render the drive unrecoverable. Pressing the air duster trigger to full blast can expel "mist" onto the platter leaving residue on the surface. Also this doesn't always work, different hard drive models respond differently. If you do manage to access the data after a procedure like this, COPY, IMAGE, or CLONE the data immediately, Don't assume the drive will continue to work. Trying to "fix" stuff yourself can make a difference between a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. You can go to the hospital or to the doctor that works from his basement.
That's Very True!!!!
Let me guess, you work for a data recovery company? He said that what he does is to copy the data off the disk and not using it.
Thanks for giving you're time for the advice and letting us know what not to do.
🙏🙏🙏
For data recovery is a good idea
MY DEAR SINCE THE VIDEO IS FOR A HD THAT DOESN'T HAVE A LOT OF INFORMATION AND JUST FOR HELP AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY I WOULD DO IN LABORATORY YOU STUPID!!
thank you ,I just did this & got back my data ..nearly 10 year photos & videos
This is truuly amazing. ive been having a headache because of my harddrive and almost ordered a new one. So so thankful for this.
you should still order a new one and move the data to there....this is just a fix to save your data, not using the harddrive.
Speechless....Thank you !
Thanks to Mr Levit's video, and a $5 screwdriver set from Walmart, our 120gB, with all our vacation photos is saved. Thank you, Mr. Levit
Always keep multiple backups of data that's difficult/impossible to replace
I keep the data from photos i have taken on the original SD cards, two external hard disk drives and at least one computer.
rianariani
Hard disc
Copy everything from it to a safe place and then forget that hdd. If you open it and dust gets inside (which inevitably happens if you don't do it in a specialized dust-free clean-room) the dust from the air will stuck between the head and the plates, will scratch the plates and the hdd will not work anymore and data will be lost. Good for a fast data recovery, but the opened hard drives even fixed by professionals with specialized equipments and lab are not guaranteed to work for long time.
Hello sir. Thank you very much for sharing this video with us. I was having the same problem for 2 months. But now I fixed it thanks to you. really thank you so much 🙏🙋🏼♂️
The way I fix my hard drive is with a hammer
ha-ha! 😆😆
Funny enough I also fixed my hard drive with a hammer but my laptop went to heaven first
😂
Hhhhhhhh
How
Now I feel I shouldn't have thrown out my hard drive a few years ago. I kept my broken hard drive for a decade, hoping someday I would be able to recover its data. Eventually, I gave up hope and let it go. Wish I hadn't.
There were no such videos on CZcams back then. My HDD had this same problem.
It's so sad. I am never gonna get my data back now...I had made peace with it. But nowadays I feel I made a big mistake. It even feels worse than losing the data itself. Life sucks.
Most reasons for unparked heads is sudden loss of power.....I.e. Battery dies before shutdown...then you leave it without recharging battery and rebooting within a day or two.....
When my hard drives are powered off suddenly, they make a loud click and the head moves off the disk. It parks its self at the side.
Xenon777
Most of the time, that is what happens. However, the inevitable can and sometimes do occur when the read/write heads does a hard touchdown often referred to as a crash when it lands on an occupied area or does not glide to a safe zone.
In my area we get power loss all the time, my couple of hdds are going off power like 400 times a year and yet this never happened to me. btw I need an ups cuz I bought ssd . Got power loss on it couple times and no errors for now. Bit late for a comment but I wanted to share my experience. Maybe this is just samsung hdds firmware fault. (I never had samsung hdd)
THANK YOU , VERY HELPFULL IVE THROWN MANY DRIVES AWAY BEFORE SEEING THIS!!!
Thank you, you just saved me $500 in data recovery.
so many negative comments. my HDD worked. thanks a lot :)
Don't forget to replace it as soon as possible
When you do something like this and fix it in this manner the next thing you should do is clone that drive or backup whatever you have on it that you want.
Unless you're doing this in a clean room, you run the risk of getting dust or other foreign material in your HDD and that can really mess the heads up even more.
Good advice, man. Thanks for sharing
Your right about a clean room, however I have done this several times successfully without a clean room.
What you have is what they call "the click of death". The read/write head is stuck.
A person has to take the drive apart, rotate the data platter and move the heads back to the park location. From there you will need an external hard drive to recover the data.
When you plug the hard drive back in the computer with the cover either on or off you plug a USB hard drive in the computer. If things go right you will see the computer boot up as normal. From that point you start copying files from the defective hard drive to the USB drive or thumb drive you have plugged in.
Hope this helps.
@@dhansel4835 after that the hard disc won't be useful anymore.
@@beeman596 You got it. How big is the hard drive? Does it fit in a desktop computer or a laptop?
I purchased some 500gig refurbished WD Blue 3.5" drive from Technocycle here in Houston for $14 each.
technocycle.com/
The best thing to get now is solid state hard drives. They aren't that expensive and there is no moving parts.
@@dhansel4835 you said it. Today, The best buy is a ssd. Hhd are only cheaper. But if the money isn't a problem go for a ssd
I will be using your style today on my Qsee system hard drive. I hope I'm as good as you were. Thanks for making this clip.
By the time I had finished watching this video I had fixed it. Thanks a lot
Thanks for your video and sharing! Is very helpful! 👍👍👍👍👍
Thanks for this video. I have three computers that simply stopped over the last few years. I'm going to give this a try. I'll get back if it works on even one.
?
Nope. Nothing works in two years. She never returned. She lost her data and hdd. We're sorry to know that.
@@muhammadwasim8787🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for the great tip! Where did you get the adapter?
my hard drive has a similar problem. Am happy to view this video
Wow ! Thanks so much : I've just rescued one HD using your fixing and it worked !!!
I have close on 20 failed hard drives since I commenced with PCs in the X86days. Obviously, they are not laptop drives like this but this is worth a try on all of them. Many thanks👍
Very Helpful, 5 mins you won't want back! Please remember CLEAN ROOM !!!!!
Excellent video and tutorial, I hope everyone knows that you should do this to get your data off your drive onto a new drive and no longer use the drive, and you should also run a DOD 7 pass secure wipe on the failed drive before donating it to a e-recycler.
Precision data it's recommended to to a professional saying that there is a price to pay... I my self use this solution because I have everything backup so there is no great loss.. And this solution like you say it's 5 minutos...... Thank you for your videos..
Brilliant. I wish i had kept my crashed drives !
Once a drive has crashed and 'repaired' it also has become unreliable! :-)
It would not have worked anyway
@@shanejohn1449 Why not ???
Same thing happened to my Seagate 2TB 2.5, it beeped with no spin. Luckily it was still under warranty so I sent it in and got a new one back, pain in the A about the data but I have an external I back up to so all of it was not lost. EDIT: Great video BTW Thanks...
Thank you very much for the easiest way you have shown on the video.
I just revived a few hard drives that have been sitting idle in the house though its not my trade.
Holly shit that is genius...finally a youtuber who knows what he's doing
288 / 5000
Wyniki tłumaczenia
I don't think he knows what he's doing. He said nothing about the fact that the hard disk should be opened in a laminar chamber. Additionally, dirt from the plate should be removed. If you want to play with the disc like a toy, this is a good method, but it definitely doesn't fix anything as the author suggests in the title.
If you manage to get it working, copy everything you want off of the drive whilst it is still working (temporarily). If it is a boot drive, clone it, so you also get the boot info.
dude u just save all of my precious data , thank u very very much
Love this guy , straight to the point no nothing else 😊😊😊
Thanks Great to know and Learn -- Also First 65 or Older
I saw ur video first time , and I'm stunned, this is Amazing,
This is Greta idea for save the hard drive😘😘😘😘😘
not ecessarily "save" a hard drive, it is more like a LAST CHANCE effort, only to save whhat you can as fast as you can... that´s it. I have been repairing/ building computers for over 20 years and I would never EVER give an opened drive back to a customer... never
great idea to destroy the drive,you mean
@@gen-x_dude 1:41
The same exact thing happened to me on the exact same drive I own. I fixed it in 10 minutes. Works great. The Head Stack assembly would not allow the platter to turn on startup. The question is why does the Head Stack get stuck out on the platter?
Thumbs up. i solve my harddisk problem with this way. Everything is the same except model (Seagate.). Windows 7 on this HDD working. Now I am trying disk repair because my opening may cause on HDD.
I appreciate that you post this with good intentions, but you missed some things in your explanation, such as inspecting the heads to ensure that they aren't damaged or contaminated with debris. You should also inspect the surface (at least the top that you can see) to verify that there are no head slaps or scratches from the heads landing down. The first step after closing the drive is to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive, avoiding the heads from thrashing and compounding any surface damage.
As a data recovery professional, we get these drive almost daily. If unopened by user, 95% of the time, we recover the data without a head change for $350CAD. But, of the drives that are previously opened, we usually need to change heads on about 80% of the cases, making for a more expensive recovery and a less than perfect recovery result.
$350 C to image and clone data off a $20 outdated, and obsolete piece of hardware? Do you at lest provide your customers with lube and kiss them on the neck before you stick it in them or ya'll just raw dawgin' these suckers?
Thanks this worked for me recently - enough so I could perform a full backup of the disks contents.!!!!
I have a double SATA dock for 3.5" and 2.5" HDD's. Since I'm only running on a docked laptop these days, it's great to access the HDD's I used to have in the desktop.
I'd like an eSATA cable for my blu-ray drive tho.
Nice! If you need any new hard drives, hit us up!
Excellent tutorial, I am very impress ..
I spent 3 minutes trying to remove that piece of dirt off of my screen LOL
The sound of the screws coming out on this video is extremely satisfying lol
you're right..lol
LOL LOL!!!
lol! i thought the same!
Same asf yoo😭🤣🤣🗣
Exactly LOL
Thanks for uploading, very useful and practical tip👍 these drives need to be phased-out, the sooner the better
Thanks! I retrieved my data from a HITACHI drive! Thanks!
Older drives used to have a problem they called stiction. The head would land on the platter while the drive was warm, then stick to it when the drive cooled. I was visiting our IT department one day when they had a drive exhibiting the problem. The tech shocked the hell out of me when he took the drive in his hand and slammed it down flat, quite hard, on his work bench. He plugged it in and it worked perfectly. Sometime later I had a similar problem with a piece of equipment and tried the trick myself. It worked! I wouldn’t recommend putting the drive back in service again after doing that but the one I smashed worked for years after.
You don't want to bang to hard on a laptop HDD because the disc plates are plated glass
I remember some coworkers would pop open a dead hard drive just to grab the magnets. They stuck them to their cubicle frames like trophies.
Thank you for the video. Just made a 1996 hard disk come back to life. Let's play some Doom on a tft screen.
Very good arrangement idea, at least to pass the information to another hard drive, thanks
Put mine in a plastic bag then bubble wrap and placed it in the freezer for about half an hour, got the heads released so I could extract the data, surprisingly it still works 5 years later!
Exposing the platter and other internal hard drive components to open air will result in eventual (if not immediate) hard drive failure. This technique should only be done as a last resort and if successful any readable data should be extracted from the drive immediately afterwards. If the data is valuable, the drive should be handed over to a professional so that any attempted hardware repair of the hard drive in a clean room.
100% agree as this should have been done in special clean room hint reason why data recovery so expensive and should always back up your important files so don't ever have worry about this or even cloud now.
Nope,.not agree,..
If it's a newer Helium drive, opening it would kill it immediately, regardless if you're extremely careful and have a dust-free environment/etc.
Finally something useful. I kept telling people i Just want to recover the data onto a new drive and they're telling me about software and all this crap and that it's "Too risky" to take it apart and they refused to help. I have 2 laptop drives that I know the heads are stuck. Thing is, now I have to find a screw driver for them lol
Do it in plastic bag seems the most available convenient way to open and move platter in place while keeping it clean
Glad I watched this at work, and not while I was in front of my crashed hard drive. . . three minutes in you say "Is a clean room needed, yes." I've been wondering that since the first screw turned. :-/
I wish I had paid more attention when trying to get the cover off the drive. He knew there was a screw hidden under the label. You have one area normally that is raised, and another area indented on the cover. The screw is under the label in that inward dimple. But, unknown to you...is there is another silver round piece of thick foil that is stuck over the screw head in the indention under the white label with black writing . In my haste...I nicked the surface of the platter trying to twist off the cover. Sad lesson learned. Hope you paid attention.
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Wow! Thank you man. You saved my day!
Well this method does work but you have to be really careful that no dust particles get in the drive. After this operation you should not trust the drive i.e you should not store any important data on the drive from there on because sometimes the read head could scratch the platters and you will not be able to ever recover data out of it.
Ya a last resort toss it after that.
um he clearly says at end of vid "now its ready to recover data" fucking cock slap