|
Class 100 clean room
Why is a Class 100 clean room necessary for hard drive repair & data recovery?
A Class 100 clean room is needed for the prevention and reduction of dust particles and contamination of the hard drive platters, but is this necessary?
Trust me it is!
Below is a demonstration of hard drive that has had the lid removed and the actuator (Magnet) replaced on a clean desk that was only exposed for less than 3 minutes.
  
  
As you can see the particles are clearly visible when a camera flash is used.
It is very important to maintain a sterile environment when working on the hard drive once the lid has been removed. Any particales can cause the read/write heads to fail or even cause irreversible damage to the platters of the drive.
This is the reason that a class 100 clean room or clean bench is necessary to work on hard disk drives.
Below is a picture of IDRDATA’S clean bench:
HARD DISK DRIVES
Clicking Noisy Hard drive.
On the side of most hard drives is a opening covered by a small silver sticker. This silver sticker collects any contaminants caused by a fatal head crash.
Head crash is a term used to describe when the read\write heads make contact with the hard drive's platters causing scratches or scoring. Thus damaging the platters clean smooth surface. In most cases this will remove a portion of the metallic coating on the platter, leaving a see through area on the platter's surface and platter dust.
(THIS IS DEEMED UNRECOVERABLE)
  
Above is a demonstration of removing the side sticker on a clicking Maxtor HDD to see if the sticker is clean, as you can see this HDD is not in good shape. If the sticker is black or contains any type of silver dust then unfortunately your data will be lost and a recovery will not be possible. To confirm if the drive was damaged, I removed the lid to inspect just how bad the damage was. As you can see this HDD has had a severe head crash and the platters have been damaged.
NOTE: If you remove the sticker and it appears to be clean, there is still a possibility of a fine scratch that has not caused any platter dust for the sticker to pick up, but most importantly if it is clean, DO NOT REMOVE the top of the drive. It could create further problems for the drive.
Beeping or Humming Hard Drive.
If you put power the HDD and you here a beeping sound, this would indicate that the spindle motor is jammed.
DO NOT, under any circumstances should you undo the screws or remove the platters of the HDD.
shown below is picture of the counterwieghts in the spindle of the hard disk drive:
(note the plugs in the spindle motor)
This is much like getting your tires balanced. The tiny plug is a counter weight to enable clean rotation of the HDD Platters, this alignment needs to stay intact for any hope of HDD repairs.
Computer will not turn when I plug in the HDD
This will most likely be a power failure of the PCB and the PCB is drawing more power than what the whole computer needs to boot, chance of repair is high but parts, sometimes can be an issue.
The hard drive Smells.
Smell the HDD PCB, if the drive smells bad then it has had a power surge and you need to check for obvious physical damage to the PCB. (See example below).
Do it yourself hard drive repair & the risks:
Please: Evaluate this site before attempting any form of self data recovery or hard drive repair.
What is the problem?
- Does the hard drive spin?
- Does the armature kick out?
- Do the hard drives heads vibrate to initiate?
- Is there an odd smell to the drive?
- If it doesn't spin do you here a slight or faint ticking sound?
- Does the BIOS see the hard drive?
- Does the BIOS see the hard drive as the correct model?
- Are there funny characters showing on boot up?
- Does the operating system blue screen?
Important things you should be aware of before you do anything to a suspected failed hard drive:
Static discharge will kill a hard drive when handling... especially the internal components.
Dust and foreign particles can damage the read/write heads and possibly destroy your data... DO NOT OPEN!
In my experience, I see so many hard drives destroyed by helpful neighbors when the problem was not situated in the internal assembly of the hard drive assembly. Just because it clicks doesn't always represent an internal failure. So don’t let anyone accept a professional data recovery lab open the drive.
Swapping the electronics runs the risk of further damage, especially if the revision number of the PCB is different.
You will have a greater success of data recovery with less risk if the original electronics are repaired.
| 
