Hard Drive - strange behavior

[karolbaum]

Hi, All. I have a Toshiba 2.5" internal 320 GB HDD for my laptop. The disk has 2 plates, 4 heads. It suddenly stopped working. No damages with computer (no crashes, nothing). Just... stopped working. I took the disk off and connect as slave in another computer. It was not recognized. I heard a clicking noise.... I oppened the HDD and saw this: the plates are perfect; the plates are moving step by step (like moving by a step by step motor, right?). The heads are fixed completely out of the plates surface; I mean, whithout touching at all the plates surface. It seems that the heads are stucked, and trying to move over the plates, but cannot (this seems to be the cause of clicking noise). So, the context is something like this: 1) the plates move approx. 20 degrees, 2) the heads try to mount over the plates but could not do it (they are being retained in their parking place), 3) the clicking is heard, 4) the plates stopped. And the process repeats. Please, could anyone figure out what it is happening? I have never seen this behavior, neither found any YouTube tutorial explaining a similar issue. Thanks a lot in advance!!

 

[clarkjd]

Your hard drive is dead. and since youe opened it, your warranty is dead also. Time for a new hard drive, or possibly an SSD.

 

[karolbaum]

Thanks for your answer, clarkjd. Warranty expired long time ago. Could you please write a few lines, accordingly to your experience, regarding why the HDD is dead? Accordingly to my description, I can think on...: 1) May be, PCB board is damaged (because of disk behavior); 2) Do not think the motor is damaged, since it has a "coordinate" movement related to heads... 3) Also the heads may be damaged; 4) Or, simple (??) the heads are stucked... (??). Nevertheless, if the disk is lost, I would try to find a replacement (same PCB and so forth) and move the plates to that new disk. "What can you loose, when everything is lost?" US 100 payed for a new HDD...?

 

[clarkjd]

Thanks for your answer, clarkjd. Warranty expired long time ago. Could you please write a few lines, accordingly to your experience, regarding why the HDD is dead? Accordingly to my description, I can think on...: 1) May be, PCB board is damaged (because of disk behavior); 2) Do not think the motor is damaged, since it has a "coordinate" movement related to heads... 3) Also the heads may be damaged; 4) Or, simple (??) the heads are stucked... (??). Nevertheless, if the disk is lost, I would try to find a replacement (same PCB and so forth) and move the plates to that new disk. "What can you loose, when everything is lost?" US 100 payed for a new HDD...?

Well, diagnosing it long distance,sight unseen, it could be anything from the heads being out of alignment so they hit edge of the platters to being damaged during the head crash.. My guess is that there is some mechanical reason that the heads are not moving over and onto the platters.

 

[karolbaum]

Thanks, again, clarkjd! I retain this from your answer: "... some mechanical reason...". I think this may be "interesting", in the sense that -if true- the damage should not be neither in the PCB, nor in the platters. Now, my laptop has a new drive, and with "DVDs to backup to factory state", it is working pretty well. On the other hand, I have kept my damage HDD apart. And I would be start working on it raplacing the heads. Thanks a lot!!