What Happened to my IBM DeskStar 20.5GB HDD, and How Can I Fix it?

[mindcraftertcf]

I have a PowerMac G4 Cube from the year 2000 that I acquired in 2015. It ran reliably over the last couple years, but it came to a very quick death this week. I had almost no time to react. I booted up the cube one day, and noticed the hard drive do the click of death about 4 times during start up, and then everything was normal. I was worried, but it only happened once so I considered it a fluke. I also didn't know it had the "DeathStar" drive by IBM in it, if I had known I would have replaced it a long time ago. Yesterday, I went to start it and the click of death, followed by a beep, was the only thing it could manage. Upon inspection, the platters look ok and read heads are working fine, and the PCB looks ok. What happened!? It died so quickly for no reason! Can I fix this by reflowing the solder on the PCB? I kinda want my data, but I really don't feel like doing a platter or PCB transplant and then having to transfer the RAM/BIOS chips.

 

[Dunlop0078]

It's likely the patters or read head which are bad, if the electronics failed it wouldn't have clicked it would've just stopped working. If the drive is 15 years old I would say it had a good long life you cant except much more than that from an old hard drive. Why you would't back up data you needed on a 15 year old drive is beyond me.

Opening up the drive may have finished it off if it wasn't dead already. They assemble those things in a clean room for a reason, a fingerprint on the platter or even a small amount of dust could destroy it when it's powered back up.

 

[RealBeast]

Agreed, no way to fix it and the only way to get the data is very expensive requiring a clean room data recovery.

But just wow, you got your money's worth out of that drive.

 

[mindcraftertcf]

It's likely the patters or read head which are bad, if the electronics failed it wouldn't have clicked it would've just stopped working. If the drive is 15 years old I would say it had a good long life you cant except much more than that from an old hard drive. Why you would't back up data you needed on a 15 year old drive is beyond me.

Opening up the drive may have finished it off if it wasn't dead already. They assemble those things in a clean room for a reason, a fingerprint on the platter or even a small amount of dust could destroy it when it's powered back up.

You're right, It lived 18 years (It was made sometime in 2000) and thats all I can expect. I didn't have any crucial data there honestly, so I wasn't worried about opening it up or not backing it up. Its just weird that it died so fast. I want to fix it if possible but I know I'll probably need to buy a new one. Problem is, they don't really make any new IDE drives anymore so I'll be buying a used drive thats half dead already. I also think I'll try "reflowing solder" because I fixed its PSU once by blowing a hair drier at it. Maybe it will help, its worth a shot.

 

[mindcraftertcf]

Agreed, no way to fix it and the only way to get the data is very expensive requiring a clean room data recovery.

But just wow, you got your money's worth out of that drive.

It did live for 18 years... RIP DeathStar.

 

[topheron]

Just one thing to add, if you ever get the 'click click click' thing and get one more boot out of a hard drive, use THAT boot to immediately copy anything you can from the hard drive.

Start with the most important stuff first.

When hard drives fail they usually die instantly, without any warning. If you are lucky enough to get a warning, treat it seriously, and back up RIGHT NOW.

Hard drive data recovery is not always possible, and is always expensive. You are very very unlikely to be able to get your data recovered off the hard drive, even if you pay professionals a shocking amount of money.

Also, if you looked at the platters...you are done. Opening a hard drive's sealed disk platter to open air... well, it doesn't take a visible particle to destroy data permanently. A smoke particle is more than big enough to scratch a trench in your platter's surface.

Do like I do every time this happens. Treat it as a reminder that I REALLY DO need to back up everything in multiple places. Hard drives are not reliable. Thumb drives are not reliable. SSDs are not reliable. Cloud storage is not reliable.

Backing up multiple places including at least one backup off-location is the best we can do.

 

[reedo_43]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from mindcraftertcf : "What happened to my IBM DeskStar (DeathStar) 20.5GB, and How Can I Fix It?"

I have a PowerMac G4 cube from 2000, and I acquired it in 2015. It has ran reliably for the past few years. Yesterday it decided to die a rapid death. It showed only 1 sign of failure prior to this. It did the click of death 4 times sequentially during boot up once last week, but ran fine after. Since it happened only once, and I didn't know the cube was running the DeathStar Drive, I considered it a fluke and decided to wait until I heard it once more to react. I turned it on yesterday, and heard a beep, and then the click of death several times. At further inspection, the Drive platters were undamaged, the read heads looked perfectly fine, and the PCB is ok too. I took the PCB off and when I put it back on the heads don't move anymore. The heads just didn't appear to be reading data before, but after removing the PCB and putting it back it stopped responding at all. What caused this drive to die so quickly, and what can I do?! I'm considering reflowing the solder on the PCB but I don't know if this is the problem and I don't want to pollute my oven (I've heard people say it can cause the oven to become dangerous from gases released and the lead of the solder.)

well if you opened the drive you probably killed it unless you were in a clean room.

 

[mindcraftertcf]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from mindcraftertcf : "What happened to my IBM DeskStar (DeathStar) 20.5GB, and How Can I Fix It?"

I have a PowerMac G4 cube from 2000, and I acquired it in 2015. It has ran reliably for the past few years. Yesterday it decided to die a rapid death. It showed only 1 sign of failure prior to this. It did the click of death 4 times sequentially during boot up once last week, but ran fine after. Since it happened only once, and I didn't know the cube was running the DeathStar Drive, I considered it a fluke and decided to wait until I heard it once more to react. I turned it on yesterday, and heard a beep, and then the click of death several times. At further inspection, the Drive platters were undamaged, the read heads looked perfectly fine, and the PCB is ok too. I took the PCB off and when I put it back on the heads don't move anymore. The heads just didn't appear to be reading data before, but after removing the PCB and putting it back it stopped responding at all. What caused this drive to die so quickly, and what can I do?! I'm considering reflowing the solder on the PCB but I don't know if this is the problem and I don't want to pollute my oven (I've heard people say it can cause the oven to become dangerous from gases released and the lead of the solder.)

well if you opened the drive you probably killed it unless you were in a clean room.

Yeah I know you're not supposed to open the drive but it was shot for sure anyway.

 

[mindcraftertcf]

Just one thing to add, if you ever get the 'click click click' thing and get one more boot out of a hard drive, use THAT boot to immediately copy anything you can from the hard drive.

Start with the most important stuff first.

When hard drives fail they usually die instantly, without any warning. If you are lucky enough to get a warning, treat it seriously, and back up RIGHT NOW.

Hard drive data recovery is not always possible, and is always expensive. You are very very unlikely to be able to get your data recovered off the hard drive, even if you pay professionals a shocking amount of money.

Also, if you looked at the platters...you are done. Opening a hard drive's sealed disk platter to open air... well, it doesn't take a visible particle to destroy data permanently. A smoke particle is more than big enough to scratch a trench in your platter's surface.

Do like I do every time this happens. Treat it as a reminder that I REALLY DO need to back up everything in multiple places. Hard drives are not reliable. Thumb drives are not reliable. SSDs are not reliable. Cloud storage is not reliable.

Backing up multiple places including at least one backup off-location is the best we can do.

You're right. Luckily this computer is more of a collectible, I don't have any crucial data on it so I'm not too worried. I am frustrated that I have to go buy another ancient drive to make this work again, and I know that whatever drive I buy will probably be at least 10 years old and prone to failure.