Harddrive Stuck Spindle (Data Recovery)

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Peder

Hobbit
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Hello :)

I am in a interesting situation, I have an external Hard disk drive that seems to have a stuck spindle from what i can hear and compare with this website, does anyone know of a place in Pretoria that can do data recovery on a harddrive for relatively cheap and quickly?

Regards
Peder
 
Are you referring to a repeating 'beeping' sound that repeats about once a second, and the drive does not spin up?

If the drive is 2.5" then the problem is most likely stiction, where the heads stick to the platter as they did not return to the ramp before the drive spun down.

Stiction on 3.5" is very, very rare. Some drives are very prone to seized spindles, Seagate 7200.11 the most common. Motor spindles will often seize if the drive is dropped. Was it dropped?

Give a bit more info leading up to the failure, and the details of your drive.
 
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South_Bit said:
Are you referring to a repeating 'beeping' sound that repeats about once a second, and the drive does not spin up?

If the drive is 2.5" then the problem is most likely stiction, where the heads stick to the platter as they did not return to the ramp before the drive spun down.

Stiction on 3.5" is very, very rare. Some drives are very prone to seized spindles, Seagate 7200.11 the most common. Motor spindles will often seize if the drive is dropped. Was it dropped?

Give a bit more info leading up to the failure, and the details of your drive.
Click to expand...
The Drive was never droppped, not to my knowledge, it was transported yes.

http://datacent.com/getsound.php?file=wd_laptop_stuck_siren.mp3 this is the exact sound it makes.

Which leads me to believe it has a seized spindle.

Have you any idea what it could cost to retrieve the data?

I am also based in Pretoria not capetown and do need the data before friday preferably.
 
Could be stiction as EARS park heads on a ramp, and this series is not known to have easily jammed motor spindles. Stiction should be cheaper to recover from than a seized spindle.

Tecleo could probably do it right away, but be prepared for a 'priority' fee of quite a lot of Rands.
 
South_Bit said:
Could be stiction as EARS park heads on a ramp, and this series is not known to have easily jammed motor spindles. Stiction should be cheaper to recover from than a seized spindle.

Tecleo could probably do it right away, but be prepared for a 'priority' fee of quite a lot of Rands.
Click to expand...

What does Stiction mean?

How much is a priority fee?

They quoted me R4500 for a economy (5-7working days) and R6000 for speedy (3-5 working days) that was on stuck spindle, would stiction be cheaper and what is the chance of getting all the data back?

Regards
Peder
 
South_Bit:

Do you guys get a lot of WD20EARS drives? I bought 3 of them, 1 acted up, another reported a couple of bad sectors.

However I've bought 18x Seagate ST2000DL003 thus far and had 2 failures total in 2 years (and these drives run 24/7 in servers and never go into low power modes, eg. full power, full acoustic, etc.)

I guess it is possible that it is bad luck (I owned 5xWD20EARS about 3 years back that I sold and they had 0 problems). But I'm starting to wonder about these WD drives.

EDIT: Sorry if this is a hi-jack Peder, just curious. If it bothers you I can remove my post...
 
Peder said:
What does Stiction mean?

How much is a priority fee?

They quoted me R4500 for a economy (5-7working days) and R6000 for speedy (3-5 working days) that was on stuck spindle, would stiction be cheaper and what is the chance of getting all the data back?

Regards
Peder
Click to expand...

I think their pricing structure is different to ours, they charge based on the size of the drive if I remember correctly, whereas we charge based on the type of failure, ie amount of work involved.

Stiction is where the heads get stuck on the platters, as explained in my first post. R4,500 is a good price for a 2TB for a mechanical failure.

Chances of recovery from stiction should be very good if handled correctly. I don't know about their pricing wrt priority, you'll need to contact them again.
 
Gnome said:
South_Bit:

Do you guys get a lot of WD20EARS drives? I bought 3 of them, 1 acted up, another reported a couple of bad sectors.

However I've bought 18x Seagate ST2000DL003 thus far and had 2 failures total in 2 years (and these drives run 24/7 in servers and never go into low power modes, eg. full power, full acoustic, etc.)

I guess it is possible that it is bad luck (I owned 5xWD20EARS about 3 years back that I sold and they had 0 problems). But I'm starting to wonder about these WD drives.

EDIT: Sorry if this is a hi-jack Peder, just curious. If it bothers you I can remove my post...
Click to expand...

As you said - boils down to luck for the most part. Sometimes you may get a batch which is slightly worse than another, which may have been your case. But to answer your question, I've not found WD20EARS any less reliable/prone to failure than any other 2TBs.
 
I am just waiting on a colleague of mine to see if she can't get better prices but at the moment it seems Tec Leo are going to be the best, maybe not the cheapest but the most reliable...
 
robdutchmonkey said:
I hope it's really important data that you want recovered for the price quoted :) why no backups?
Click to expand...

the reason there isn't a backup is because, its a TV series i make, and every episode is an average of 15GB so its kinda difficult to do backups...

/i have decided i need to get a more robust backup solution, which won't cost as much as this is going to cost me...
 
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