Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

[joshnz]

I have a 2.5" laptop drive here my friend was using it as a external drive he left it plugged in one night by accident and when he went to power it up next time it would not work.

I have tested the controller board on a bad drive and the disk spins up.

I tested the ohms of the motor only 1 ohm less than the other motor.

I applied 3vac to the bad drive motor and the platters shook back and forth as expected.

On the drive with spindle motor issue no shaking at all felt through drive.

so with ac applied spun whole drive and got the platters to shake but by the time i put controller board back on it had seized again.

I have not opened up this drive due to dust and other contaminants that may enter the drive.

My goal is to get it to spin up long enough to get data off it.

My next attempt will be to heat drive to 50 deg C.

[spleenharvester]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

I don't know much about HDDs, but if you got it spinning using AC, is it worth just insulating the motor contacts from the PCB and trying it that way? Or does the HDD need some kind of info that the motor is spinning?

[stj]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

the motor is a multipole motor stepped by the pcb.

[kc8adu]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

and must run at a precise rpm and phase to work at all.
i have done platter swaps but its very fussy and expensive.
if you put the drive to your ear do you hear it try to spin?
you might be able to give it a bit of help at the time you hear it try.
be ready to copy off whatever is important as it may be your last chance.

[joshnz]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

I don't know much about HDDs, but if you got it spinning using AC, is it worth just insulating the motor contacts from the PCB and trying it that way? Or does the HDD need some kind of info that the motor is spinning?

Can't get it to spin with single phase.
My idea was to get itself to shake it loose.

Drive does attempt to spin up but can't get the spindle to turn so gives up and then retries can't hear any rotation at all. only can hear the noise from motor drive.
as i said pcb can spin up my failed head drive.

I have a drive here with failed heads / preamp but would mean platter swap and head swap.

[Agent24]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

Stiction problem?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

[joshnz]

Re: Laptop hard drive spindle motor?

Got the drive to spin up it is very unhappy I think the disk platter/s when it spun up were hitting the head ramp.
Made a ticking
Scrape noise that increase in speed as the drive spun up, once it got up to speed it went to find it's boot track And failed to do that, it only made two attempts.