Hard drive Cover

[canadaboy25]

Hello, I have a hard drive that has had the cover screws removed and now it won't spin up.

The hard drive is a Maxtor 5t060H6.

I have read that the screws need to be torqued correctly for it to work. Is this true?

Any sugestions would be appreciated.

[joshnz]

Re: Hard drive Cover

Also it will be contaminated it is junk.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: Hard drive Cover

There's a YouTube video where somebody loosens the screws of a hard disk but leaves the cover in place, and the drive just clicks. Then he retightens the screws, and the drive works fine again. With some drives, one of the cover screws secures one end of the drive shaft.

HDDguru.com has forums with several data recovery people.

[ratdude747]

Re: Hard drive Cover

Also it will be contaminated it is junk.

Agreed. If the cover was pulled, the drive is scrap metal and magnets... unless it was pulled and replaced in a clean room. Which I highly doubt.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Hard drive Cover

I do not beileve that the cover was pulled, just some of the screws removed.

Would removed screws cause it to not spin up?

[ratdude747]

Re: Hard drive Cover

I do not beileve that the cover was pulled, just some of the screws removed.

Would removed screws cause it to not spin up?

Not likely.

[mariushm]

Re: Hard drive Cover

The hard drives need and rely on a particular air pressure inside the drive to float the disk heads above the disk surface.
The nozzles each drive come in are supposed to balance the air pressure inside when the air gets hot from the spinning disks. By opening up the drive you mess up that air pressure and the drive detects through the pressure sensor and will refuse to move the heads out of the parking zone.

I don't know if the drive will start working again if you broke the seal and let air in. Maybe if you let it stay in a warm place for a few days, so that the pressure inside will stabilize.

[momaka]

Re: Hard drive Cover

Hello, I have a hard drive that has had the cover screws removed and now it won't spin up.

Won't spin up or won't home/initialize properly? Does it click or make any weird noises?

There's a YouTube video where somebody loosens the screws of a hard disk but leaves the cover in place, and the drive just clicks. Then he retightens the screws, and the drive works fine again. With some drives, one of the cover screws secures one end of the drive shaft.

Old (and possibly new) WDs and some newer Seagates have one screw that holds the arm in place. This screw also happens to be holding the top cover as well. When the HDD is closed at the factory, this screw makes the arm (and thus the heads) aligned in a certain way. It is pretty much unique for each drive because the alignment of the screw is arbitrary. If the screw is removed, this will usually mess up the alignment of the arm and the HDD will no longer be able to read and write data. There's actually a Youtube video of a IBM Deskstar showing this (can't find it on this PC... I think it's on my other PC's bookmarks). As they guy in the video plays around and moves a screw driver inserted into the screw hole of that alignment screw, the HDD did actually home/initiallize a few times, thus showing how important that alignement is. I have myself witnessed this after opening and closing a Seagate (either 7200.8 or 7200.9, I can't remember) HDD that refused to initialize afterwards.
Not all HDDs are like that though. Some, like old WDs, just require a certain torque on all screws on the cover - again, probably to set the alignment on the arm in a certain way.

Would removed screws cause it to not spin up?

No.

Agreed. If the cover was pulled, the drive is scrap metal and magnets...

Not entirely true.
Depending on how much care you took not to get dust on the platters, you can have the HDD running for several hours or even several days (or even indefinitely with older sub-100 GB drives, where the data density on the platters is quite low).
I've opened and unstuck a Fujitsu 2.5" HDD that had stuck heads on the platter. This was all done in my room, where I have a carpet (so not the best dust-free environment). I didn't even use a clean toothpick, and the HDD still managed to work for about 2 hours before finally giving out.

I don't know if the drive will start working again if you broke the seal and let air in. Maybe if you let it stay in a warm place for a few days, so that the pressure inside will stabilize.

Hmm, that's not how it works.

HDDs do NOT have pressure sensors. Most just have a crude floating "small arm" mechanism that physically blocks the arm from moving if there isn't enough air flow above the platters due to the cover being removed or due to a slow spindle motor. Some HDDs don't have even that, and they sound horrible when you try to run them with the cover off (which is obviously bad for the HDD).