Replacing HDD motor

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 12, 2008
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295
Has anyone ever tried to replace the mechanism that spins the platters in a HDD?
Is it a tough thing to do and for someone who has done it, is it worth the trouble, cost/time wise between getting a new HDD and fixing the old one, if there isn't much important data on it?
 
Seems like a no brainer...get a new HDD if there's no important data on it. 500GB is like $70 or so.
 
WA state has a high minimum wage at around 8.55 or so... don't remember exactly...

but if you take that and multiply a day's labor minus taxes you get:

8.55$/hr * 8hrs * (roughly 85% taken out for taxes) = $58

So, if you ONLY spent one day researching and replacing the motor on your hard drive... you might come out around $10-20 ahead.

Chances are it's gonna take you longer than that. There is also no guarantee that your repair will hold or be reliable to any extent.

Sorry jim, she's dead.
 
I had a drive here at work that wouldn't spin up. I bought an identical drive off of Ebay, swapped the electronics, and the drive started working again. I only did it to pull the data off, which I was successful in doing. But if there is no important data on it, just buy a new one.
 
I think if you have to buy an identical drive to get the motor out of it, you might as well just use the new HDD rather than try and replace the motor in the other one ;).
 
Here's another weird one - a buddy had a drive die, and based on some advice he read online, he put it in the freezer for a while (no kidding) and after it got good and cold, it worked...!! Of course he got the data off the thing pronto, but it did enable him to get his data. Google up "hard drive freezer" and there's a ton of info on it.
 
Here's another weird one - a buddy had a drive die, and based on some advice he read online, he put it in the freezer for a while (no kidding) and after it got good and cold, it worked...!! Of course he got the data off the thing pronto, but it did enable him to get his data. Google up "hard drive freezer" and there's a ton of info on it.
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Usually this works when the problem is related to stiction, whereas the head adheres to the platter in much the same way two flat panels of glass, one on top of the other, sort of get stuck together. The heads are never supposed to touch the media but with a flying height of just a few nanometers when the disk comes to rest they do in fact sometimes touch. The motor generally has enough inertia to break this bond when it occurs, but on occasion the drive refuses to spin up; although the problem was more prevalent in the past than on today's drives.
 
I had a drive that belonged to a friend once that would quit working after 5 minutes or so. In order to get more time to find and remove some music and photos, I put it in the freezer for a half hour. I got 15 minutes of use out of it then. After the 3rd time though, it failed catastrophically with lots of loud noises.

I did get all the stuff he wanted off the drive though.

Don
 
I had a couple of drives that would spin up after a trip to the freezer. I also had a drive that would only spin up by banging on the case while applying power. In all cases, as you alluded, the drives all eventually died.
 
Another true horror story.....:p

Have a buddy that had a drive that would not spin up at all. Freezer trick didn't work. Now, we'd been, er, "consuming adult beverages" all along the debug path, and after the third failed freezer attempt, we were a bit on the "adventuresome" side. Out of sheer frustration, my buddy grabs a screwdriver, opens the lid on the drive, and gives the platters a push on the edge with a Q-tip. The drive spun up, and he got his data off the drive as we both sat there and watch the open top drive do it's thing.

We're professionals, folks, don't try this one at home......:D Kidding aside, it worked, and I guess at the end of the day that's what matters. Can't really recommend this path for "mission critical" data, to be sure.
 
seems like you got lucky.. and the freezer trick is something i have read about a few times.. but hopefully i wont have to use it
 
On the motor replacement... don't waste your time. The motor on almost all drives is press fit into the bottom of the case from the inside. This means you'd have to remove the platters and the headstack, the chances of the drive working after having it torn down that much (unless you are a data recovery pro) is slim to none and even if it did work I would definitely not trust it with any data. Drives are so cheap the only reason you would ever consider something like this is if the data had value (in which case I wouldn't do it myself I would send it in for professional recovery).

Ironically the "freezer trick" is worse for the drive then heating it up. If you have frozen bearings heating the drive up with a heating pad often will loosen things up enough to get it spinning. Freezing the drive causes massive condensation on the platters which can completely kill the drive (and data). If the heads are stuck and you need data off you are much better off taking off the cover and carefully freeing the heads (without bending them) and then setting the cover back on to minimize dust collection while you copy your data off.
 
irrision said:
On the motor replacement... don't waste your time. The motor on almost all drives is press fit into the bottom of the case from the inside. This means you'd have to remove the platters and the headstack, the chances of the drive working after having it torn down that much (unless you are a data recovery pro) is slim to none and even if it did work I would definitely not trust it with any data. Drives are so cheap the only reason you would ever consider something like this is if the data had value (in which case I wouldn't do it myself I would send it in for professional recovery).

Ironically the "freezer trick" is worse for the drive then heating it up. If you have frozen bearings heating the drive up with a heating pad often will loosen things up enough to get it spinning. Freezing the drive causes massive condensation on the platters which can completely kill the drive (and data). If the heads are stuck and you need data off you are much better off taking off the cover and carefully freeing the heads (without bending them) and then setting the cover back on to minimize dust collection while you copy your data off.
Click to expand...

The freezer trick is a "last resort" method after you have tried everything else. Kind of like, well, I was going to throw it in the trash anyways. If the data is mission critical, spend the cash on a recovery service, do not try the freezer trick.

Don
 
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