It’s really not too difficult to fix your own hard drive, if the problem is a head crash, or the infamous Seagate “stiction” problem, if you know what to do. You will require #4/0 steel wool, Varsol, WD-40, a few hand tools, and about 45 minutes. First, you need a clean room, so make sure the garage door is closed before you begin. Move those old lawnmower parts off the bench. Disassemble the sealed unit and carefully wash all parts with Varsol. Bend the read/write heads out of the way and then disassemble the platter stack. VERY CAREFULLY buff the platter surfaces with the #4/0 steel wool. This will remove any existing data, level out any surface defects, and help to redistribute the magnetic media and fill in those pesky “bad sectors” that most drives have. Reassemble the platter stack, and using a .015" feeler gauge, bend the read/write head back to the platter surface, using the feeler gauge to set the gap. This is a slightly higher gap than the factory uses, but it reduces the chance of head collisions with any flotsam you neglected to remove. Give the head and platters a good shot of WD-40 and reassemble the unit. If your drive has a filter, replace it with a clean section of gauze pad. All that’s left is to low level and DOS format the drive, and you’re back in business. I haven’t tried this yet myself, but my friend’s wife’s sister-in-law’s husband knows a technician who does it all the time.
PS: If you haven’t realised it by now, it’s a joke. So don’t do it, ok? I found this while rummaging through my old files. It came from the Softaid website which dealt with embedded software. It looks like the company was taken over a while back so that website doesn’t exist anymore. I hope the unidentified author who wrote the joke long ago won’t mind my posting it. You can tell the age of the joke by the references to stiction and DOS formatting.
Wow, serendipity I thought, a new thread on just the subject I wanted. But no. So how do I fix a hard disk crash to get the data off, then I don’t really care about the hard disk.
My eyes started getting bigger and bigger the more I read it, until I could no longer hold back, and general laughter broke out rotfl! , and I realized it was one day before April 1st !! (or is it April 1st in Australia already (plus one day) ?? ).
Its a good one. … I’m keenly waiting also to see what Microchip calls his new start up company for hard drive repairs ? lol!
It’s also worth remembering that those obstinate ‘stuck’ bits on flash memory are only ‘stuck’ so far, and judicious application of several million volts should remind then who’s boss.
Glue your old USB sticks to the tops of lightning conductors (please use gloves). Recycle. Save the planet.
On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:56:02 +0000, Dwarfer99 wrote:
> Wow, serendipity I thought, a new thread on just the subject I wanted.
> But no. So how do I fix a hard disk crash to get the data off, then I
> don’t really care about the hard disk.
Depends on how badly the disk is damaged; you may have to go to a data
recovery service.
Dang, I forgot about that, I had such a good laugh when I rediscovered it that I just had to share right away. I’ll have to dig up another joke, won’t I?
