Gloom and Doom- wish I hadn’t done that!

[spec]

**broken link removed**​

It had been a hell-of-a day: up at the crack of 8:30am. Had to drive ten miles to a pub in the country for lunch and a pint with the misuse. A couple of hours in the library in Weston super Mare reading the papers. Coffee and donut in The Coffee House and finally managed to get on the laptop by 7pm after dinner. Ploughed through the thousand-and-one emails: get a Tai wife for £200, fabulous holidays from Saga, cure for your erection problems, you have won $10, 000, and so on.

Then got down to the real stuff… ETO, electronics, computers, and a bit of Wikipedia editing. After a while I fancied a beer but, like a half-wit, managed to splash a small amount of beer on the Ultrabay door at the side of the Lenovo T520 laptop. This caused Win10 to report that the Hitachi Travelstar 1 TB Hard Disk Drive (HDD) in the Ultrabay could not be accessed on the next reboot. As this HDD contains all my user files, which had not been backed up since end Dec 2015, I was in a state of doom and gloom.

I tried to revive the HDD by drying off a drop of beer on it, then baking it at 60 deg C for 2 hours, then washing it in isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and baking it at 60 deg C for 24 hours, but all to no avail- the platter simply refused to spin up. What annoys me is that I have been so stupid and not backed up for that long, especially as 4TB of Network Access Storage (NAS) is on-line in our house, so it was just a matter of pressing the button to do the job.

In desperation, I Googled data recovery firms. The first to pop up was Fields Data Recovery who advertised a not-to-bad charge of £130 UK to recover the data from your hard drive. But when I Googled them for problems I found they were a rip off outfit, with many shadow companies, who did more damage than good and also ended up charging a fortune for ‘extras’. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2520295#topofpage

But Kroll On Track have good reports, but are hellish expensive at £300 UK to £1.2K UK depending on the work involved, so I intend to send off my errant HDD to them to get a free quotation. Fingers crossed that it is not more than the former or I won’t bother. http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/data-...Eow5dK0G9_2AJk35QEyuBDYd-cDOayuw0DhoCQczw_wcB

You tend to learn from your experiences, good or bad. For example, I always thought that HDD platters and heads were contained in a hermetically sealed chamber with a small valve to release any air pressure, but this is not the case. The mechanical parts are in a chamber but the hole only has a filter over it to prevent debris ingress. I also found out about the dark side of data recovery services.

 

[djsfantasi]

And the moral is:
Don't drink and compute...

 

[spec]

And the moral is:
Don't drink and compute...

So wise dj

 

[Les Jones]

I think I would have washed the beer off with water (Preferably distilled.) to get rid of any inorganic salts that may be in the bear before washing it in IPA. If the laptop was powered on when the beer was spilt it may have been condutive enough to pass too much current through a component. I keep thinking that I should get a NAS storage unit to save plugging in USB disk drives for backups.

Les.

 

[spec]

I think I would have washed the beer off with water (Preferably distilled.) to get rid of any inorganic salts that may be in the bear before washing it in IPA. If the laptop was powered on when the beer was spilt it may have been condutive enough to pass too much current through a component. I keep thinking that I should get a NAS storage unit to save plugging in USB disk drives for backups.

Les.

Quite right Les- that is what I did with a cloth soaked in de-ionised water but, the problem is, you can't get at most of the components which are mounted on the face-in side of the HDD controller board. I would not think it wise to put water in the air bearings- you did mean bearings by 'bear'.

The two modes of failure with deposits is that either a short causes component damage or simply causes a circuit malfunction, especially with high impedance circuitry.

I once spent about 2 weeks spare time trying to recover my father-in-law's VCR controller (no longer available new) which had suffered a similar fate. After much flaffing around I only managed to get it working by removing the solder resist and scraping into the PCB along the edge of the copper traces with a scalpel. Luckily, it was only a small board. The controller then worked fine for a couple of weeks but then packed up again. Under a glass you could see very small crystals had grown between the copper traces. I only fixed it permanently by soaking it in IPA for 24Hrs and baking it at 70 deg C for the same time, and conformally coating the PCB and components at 35 deg C.

A NAS is absolute luxury. I had the bits hanging around for about a year before it was assembled and put on air. It averages 9 MBs transfer rate. After my disaster I am acting on advice and have ordered another Hitachi 4 TB NAS drive to mirror the present single drive.

A friend has made a pretty good NAS by plugging USB HDDs into his internet router.

 

[jpanhalt]

Hi Spec,

Here is a memorable thread by a brave DIY'er that you might gain encouragement from. The assault is quite detailed. I just happened to remember it, but it was hard to figure out how to search for it. Then I remembered he used a head "comb." That term probably doesn't help, if you use Google. Fortunately on ETO, combs are not too popular.

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/hard-drive-failure-cries-engineers-to-the-rescue.132565/

John

 

[spec]

Hi Spec,

Here is a memorable thread by a brave DIY'er that you might gain encouragement from. The assault is quite detailed. I just happened to remember it, but it was hard to figure out how to search for it. Then I remembered he used a head "comb." That term probably doesn't help, if you use Google. Fortunately on ETO, combs are not too popular.

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/hard-drive-failure-cries-engineers-to-the-rescue.132565/

John

Thanks a lot John- real useful and interesting thread. I haven't read it all yet though.

Cheers

Chuck

 

[tvtech]

Sigh. Acers handle beer extraordinarily well. Especially the older ones 2006 was a good vintage...

Me and my little 5680 have traveled the NET since 2006. Mush beer splashed and much poured. Nothing has REALLY failed yet

Rolling Stones had "Sticky Fingers".....I have some "Sticky keys"....

tv

 

[spec]

Sigh. Acers handle beer extraordinarily well. Especially the older ones 2006 was a good vintage...

Me and my little 5680 have traveled the NET since 2006. Mush beer splashed and much poured. Nothing has REALLY failed yet

Rolling Stones had "Sticky Fingers".....I have some "Sticky keys"....

tv

Same here with previous machines but this Lenovo T520 seems to be very touchy. Mind you the HDD is nothing to do with the T520.

After a couple of years I decided to give the laptop a good spring clean: brushed off all the accumulated debris in the corners and crevices and then sponged over with a cloth dampened by a very weak solution of water and natural soap.

The result was that the T520 would not boot and could only be coaxed into doing so by pulling the back up battery (BUB) for a minute or so. I expected the fault to cure itself as the water evaporated but even after heating at 60 deg C for 4 hours no luck. Only changing the keyboard fixed the problem. Thankfully, pulling the BUB and changing the keyboard are dead easy and only take a few minutes. The replacement keyboard only cost £0 UK too.

 

[spec]

My laptop history has been:
Acer Travelmate 4200 wlmi
IBM/Lenovo T42
Lenovo T520 (current)
Lenovo G570 (current wife)

The Travelmate developed dry joints on the main board and, although the joints could have been re-flowed, it wasn't really worth it.

The Lenovo T42 was a legend in its time- and my favorite laptop.

It was in a sad sate when I was given it: full of cement dust and sand after a couple of years on building sites. The power socket was elongated and making intermittent contact and the case was scratched all over. I completely stripped it, including removing every key, and blew all the sand and cement out with an airline . I then gave it a complete clean with de-ionised water followed by iso-propyl alcohol (IPA). The parts then went in an oven at 60 deg C for 24hrs before being reassembled.

Most of the scratches polished out and the surface matted up well with fine wire wool. I reamed out the power socket and aeraldited in a stainless steel sleeve, so the power socket was then better than new. The mains PSU also needed opening up with a hot knife, and an inductor, which had broken away from the PCB- a common fault with PSUs, re-stuck with silicon adhesive and re-soldered.

Once the memory and HDD were upgraded, I used the T42 for about 18 months. It was especially nice because it had a high resolution, high brightness screen fitted.

Then horror of horrors, my lovely little laptop wouldn't boot up on occasions. Slowly the problem got worse and I found after many wrong avenues that the Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL) lamp that backlit the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) display was not striking up reliably.

After Googling possible causes I changed the inverter that produced the striking voltage and the 400V to 700V operating voltage, depending on brightness, to power the CCFL. But the fault persisted. After a lot of investigating I traced the fault to an aging CCFL and after much further Googling found a company in the USA that made superior CCFLs and, to my amazement, stocked a model that suited the T42; it wasn't that expensive either, even including post and packing from the States.

I was all geared up to fit the CCFL but then, as I have mentioned many times before, our house went up in a gas explosion, and while the T42 looked undamaged something terminal had happened to its internals, like every other piece of electronic equipment in the house. While the T520 is a far better machine, I still miss the T42.

On a general point, Lenovo kit is exceptionally well made and is designed for servicing. Also, the documentation, including service manuals, is freely available. This is not the case with many laptops. For example, I ordered twenty Satellite Pros for our department. They were fabulous machines when new but, within two years, they were all written off due to beyond-economical-repair faults, mainly keyboards. On Lenovo laptops a new keyboard costs £32 UK and takes 5 minutes to replace.

 

[Dr_Doggy]

there are different levels of recovery, which unfortunately helps the scammers,
most of them operate on principals of unformat, undelete , and other partition recovery

I think in your case SPEC you have not buggered up the platters that hold data, but have a circuitry problem, in the heads or back up the circuit somewhere, Having said that: it is possible to revive it... unfortunately by that i mean you need to hire real professionals they will take the drive, eject the platter in a clean room and attach it to a machine that will go through the disk and recover it to another disk, however I have investigated the costs and is around 1-10K$
......none of my dead disks have been able to justify that price so i sit and wait for machine to go on sale...

 

[Les Jones]

Hi Spec,
Where I typed "bear" it should have been beer.

Les.

 

[spec]

there are different levels of recovery, which unfortunately helps the scammers,
most of them operate on principals of unformat, undelete , and other partition recovery

I think in your case SPEC you have not buggered up the platters that hold data, but have a circuitry problem, in the heads or back up the circuit somewhere, Having said that: it is possible to revive it... unfortunately by that i mean you need to hire real professionals they will take the drive, eject the platter in a clean room and attach it to a machine that will go through the disk and recover it to another disk, however I have investigated the costs and is around 1-10K$
......none of my dead disks have been able to justify that price so i sit and wait for machine to go on sale...

Hi Dr,

It is comforting to know that you think that the platter should be OK, especially as Krol will probably have substitute controller boards for such a common HDD. But there is a complication: each controller board has a custom prom which must match the disc.

If Krol have to get into the disc chamber in a clean room you are talking about £1K UK upwards so that would write the disk of as far as I am concerned.

As you say, there are different levels of fault with corresponding levels of cost. It is quite clear that Krol are catering for the corporate/government market rather consumer. I have told them that the data on my disk in not worth more than £300 UK, but they still said to send the disk in for a free assessment. Here is Krol's guide to the costs of repairs for the various fault levels that you describe. The kind of money they are talking about is colossal for the private computerer, but it would be noise in the dust for a big company, certainly the one I worked for:

 

[spec]

....none of my dead disks have been able to justify that price so i sit and wait for machine to go on sale...

I'm intrigued, as well as not being too bright- what do you mean by your last statement?

 

[jpanhalt]

From serious to ? You can always smile.

It is Saturday night in Cleveland.

John

 

[spec]

From serious to ? You can always smile.

View attachment 98148

It is Saturday night in Cleveland.

John

That has cheered me up John.

 

[tcmtech]

You should have got the Thai wife for 200. I hear that if you haggle with them the better places will include a new laptop with the new wife or if they are out of laptops they will send you a wife with computer skills instead.

I also hear that the Vietnamese sites are now offering free replacements if the wife they send you runs away or kills herself. Pretty sure if you tell them the Thai's are including laptops with their women now they will probably toss one in to being they are pretty competitive that way.

Just don't get the $29.95 Turkish wife from eBay. The one I got was totally defective and there was no warranty let alone a working laptop included either. (Cheatin bastards. Shoulda went Thai or Vietnamese. )

 

[ronv]

If you can find another drive on e bay or from a friend you might be able to just swap the board.

 

[spec]

If you can find another drive on e bay or from a friend you might be able to just swap the board.

Good idea ron,

There are a couple of practical difficulties though: I don't have a workshop, or magnifying system- eyesight not as good as it was. On the Hitachi HDD you need to fit a surface mount PROM from the original controller board to match the platter (I understand). Knowing me, I would make more of a mess of it than good.

Thks for the suggestion though.

spec

 

[spec]

Just cast my mind back, and since the mid 1980s, when PCs with HDDs were getting common, both at work and home, I have never had a HDD failure. The only reason that HDDs were replace was for increased capacity. Is this the general experience?

spec