Repairing Maxtor hard drive - possible to DIY?

Question

I have a pile of old drives from some P3's I have just retired, and am going through them one by one to make sure there is no data on them I need before I reformat them and give them away or use them to back images etc. up to. I bought one of those inexpensive external drive bays that hook up via USB as its a lot easier than constantly replacing drives and rebooting, and it works quite well.

I have 2 Maxtor Drives, one 20GB and one 40GB - both of them make that dreaded "clunking" sound when powered up, but after that it does sound like they start to spin, but I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, the laptop I am using to read them will not see these disks, not even in the disk management module. I was wondering if its possible that there could be something obvious I could see if I popped the cover off. I've got the external drive bay taken apart so that the drive is just sitting on the table, so it is in plain view when I power it up. Can the disk be run with the cover off?

I have some photo's that I can't find that may be on one of these disks, but there is nothing on them critical enough that I'd pay money to get them recovered, so I really have nothing to lose, and I am curious about taking them apart. Is there anything obvious to look for with the cover off the drive?

thanks!

Tim Phipps · Accepted Answer

Don't go opening the drives up just yet. There were certain models of Maxtor drives that had a firmware corruption problem. The firmware would get corrupted and the system would no longer recognise the drive. There is a freeware tool that can fix certain models available here.

formatting link

Please read the user manual - you will need to jumper the drive to 'safe mode' otherwise the repair will not work. I would suggest that you should connect the drives directly to a PC and not via a USB enclosure as I'm not sure if the repair tool will work that way. I have used this on a 20gb Maxtor drive I had a while ago and it seemed to work ok.

GS · Answer

thanks! I'll give that a whirl first! would that explain the "clunking" though?

Jeroni Paul · Answer

The tool from Salvationdata mentioned before will fix the 20 Gbmodels. I've a 40 Gb Maxtor that failed the same way and still foundno way to repair it. Tried everything I found in it.Opening the disk will result in dust stuck between the head and diskand there is nothing to repair there.GS wrote:

James Sweet · Answer

There's nothing you can repair inside the sealed compartment, there's some cool magnets and bearings to salvage though.

Tim Phipps · Answer

Hard to say without hearing it myself.  The drive I had made an unusual noise IIRC but not a loud clunking type of noise.-- Tim Phippsreplace "invalid" with "uk" to reply by email

meow2222 · Answer

Youre having a problem with the controller, which is the uncovered pcb. The sealed up bit is the drive machanics, which a) arent the problem b) wont survive long once opened, as the average piece of house dust will cause a head crash.

NT

Dr. Anton T. Squeegee · Answer

In article ,  (known to some as GS) scribed...  Extremely unlikely. In fact, you will kill the drive for certain by opening it. Removing the cover on any modern high-density/high-capacity hard drive, outside of at least a Class 100 positive-pressure clean-room, is a sure recipe for disaster. Again: No. Definitely not. Not for more than half a minute or so, anyway. There's a reason those drives are sealed so well. At the minimal heights those heads fly at, a dust grain that you could barely see with the unaided eye looks like a fifty-foot high boulder to the heads. Of course, if you want to see the actual physical result of a head crash, go right ahead and try operating a drive with the cover off. Now, what you CAN try is swapping circuit boards between similar drive models. You may or may not end up with a working unit. Given that they're Maxtors, though, I'm not sure I'd bother in any case. Happy tweaking.-- Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Institute(Known to...

cmdrdata · Answer

You didn't say the drive size, but if they are 3.5" version, I suspect that your laptop USB port is not able to fully power the HD. USB port I believe can only provide

5V/500mA max, and your drives may need more. I think 3.5" drives need both 5VDC and 12 VDC.

On the noise issue, I've taken apart a 2.5" drive that no longer worked, and with the cover opened, while applying 5VDC to the power pins I can see the head moved into position trying to read data repeatedly for about 20 times, then it goes to "park" position. The disk, which has lost most of its magnetic coating continue to spin. As mentioned, this drive is toast, since the disk itself no longer has a magnetic coating in 90% of the surfaces.

Repairing Maxtor hard drive - possible to DIY?

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