tips/links for hard drive heads transplantation?

Good luck.

OD

Which clean room will you be using ?

kip wrote

He's gunna need a hell of a lot more than a clean room.

The HD may contain very powerful magnets which can be fun to experiment with. As the others have commented, little else will likely come from your work.

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plus a credit card with a decent balance.

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Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

Don't. Unless you just want to have a look and breaking anything does not matter. In the second case I advise to use a screwdriver....

Arno

In a nutshell, forget it.

Actually, it's an interesting experiment (and one I'd expect to fail), but:

1) Drives will usually run for anything between a few hours to a few days after being opened up providing you're careful about the environment in which it's done. That's long enough to recover data off the drive (but forget using the drive long term obviously is heads *will* crash eventually) 2) I'm not sure how much of an issue radial alignment is - won't modern drives handle the calibration automatically during startup? (and periodically during use to minimise the effects of temperature changes). I'd assume that track zero is found electronically, rather than being dictated by any mechnical resting place of the head assembly.

Head height is doubtless very critical though (even with flying heads) and for that you would need a lab to set up properly.

There's also the problem of how to physically remove the head stack from the donor drive - those magnets are *strong* and likely something would get damaged in the process of removing the head assembly...

cheers

Jules

How do you know the problem is with the heads?

Ah, you do this all the time.

'obviously'

You sure it's the heads and not the platters?

as in God's *will* or did you make deal with the devil?

Or die of old age.

Ah yeah, those little servo motors adjusting them mechanically at startup.

Lets hope so as they are as far apart as they can be on the platter.

No kidding.

Yeah, better start saving for that automatic laser guided adjusting rig. And for that laser guided robot that applies it back into the drive without upsetting 'the adjustment'.

Yeah, it is 'obviously' much easier to remove them from the bad drive and restoring them to the bad drive is 'obviously' a doddle too.

Especially those that apply the downforce to the heads and in need of micro 'adjustment'.

assembly...

Your pride obviously if it sticks to your screwdriver while the heads are still on the platters, making a Karel Appel impression on the platters.

Jules wrote

It will, you watch.

Not many drives fail in a way that needs the heads replaced without gouging up the media in the process.

Depends on what you do about the platters. If you remove and replace them, you have buckleys of getting them back the way they were before you removed them as far as the eccentricity of the tracks is concerned, because the tracks were written on the platters after the platters were installed in the drive.

Bad assumption. There's a reason you can hear a drive recalibrating.

Especially with flying heads.

Not necessarily, quite a bit of that comes from the design of the heads.

You dont need to remove them.

The main problem is that many drives need to have the platters removed to get the heads removed and you have buckleys of getting them back the way they were before they were removed.

And most drives that need new heads have gouged up the media in the process of the original heads failing.

No, usually once a month or so in order to recover data from drives with sealed spindle motors that are suffering from stiction or bearing problems. I just tend to leave them running once I've got everything off just out of curiousity to see how long they'll last before they go crunch. :)

Umm, what servo motors? Long time since any hard disk used them...

Ahh, gotta love the trolls...

No, there is that - I'd assume that the OP has a good reason for wanting to swap head assembly (i.e. they've ruled out that the problem isn't with the logic board in the drive)

Absolutely - I'd assume they OP has a drive where they could technically get the heads out without disturbing platters, otherwise things are guaranteed to go horribly wrong :)

I don't know - most hard disk manuals seem to say that they'll do periodic recalibration (or at least ones for high end SCSI drives do)

heh heh, for sure - and I can't see there's any chance of getting the platter stack apart and being able to put it back together again in order to read existing data off! :-)

If heads will come out without touching the platters then maybe the OP should give it a go if they have a spare donor drive lined up - they can't be any worse off. I've never heard of anyone actually trying this though (let alone trying it and it working! :)

cheers

Jules

You're thinking of stepper motors.

Jules wrote

Its more likely he assumed the heads are the problem but doesnt know that they are.

You're doing a lot of assuming.

Different matter entirely to the recalibration you can hear when the drive cant read the platters properly.

Yeah, because if the heads need replacing, they've usually gouged up the media in the process of failing.

Say you, who admits to know no one who actually did it, including himself.

Yes, on bad sectors. The rest is just drive health checks during idle time.

I'll guess that IBM/Hitachi and Seagate don't make 'high end SCSI' drives anymore then.

Well, that's _your_ problem.

As if you ever tried.

Well, for that to happen it must have the heads parked at a parking rest, obviously.

Except for killing the donor drive without any gain.

So you haven't been around much, so what.

After they already have gone crunch once before you got them.

And none ever used servo motors to adjust head alignment, you simpleton.

Especially those that display their ignorance so fast and freely that it is almost impossible not to make fun of them (i.e. ignore the bait).

Making you the troll, (in case you missed that too).

Ok thanks the drive in question is an old quantum 5.1el so I suppose it has

1/possibly 2 heads and the arm can be rotated away from the platters completely before pulling it out!? Now what about aligning the magnets and sliding the 'new' arm over the platters...any special tools etc.

No, just a steady hand. Practise makes you perfect.