Did I fix it??

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Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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I have a 5TB White Label hard drive that started disappearing randomly. It got so bad that it rendered the drive unusable. It's out of warranty so I removed the board and cleaned the contacts. This seemed to make it worst. I then removed the board and took a jewelers screwdriver and pried up on the spindle motor contacts. This seems to have done the trick. I'm in the process of filling the drive up. It's 2/3's full and still going. Before surgery, it would not have lasted 30 sec's much less the 4 hours it's been going so far. Hard to believe this fix worked. After it's full I'm going to do a full format.

Also, when the drive is detected, HD Sentinel says health is 100%. With zero bad sectors I figured it was worth the effort to try and save it.
 
T_Minus

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Curious... but why would the spindle motor contacts need to be pried up in the first place?

I'm going to lean on the side of coincidence ;) unless others have experience with same type of issue and solution, just doesn't sound right for a failing HDD but maybe ya got lucky :D :D
 
Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,386
1,387
113
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T_Minus said:
Curious... but why would the spindle motor contacts need to be pried up in the first place?

I'm going to lean on the side of coincidence ;) unless others have experience with same type of issue and solution, just doesn't sound right for a failing HDD but maybe ya got lucky :D :D
Click to expand...
The contacts are actually at the end of cantilever springs. I pried them up so that they would make a tighter contact with the pad on the HD body. I filled the drive completely and now I'm in the middle of a long format, so far so good. The reason I suspected a contact problem was the first time I cleaned the contacts the problem got worst. I reasoned that I put downward pressure on the cantilevers and this made the contact even weaker than it was. It may in fact be a coincidence but at this point I hope it's a "We'll never know". :)
 
Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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It hung half way through the format. Next step is to take a heat gun to the control board. Got nothing to lose but a paperweight. :cool:
 
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