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    A Colossal HDD Failure

    Here's a good example of one: Seagate 7200.11 series, 1.5 TB, model ST31500341AS


    It didn't look bad on the outside or anything like that (I put that note on the HDD after I opened it… so there's some foreshadowing for you .) But as soon as I plugged it in, it sounded absolutely horrible, making loud clicking and grinding noises. I thought it might be bad spindle motor at first. Curiosity got the better part of me, as usual, so I decided to open it. And this is what I found:



    And a high-res picture (link format to save on loading bandwidth)
    https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1580607991

    Uh-oh… Goodbye precious data! Hello magic “pixie dust”.

    I should have known to expect this, though: while opening the HDD, I did notice some black “dust” started sticking to my fingers “out of nowhere”. As I started opening the HDD more, I saw more of that dust pour onto my carpet – and let me tell you, this crap is hard to get off from there. Had to vacuum my floor several times to get rid of the few spots where the dust fell. Also took dish detergent to wash the dust off the skin on my fingers, as it is very fine.

    Fortunately, I didn't loose any data, as this wasn't one of my HDDs. It's a failed HDD I got from work. Still not a big loss in terms of data, as the HDD contained old surveillance video footages that were backed up elsewhere (and at this point, not really needed either.) Moreover, I don't even have to low-level format the HDD now.

    It's interesting that this HDD still kept the platters spinning, despite the obviously failed head(s). Maybe I should cut a round piece of sand paper and glue it onto that top platter – table top bench grinder/sander! Fitting purpose, given the above images.

    (No really, I might actually do that ^ )
    .
    .
    Anyone else have extreme HDD failures like this to share?
    Attached Files

    #2
    Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

    LOL!! I love it!


    I had a 15k do that once.... it made a hell of a racket!
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      #3
      Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

      Yep worst I've seen was a 15k that had dead motor driver IC, melted spindle motor coil, destroyed heads and all platters surface gone into dust. Was stress-tested for a day to make sure it works then a couple of months later it died randomly while idling.
      Attached Files
      OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

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        #4
        Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

        Oh! That will buff out just fine!

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          #5
          Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

          Screw BSY (that's a 7200.11 ya' got there, had a 1TB model to work with that had BSY), that thing is WAY worse.
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            #6
            Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

            I hate seagate drives, when you said colossal failure i figured it would be a YUGE drive like a QUANTUM BIGFOOT!
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              #7
              Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

              "Certified Repaired HDD"
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              ^If you have datasheets not listed PM me

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                #8
                Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                Originally posted by BigTroll View Post
                I hate seagate drives
                I've actually had good luck with their server level Barracuda and Cheetah Seagate drives over the years. Back in the day, they were far less failure-prone than any of the others on the same platform (higher-end SCSI). Quantum was my most hated....SCSI or IDE, bastards would always just die without warning. WD didn't make SCSI HDD's, atleast I never knew of any, but WD was my favoured drive for IDE/SATA systems...and that still holds true today.
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                  #9
                  Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                  I have a similar model: ST31000340NS, Seagate, ES.2 1000Gbytes, It would not spin up, I check that there was drive to the motor, and it was ok. So I opened the drive and the bearing is seized solid.

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                    #10
                    Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                    Originally posted by Topcat View Post
                    I've actually had good luck with their server level Barracuda and Cheetah Seagate drives over the years. Back in the day, they were far less failure-prone than any of the others on the same platform (higher-end SCSI). Quantum was my most hated....SCSI or IDE, bastards would always just die without warning. WD didn't make SCSI HDD's, atleast I never knew of any, but WD was my favoured drive for IDE/SATA systems...and that still holds true today.
                    I don't have much experience with scsi except 50 pin drives in my macs and most from the factory were quantum and seemed to last along time however they put some piece of foam in the drives thats flaking apart and killing them now, at least thats the word in the 68k mac forums. I do have one 2gb seagate scsi in a mac that still going strong but is very noisy.

                    For ide/sata samsung drives were my favorite before they sold out to seagate, always seemed reliable. but yeah the 7200.11 and 7200.12 are garbage, I just replaced my 1tb seagate 7200.12s last month in my camera NVR, both had over 2000 bad sectors and 1 became unreadable by my bios. both were replaced wtih 1tb samsungs with 48k hours on both no reallocated sectors.
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                      #11
                      Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                      Originally posted by BigTroll View Post
                      I hate seagate drives, when you said colossal failure i figured it would be a YUGE drive like a QUANTUM BIGFOOT!
                      Happy to say my 19GB Quantum Bigfoot is still functioning into 2020~
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                        #12
                        Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                        I thought there were clock mechanisms (just like the $3.88 clocks you buy at Wal-Mart) that could be fitted to the center of one of these platters. Are they still available at craft and hobby stores?

                        This clock would stand out from the "typical" hard drive platter that was turned into a clock.


                        Edited to add:
                        ...some piece of foam in the drives thats flaking apart....
                        Don't many drives (consumer drives, at least) have a "recirculation filter" (piece of foam or other material) to filter the air inside them? Many pictures of disassembled hard drives are on the web. Just like an old foam seat cushion, these filters may be falling apart due to old age. (There is also another filter to allow air to escape when the drive heats up and air inside the drive expands.)
                        Last edited by Hondaman; 02-03-2020, 12:27 AM.

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                          #13
                          Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                          Originally posted by goontron View Post
                          Happy to say my 19GB Quantum Bigfoot is still functioning into 2020~
                          Awesome! I have a 8.0 Bigfoot in a 95 rig since it fits right in with the 8.4gb limit.
                          My Computer: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Asrock X370 Killer SLI/AC, 32GB G.SKILL TRIDENT Z RGB DDR4 3200, 500GB WD Black NVME and 2TB Toshiba HD,Geforce RTX 3080 FOUNDERS Edition, In-Win 303 White, EVGA SuperNova 750 G3, Windows 10 Pro

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                            #14
                            Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                            Originally posted by Hondaman View Post
                            Don't many drives (consumer drives, at least) have a "recirculation filter" (piece of foam or other material) to filter the air inside them? Many pictures of disassembled hard drives are on the web. Just like an old foam seat cushion, these filters may be falling apart due to old age. (There is also another filter to allow air to escape when the drive heats up and air inside the drive expands.)
                            The filter in this drive is not foam but more similar to a cloth fiber, it is located in the top left of the of the drive above the platter in picture #2

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                              #15
                              Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                              Originally posted by BigTroll View Post
                              both were replaced wtih 1tb samsungs with 48k hours on both no reallocated sectors.
                              The new Samsung platter drives are Seagate, IIRC!

                              IIRC, for drives, except maybe optical drives, Samsung only does solid state drives now.
                              Last edited by RJARRRPCGP; 02-03-2020, 08:50 PM.
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                                #16
                                Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                                Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP View Post
                                The new Samsung platter drives are Seagate, IIRC!

                                *snip*
                                And they suck just as bad.
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                                  #17
                                  Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                                  Don't worry these are samsung drives made before seagate bought them out.They were made in 2009/2010.
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                                    #18
                                    Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                                    yupp always check the label, RJARRRPCGP. they are samsung labelled drives NOT "samsung by seagate" labelled.

                                    anyway, bigtroll, are those drives u have HD103SJ drives? i luv those cuz they are the fastest 1tb drives around. faster than even the 1tb wd cav blacks. great for running raid 0. i use them on my bittorrent rig to increase throughput and to avoid disk overloaded warning messages on my 200mbps fibre line.

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                                      #19
                                      Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                                      Originally posted by Topcat View Post
                                      I had a 15k do that once.... it made a hell of a racket!
                                      Oh I bet!
                                      At 15k RPM, those platters have a lot of momentum. Ain't no head going to stop them just like that. I imagine it looked similar to the one above, if not worse.

                                      Originally posted by piernov View Post
                                      Yep worst I've seen was a 15k that had dead motor driver IC, melted spindle motor coil, destroyed heads and all platters surface gone into dust. Was stress-tested for a day to make sure it works then a couple of months later it died randomly while idling.
                                      Nice!
                                      Your low level format is now complete, sir!

                                      Originally posted by BigTroll View Post
                                      I hate seagate drives, when you said colossal failure i figured it would be a YUGE drive like a QUANTUM BIGFOOT!
                                      Oh, I have a wonky one like that too. Posted it a while back here... or rather the power-up sounds it made.
                                      https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...1&postcount=50

                                      ^ In short, that HDD still works, but has a hard time calibrating after a power up, suggesting it will probably fail soon. Has lots of bad sectors and had a few ever since I found it some 15+ years ago. As such, I never used it much. Maybe 50 hours total in those 15+ years, if even that. I mostly keep it just because its big and cool-looking - makes folks appreciate storage technology a bit more today.

                                      Originally posted by Uranium-235 View Post
                                      "Certified Repaired HDD"
                                      Good catch! I didn't notice this until now.
                                      Probably explains the condition it's in.
                                      Of course, it could also be that after it was refurbished/repaired, it was mishandled with shipping. I guess we will never truly know.

                                      Originally posted by Topcat View Post
                                      I've actually had good luck with their server level Barracuda and Cheetah Seagate drives over the years.
                                      Same - particularly with the Barracuda ATA IV/V and 7200.7 series. Some claim the 7200.9 are also very reliable, but I'm on the edge with that statement. The 7200.10 and later certainly weren't, though.

                                      As for WD... appears their HDDs are good as long as you don't power-cycle them too much (whereas Seagate appears to be the other way around.) I'm I hard "power-cycler" with my personal PCs, so I've had OK luck with Seagate HDDs so far and more or less OK luck with WD. Had a 80 GB WD fail a few weeks ago. No bad sectors, but started having a hard time starting up for about a week. Then it failed. I suppose that was a good enough warning, though. IME, WD HDDs usually don't give much warning when they are about to fail, whereas Seagate usually do (typically high bad sector count.)

                                      Originally posted by R_J View Post
                                      I have a similar model: ST31000340NS, Seagate, ES.2 1000Gbytes, It would not spin up, I check that there was drive to the motor, and it was ok. So I opened the drive and the bearing is seized solid.
                                      You sure it's not the heads stuck to the disk? Older Maxtor HDDs were notorious for this. I've also seen it happen to a 2.5" WD Blue (250 GB, IIRC.) When it comes to heads sticking to platters, that's where Hitachi shines, as they use those head ramps. Toshiba does too, IIRC... but that's all they got going for them. Hitachi, on the other hand, had/have some pretty decently reliable HDDs.

                                      Originally posted by goontron View Post
                                      Happy to say my 19GB Quantum Bigfoot is still functioning into 2020~
                                      One of the few left, probably.

                                      Originally posted by BigTroll View Post
                                      Don't worry these are samsung drives made before seagate bought them out.They were made in 2009/2010.
                                      That's what I have in my "main" PC right now: a Samsung Spinpoint SP0802N. I believe that's also before Seagate acquired them, as it's an 80 GB IDE HDD. And even if it is a Seagate HDD, it's from around the same era as the 7200.7 and 7200.9 drives, so it should still be OK.
                                      Last edited by momaka; 02-04-2020, 06:31 PM.

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                                        #20
                                        Re: A Colossal HDD Failure

                                        Originally posted by ChaosLegionnaire View Post
                                        yupp always check the label, RJARRRPCGP. they are samsung labelled drives NOT "samsung by seagate" labelled.

                                        anyway, bigtroll, are those drives u have HD103SJ drives? i luv those cuz they are the fastest 1tb drives around. faster than even the 1tb wd cav blacks. great for running raid 0. i use them on my bittorrent rig to increase throughput and to avoid disk overloaded warning messages on my 200mbps fibre line.
                                        Just checked and YES they are both HD103SJ drives! One is up to 49000 hours now both show no reallocated sectors, both run 24/7 running as NVR for my cameras. I also know the older samsung drives said made in korea which no seagate drives were ever made in korea to my knowledge.

                                        I thought about using them in raid, but the computer is a ThinkCentre M78 socket FM2 lenovo and I havent heard good things about AMD raid so I never bothered.
                                        My Computer: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, Asrock X370 Killer SLI/AC, 32GB G.SKILL TRIDENT Z RGB DDR4 3200, 500GB WD Black NVME and 2TB Toshiba HD,Geforce RTX 3080 FOUNDERS Edition, In-Win 303 White, EVGA SuperNova 750 G3, Windows 10 Pro

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