Biscuit Buns

I'm just curious if anyone has any info on setting up a clean room. I do a lot of computer "stuff" and since my hard drive just crashed with my entire LIFE on it (doin' the no backup, bang head on brick wall dance) and data recovery via software was impossible, I'm interested in learning about my clean room options. Sending it out is out of the question due to finances, so I think this would be a good avenue to go down, learning how to do this. If nothing else, just to expand my knowledge and abilities in the computer world. Any suggestions or knowledge you'd care to start me off with?

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MikeSty

My mentor told me that it is occasionally possible to recover a HDD that's been raped by the bearing by standing downwind from it on a day in a low-pollen, low polluted area. He was probably being sarcastic though.

phukraut

If a data recovery clean room is anything like a lab clean room where I work, then it's <em>very</em> expensive to build one. I'd just find the money for the pros to do it---particularly if you're not planning on making a business out of it, to get back your investment.

P-Naughty

Yeah, what phukraut said. Find some way to acquire the funds to send it off unless you wanna make a business out of it. It's a very tedious and time consuming process to do this type of work.

On a brighter note, maybe this will be a lesson to all y'all who don't back up your data. Whether it's burning it to CDs, burning to DVDs, having a backup harddrive, using a small storage server on a private network, or using an external hard drive; just do it.

I've lost gigs of stuff and had to rebuild, and it ain't fun. Spending a couple hundred bucks on a Maxtor or Western Digital external (USB 2.0 or Firewire) drive is well worth it, especially when the alternative is burning 9 DVDs or countless CDs. That's right, 9 DVDs. But my "My Documents" folder has 29.7 gigabits of stuff in it, then I have several other large folders. I still miss all the stuff I got from this forums previous incarnation

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skaven

OK here's some actual advice geared toward what you're looking for. Obviously you don't have the funds to send the drive off, so if you really want to try to "clean room" the drive, here's what I'd suggest doing:

1. buy an identical hard drive to the one that fried
2. try swapping the controller cards on the back (this does not require a clean room, but watch out for tiny ribbon cables and stuff). Usually if it was the controller that died, this will bring it back.

3. If that fails, then you're going to want to try moving your platters from the toasted drive into the working drive. This will require a clean-room. To prepare a decent clean-room, try the following:

a. move a desk/workspace into your bathroom
b. clean all of the surfaces above the level of the workspace thoroughly. Try to get as much dust as possible out.
c. shut off the air conditioning, and block off the A/C vent if there is one in the bathroom.
d. seal the window and door with towels
e. run your shower on hot for a few minutes to get a good steam built up in the room.
f. shut the shower off and let the mist settle out of the air. It is important that most of the moisture settle out of the air; the droplets will capture any dust still in the air and "stick" it to the walls.

4. So now you have a clean-room. While the room is still "wet", transfer the platters from your busted hard drive into the working hard drive. This will likely require quite a few tools, so have them handy in the bathroom before you start the project.

5. If your clean-room starts to "dry", cover your workspace with saran-wrap (seal it all up) and run the shower some more to keep the dust down.

Tips:
* have your tools ready to go ahead of time
* try to find out ahead of time what exactly to expect inside the drive
* try to minimize the amount of time either hard drive is exposed to the elements
* If you find that your parts are collecting moisture due to condensation, continue the hot-water cycles until your components reach ambient temperature and don't get condensation on them before opening. This can take a while.
* Wear latex gloves (the kind without the dust on them) during the whole procedure to keep skin cells and oil off of the components
* clean all your tools thoroughly with alcohol before use -- just in case you slip and hit something, you don't want metal filings or rust or grease getting on your parts
* have rubbing alcohol handy in the bathroom to clean things should they get dirty.
* remember that you can't leave the cleanroom until everything is sealed back up. If you must leave, seal everything up with saran wrap to prevent contamination. Then re-run your cleanroom setup procedure when you get back to work.
* consider wearing a shower cap and no shirt during the procedure. You'll feel goofy, but keep most of the hair and clothing fibers away from your workspace.

MikeSty

Holy crap! That's some good thinking right there Skaven. I think i might try that for no apparent reason. Much better than my method.

sailor

Damn, skaven. Might be worth a shot if for nothing else than a learning experience. Although, if you really need the data, Id just save up for a recovery service.

In my experience, the best backup system is an external hard drive, or if you have multiple machines, a network file server. Very easy to set up--I have an old P3 800 that I threw a 160GB drive into and installed linux and samba. All my other machines now back up over the network to that box every night. Works pretty well.

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txd

Just remember to back up the backup Says he who's backup hard drive just died taking with it stuff that was archived off to it...

portwineboy

That's some good stuff skaven. Props!

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skaven

Not really all my original ideas; I saw most of that information one time ages ago on a modding web page. The guy had a HOWTO for people that wanted to put a plexiglass lid on their hard drive. The above idea about the bathroom cleanroom was suggested as the best environment to open up the drive and replace the cover with a plexiglass one.

Swapping out platters is a great deal more involved, however, and if anybody out there does attempt it, and it works, I strongly suggest copying the data off of the recovered platters, then throwing away both hard drives.

Biscuit Buns

Skaven, you rock my world.

That's totally doable. I've already tried step one and two, so it's three and beyond, but definitely possible. I've taken apart boxes, laptops, even monitors, but never anything that I would have just died if I couldn't put it back together. Never tried to rebuild a hard drive, though! This should be fun even if I can't retrieve any data.

Regarding the business aspect, if I can set up a clean room, it would be stupid of me not to start one. In fact, there are state contracts to be had here in town, which is a nice little dream. I know what it takes to set up a chemical lab environment, and the state supply surplus is located here in town so if nothing else, I should be able to set up at least a piddly little system for myself and build from there, taking on more as desired.

You guys rock and Skaven, thank you!

PS - Mike, the standing downwind of the HDD didn't work. Sorry, dude.

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A hard man is good to find. ~Mae West