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Hard drives are known to suffer "sticktion" where the heads get stuck to the platter and either the drive won't spin up or it spins up and the heads damage the

by wmf 2y ago

Hard drives are known to suffer "sticktion" where the heads get stuck to the platter and either the drive won't spin up or it spins up and the heads damage the platters. I imagine hard drives could also have bad capacitors but I haven't heard of that happening.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>I imagine hard drives could also have bad capacitors but I haven't heard of that happening. That's very unlikely. If you're thinking of the "capacitor plague" of the 2000s, that only affected electrolytic capacitors, since it was caused by the Chinese poorly copying the formula for capacitor electrolyte. I don't believe hard drives used electrolytic capacitors in that time period, simply due to their size, though I could be wrong.
bogwog 2y ago
That seems like it could be solved by (carefully) disassembling the drive for long term storage, adding a thin piece of paper or tape under the heads, etc.
- wmf 2y ago
  Disassembling a drive just allows dust to get in and cause more damage. Come to think of it, in recent drives the heads fully unload onto a ramp so they're probably less likely to stick.
zh3 2y ago
In the old drives of 5" HDDs the head stepper motor shaft was external, and if a drive got stuck a slight twist of the stepper shaft would unstick the heads after which the drive would spin up (well, as long as it didn't rip heads off the HDA so it was always a calculated risk). Happened to me when I got a call out to a large UK outfit who'd have an extended power cut and knew recovery was going to be fun. First stop was a particularly critical PC which had exactly this problem, so open the case, touch the HDD just right and off it went - happy with that, and to the next item. Anyway, the recovery operation went well, and this particular incident came floating back by way of a hushed comment from a manager a few years later about this tech who'd come in to help with the recovery, and who'd "...laid his hands on the PC, and it came back to life!" :)
hilbert42 2y ago
A known fact, magnetic media loses a significant percentage of its magnetic remanence every year. Leave a HD, audio or videotape long enough without regenerating it and eventually you'll have nothing left. Stiction and faulty caps etc. are incidentall/secondary issues.

by wmf 2y ago

shiroiushi 2y ago

>I imagine hard drives could also have bad capacitors but I haven't heard of that happening. That's very unlikely. If you're thinking of the "capacitor plague" of the 2000s, that only affected electrolytic capacitors, since it was caused by the Chinese poorly copying the formula for capacitor electrolyte. I don't believe hard drives used electrolytic capacitors in that time period, simply due to their size, though I could be wrong.

bogwog 2y ago

That seems like it could be solved by (carefully) disassembling the drive for long term storage, adding a thin piece of paper or tape under the heads, etc.

wmf 2y ago
Disassembling a drive just allows dust to get in and cause more damage. Come to think of it, in recent drives the heads fully unload onto a ramp so they're probably less likely to stick.

zh3 2y ago

In the old drives of 5" HDDs the head stepper motor shaft was external, and if a drive got stuck a slight twist of the stepper shaft would unstick the heads after which the drive would spin up (well, as long as it didn't rip heads off the HDA so it was always a calculated risk). Happened to me when I got a call out to a large UK outfit who'd have an extended power cut and knew recovery was going to be fun. First stop was a particularly critical PC which had exactly this problem, so open the case, touch the HDD just right and off it went - happy with that, and to the next item. Anyway, the recovery operation went well, and this particular incident came floating back by way of a hushed comment from a manager a few years later about this tech who'd come in to help with the recovery, and who'd "...laid his hands on the PC, and it came back to life!" :)

hilbert42 2y ago

A known fact, magnetic media loses a significant percentage of its magnetic remanence every year. Leave a HD, audio or videotape long enough without regenerating it and eventually you'll have nothing left. Stiction and faulty caps etc. are incidentall/secondary issues.