Stiction after long storage
The heads bond with the platter. Makes a hum or strain when attempting to spin. It needs to be opened; repeatedly trying to access it causes additional damage to the platter's alignment.
Common
In 2006 Seagate bought Maxtor, so no new products have been released as Maxtors. Instead, what shows up is the DiamondMax, MaXLine and OneTouch units which were removed from old machines and cupboards – usually containing things people didn’t realise existed only there.
A device that hasn't spun for ten years will be at its most vulnerable with the initial few seconds of spinning. In addition to the lubricants having migrated, the heads could be stuck to the media; and the board would have aged while sitting in place.
The pattern is different from all newer models and that defines how we go about doing our work.
Most current-generation drives show up after they have stopped working. Most Maxtor drives show up simply because someone found them — cleaning out a home, closing down a business or replacing a computer that has just been left in a corner for a decade — and they find photos, financials, documents etc., that can’t be located anywhere else.
Usually these devices have simply gone many years without being powered. Therefore, you generally don't find a device which has been damaged from use. It's a completely new condition, and typically a better one: if your drive has not been powered on for some time, it isn't accumulating damage.
Stiction is the exception. Heads will stick to the platters over a sufficient period of time. If your drive has been shut down for ten years, and now hums or makes a whining noise trying to spin up but can't, then it's sticking, and it should be opened. Simply repeatedly powering it on won't work.
That's because of how people normally attach them.
Attaching an older Maxtor to newer machines, using an IDE or SATA-to-USB converter commonly generates either an option to format the disk; or within Windows Disk Management, to initialise the disk with either MBR or GPT formatting.
Decline both. The drive is not blank. Windows can't read a partition structure created by an operating system two decades old, or one that has degraded slightly, and its only response is to offer to write a new one. If you accept the overwrite option, it will simply overwrite the location map for all data on the drive.
In terms of which is more devastating, GPT. Because it creates a table at the beginning of the disk, and a duplicate of that table at the extreme end of the disk. And the end of the disk is typically where the original file system placed its own backup structures, precisely what a recovery would rebuild upon.
The heads bond with the platter. Makes a hum or strain when attempting to spin. It needs to be opened; repeatedly trying to access it causes additional damage to the platter's alignment.
No noise, won't spin, may occasionally produce a burning odour. The board is repaired by transplanting the original ROM chip across, and leaving the platters alone.
It is common for storage devices to have areas that are no longer able to be read after they sit for many years. The drive is imaged in graduated passes, reading as much data as possible before switching to an area of the disk where there may still be unreadable sections.
Any IDE or early SATA device that your computer cannot see. This isn't a failure. It's just a connectivity issue; the device works perfectly well on the right hardware.
The drive isn't empty. The dialogue should be cancelled. Disconnect and document what prompt was seen, and whether MBR or GPT was selected if someone chose something.
Each time you try to power-on a drive that has been idle for ten years, you take another chance. If it hums, straining sounds occur, or clicking happens, you've spent one more shot, and the drive will not free itself on the fifth try.
Recovering older hard disk drives, or finding a donor for an older one, is essentially what we do for a living so it’s just routine work – it doesn’t matter how old they are; the only thing that can affect when the donor arrives is where we find the correct revision of that part. In Manchester, single units start from £300 + VAT after a 48-hour free diagnostic.
Yes, routinely. The normal condition is that they have been idle for years, therefore the condition is often better than a drive that failed while running.
No. The drive is not blank. Windows does not recognise an old partition structure or a deteriorated one. Accepting writes a new empty partition structure over the map to everything on the disk.
GPT. At both ends of the disk, GPT makes copies of the partition table. The very end of the disk is often where the original file system kept its own backup structures, which is exactly what a recovery would rebuild from.
Stiction is generally the result of the head bonding to the platter due to resting upon it for some time. The drive should be opened instead of continually attempting to access the data. Repeated power-on attempts will cause significant stress on the platters and the alignment mechanism in critical areas of the drive.
No. All legacy devices can be read by suitable equipment. Rather than looking for an adapter, send the device to the appropriate party for reading.
No. Regardless of the era of the single drives, they start from £300 +VAT. The length of time it takes to source a correct revision replacement for an unusual legacy drive is what is affected by its age.