Help on old HD.

Q

I've got an old HD in a computer. When I turn it on, it refuses to either spin up, or it's heads to work, I'm not sure which. Any ideas?

-Q

Bash

is it getiing power?

Q

Yea, I can see the activity light blink alot.

-Q

Mr.BeanBag

Is it clean? There might be some diust or debree in it stopping it from running correctly.

Blink

Maybe it's just aged?

Mr.BeanBag

yeh, i got loads of old hd. most of them don't even work

BOD

try tapping it gently sometimes the arm gets stuck and the drive won't spin up

Q

I've tried whacking my Mac and it doesn't seem to work...

-Q

BOD

take the drive apart.....

Q

BOD wrote:

take the drive apart.....

Considering that I haven't the means to get the machine apart...

-Q

BOD

angle grinder!

MentalMadness

I once repaired a 500mb drive by whacking the drive, in order to get the heads loose. It works most of the times.

BOD

its how i fixed my laptop yesterday...

stitch

I havent had a hdd fail on me in a while, and when one does, its usually a 1gb or 2gb and thats when i chuck that one to the trash and grab a new one out of the closet.

No good hdds have ever failed on me.

BOD

the ones that fail for me already have thousands of bad sectors and years old anyways...

IBMWarpster

LOL, I never had one fail. I have a 20GB that failed SMART tests in the BIOS and thousands of bad cluters

TCPMeta

Might have to do what i've done plenty of times in the past. Take off the front cover and jumpstart the drive by spinning the platters, use a dustfree cloth though.

IBMWarpster

or tap it on the edge of the platter with something.

BOD

if you take it apart you might find something is loose.