A really weird hard drive failure.

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was doing some googling on head crashes (to find an easy-to-understand explanation) and found this:

http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/

Thoughts?

 

[Cutlass]

It ran a long time with the heads in contact with the disks.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

What would that blue goo be? Something to do with a liquid bearing? Or did IBM Deathstars even have liquid bearings? (Tried googling. I didn't get anything except for one person saying that their deathstar was oozing liquid that hardened and looked like white glue.)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

It ran a long time with the heads in contact with the disks.

it doesnt necessarily have to be for a long time even. A relatively short head crash can kick up enough dust that will then produce a sandblasting effect as the drive spins. Question is, why didnt it show signs of failure immediately?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Where did it say that? All I saw is that they had it for a server and they wanted him to look at it.

Also, that doesn't look like a clean room. Is that a TV remote I see? Or a keyboard?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Where did it say that? All I saw is that they had it for a server and they wanted him to look at it.

Also, that doesn't look like a clean room. Is that a TV remote I see? Or a keyboard?

Where does it say what?

And I dont think they wanted him to take a look at it to recover it, rather just to figure out what the heck happened. You dont really need a clean room for that.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Where does it say it didn't show signs of failure immediately?

Also, any idea about the blue oozing stuff, what it could be?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Where does it say it didn't show signs of failure immediately?

Also, any idea about the blue oozing stuff, what it could be?

To strip the platters like that you need to have the HDD running for a fairly long time. Longer than it would run after a head crash. Which means, it didnt show signs of failure immediately because if it had, it would likely just look like there was a scratch, not complete wiping of the platter surface.

EDIT -- Here's another interesting one for you, fresh off the presses

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Weird!

My money's on that some employee dropped the box (causing a flaw in the drive) then it was transported through artic weather, so when the brittle disk spun up and it hit a flaw it became unbalanced and just shattered.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Weird!

My money's on that some employee dropped the box (causing a flaw in the drive) then it was transported through artic weather, so when the brittle disk spun up and it hit a flaw it became unbalanced and just shattered.

Way to restate the Gizmodo comments. Now here's a question, whats an HDD from a Dell doing in the arctic?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I only read the first page, so I was just making a joke which came out not funny.

I have no idea why it'd be in the artic. Didn't a little while ago these explorer guys take a netbook (or maybe just a regular laptop) up there? And it survived.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Not exactly a failure, but this is an interesting video (and has my beloved despised Maxtor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHypB3h6XR8&feature=related

And this, too. I don't know the type of drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GT2WrsCDmI