All Maxtors still in service today are somewhere between 15 and 25 years old. Most come to us not from heavy use, but because someone powered up an old drive from storage to get some information off it and it would not start.
The greatest danger facing an idle hard drive is when it begins spinning. For many years, the lubricants in a drive will migrate. Heads could be sticking to the platters of the drive and all components on the board could age. One ill-fated spin (the first) can damage a drive that a careful attempt would have recovered.
Since Maxtor stopped making hard drives in 2006 after being acquired by Seagate, the latest Maxtor model is approaching two decades old. As time passes, three of these types of issues occur on their own; the spindle grease (lubricant) on the motor gets thicker and thicker due to migration, which forces the motor to work harder to get up to speed; the heads may “stick” to the platter instead of riding along a ramp (“stiction”) as they normally do because the head has been parked against the platter’s surface (instead of the ramp), so they cannot move once stuck; and the electrolytic capacitors on the circuit board can dehydrate, causing a drive that worked at one point in time to no longer power-up.
The causes listed above relate to the inactivity of the drive (i.e., it has been idle) versus its use; therefore, they commonly appear when something first needs to be read from the drive as soon as you start to use it.
If there is a rhythmic clicking upon powering up, it likely indicates that the heads cannot locate their servo position and you should stop right now. If your drive produces a buzzing/whining noise that occurs repeatedly every couple of seconds without spinning up, it is indicative that your motor is fighting stiction or the bearings have failed. If your drive will spin up to speed normally but is not detected, it would suggest that the issue lies with either the circuit board or firmware of the drive, not with the mechanical components, and this is typically the easiest of the three to recover.
What they all have in common is that the valuable information came from the initial power-up. The subsequent power-ups are simply additional (repetitive) damage.
The stuck head-stack is freed up and, where the heads were damaged, a matching set of heads from a donor of the same family/firmware is installed. Where there is a motor seizure we move the platter pack to a donor chassis while keeping the alignment intact. When there is board failure we either repair the board, or swap it out, with the original ROM adaptives retained from the prior configuration. Note: A Maxtor board from a different unit will not operate as intended unless we retain the original ROM adaptives.
The hard drive is then copied (read-only) to an image using small reads; all other operations (file system restore, extract data, verify etc.) will be performed against this image. Since an older drive may only provide one good read, it’s best to use this for the backup image and not the original.
OneTouch, Basics and Personal Storage units are internal Maxtor drives which have been connected via a USB or FireWire bridge. As with all other external drives, failure of the bridge is going to occur at least as often as failure of the actual disk. Therefore, when possible, we recommend sending the entire unit, unopened; some versions of these units do not allow access to the disk after it has been removed from the enclosure. If a OneTouch unit is not recognised by your device, but appears to be functioning normally (i.e., it is silent), there is a high likelihood that the disk within is operational while the logic board controlling it has failed.
The cost of one single Maxtor drive is from £300 +VAT which will be quoted to you in writing after our free 48-hour diagnostic, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data. All donor work requires a 50% deposit with the final balance being due only once the data has been recovered.
No. Maxtor were purchased by Seagate Technology and stopped manufacturing drives as early as 2006. As such, all firmware updates, drivers and spares for Maxtor drives are no longer manufactured. In the event of failure, you are left with the option of recovering the data, as opposed to repairing the drive.
It’s because they were stored; storage causes damage. Lubrication for spindle wear migrates and thickens over time; heads (parked) can attach to the platters’ surface over time; board components dry out etc. So a drive could possibly run perfectly at the point where it is stored and then fail months/years down the line simply based on the fact that it has aged. Failure is a result of age (time), not how recently you last ran the drive.
No. Clicking means that the heads are unable to locate the servo data of the disks, and when it buzzes but does not spin up, it is likely due to a stuck bearing or stiction. Each time you try, both issues worsen and repeated spin ups are typically the main reasons why a recoverable legacy hard drive becomes unrecoverable. Unplug and do not touch it again.
Generally. Internal drives (such as those used by OneTouch and Basics) have their own internal bridges, which fail at least as frequently as the disk. It is recommended that you send us the entire enclosure instead of just taking out the drive. There are a number of models where the disk can’t be properly accessed once it has been removed.
A single Maxtor unit costs from £300 + VAT, subject to a fixed written quote after a no-charge, 48-hour diagnostic. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. Where there is need for donor parts work, we require a 50% payment with the remaining balance only charged upon successful completion of the recovery.