HDD Refurbishing Service

[parksplace5454]

Does anyone know of a service that will refurbish hard disk drives.  Not interested in data recovery; just want disk drives refurbished so they can be used again.

[rokgpsman]

Not sure what you could do to refurbish a hard drive? It contains rotating platters coated with a magnetic coating, they are inside a dustfree compartment and shouldn't be opened outside of a clean dustfree room. There is a motor but no one replaces them unless there is priceless data they are trying to recover. The electronic controller board can be replaced if you have another one just like but that isn't done unless there is a defect.

If you are wanting the data to be wiped clean from the drive to erase all traces of what is currently on it that can be done. Are you just wanting to load different game software onto the drive? Do you also need to install different boot software or partition it differently than it currently is?

[parksplace5454]

I have some good disks and some disks that will not boot up for the Odyssey (Quantum and Seagate).  I was hoping there might be a service with a clean room that could repair the ones that will not boot up.  I wanted to be able to use them to make additional copies of the good disks.  My searching of the Internet has not thus far revealed such a place.

[rickhunter]

It costs a fortune to have that done, as the disk has to be basically re-manufactured, AND you have totally obsolete hard drives. You are better off trying to find some used drives of the same model on e-bay.  Nobody makes platters and heads for those drives anymore, since they are probably more than 10 years old already.  Hard drive manufacturers will replace drives in warranty with newer drives if the original is not available, the only ones that get re-furbished are the ones currently in production or just out of production where parts can be obtained.

[LINDAM]

Am I missing something?? Is there something special about these drives that you can't just buy a similar drive.

[lookes]

What are the model #s of the drives? I assume they are... older. Do they all have the same symptoms? I do have a clean bench but I doubt those would be worth opening. If it is just firmware damage it may be worth resurrecting them if there is a good reason to...  Machines locked to certain drive serial numbers or models numbers etc. If internal problems, no.

[parksplace5454]

Well,, I guess the conventional wisdom is this is not a worthwhile endeavor.  These drives have various problems; some do not spin up, some do but yield a SCSI fault on the Odyssey diagnostic display.... alas... I guess it's off to the dumpster...
I would like to thank everyone for your inputs.

[rickhunter]

Am I missing something?? Is there something special about these drives that you can't just buy a similar drive.

The Odyssey required a specific sized SCSI drive in order to pass the security in the boot process.  All gaming devices have this requirement, be it CF card, Eprom, etc.  Must be same capacity and model as intended.

[parksplace5454]

Completely agree and understand.  The two used were the Quantum Viking VK45S721 and the Seagate Barracuda ST15150N.  The ones shown in the photo are of those two types and were all pulled from Odysseys.  I am not aware of any other HDD that will work in their place.

[rbeby]

I've used this adapter to read & recover & reformat. hard drives. don't know if it will connect to a SCSI drive.

Cables to Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or SERIAL SATA drive adapter, found at AMAZON.

[rokgpsman]

Well,, I guess the conventional wisdom is this is not a worthwhile endeavor.  These drives have various problems; some do not spin up, some do but yield a SCSI fault on the Odyssey diagnostic display.... alas... I guess it's off to the dumpster...
I would like to thank everyone for your inputs.

Since you have nothing to lose you can try swapping the controller cards (circuit board on back of drive) on identical drives if you think the problem with some of the drives is in the board, see if you can get one back working that way. They usually just have a few screws and a flex cable attached. We used to do that to some bad drives to make a few good ones but it is hit & miss.

[rokgpsman]

Am I missing something?? Is there something special about these drives that you can't just buy a similar drive.

The Odyssey required a specific sized SCSI drive in order to pass the security in the boot process.  All gaming devices have this requirement, be it CF card, Eprom, etc.  Must be same capacity and model as intended.

Could a larger capacity drive be partitioned into the correct size drive partition to fool the Odyssey? Say partition a 1gb drive as a 512mb drive (or whatever the original drive size was)? Would waste some of the drive storage but would be correct size then.

 

[parksplace5454]

Some good thoughts... will check them out.  I did go through the whole batch of Quantum drives replacing the electronics board on each one with a known good board... yielded 2 more good drives... well worth the effort... thanks!

[rokgpsman]

If you are needing more drives like these then there are sellers on amazon.com selling the Seagate drives from about $80 and higher, all used but some are from sellers with good feedback rating and offer guarantee for short period of time. There are several listed on ebay for $70 and less.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST15150N-Barracuda-50-pin-Refurbished/dp/B0084ZKIQO/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1428469052&sr=1-1&keywords=st15150n

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=st15150n&_sop=15