Unresponsive 160 Quantum ProDrive ELS

[Stephen]

As the title says, I have an unresponsive Quantum ProDrive ELS. This drive is from my family's 1993 LC 520 and has a lot of old school projects and silly doodles on it. As a result, I'm interested in restoring the information.

I see there's a spacer available on eBay for this specific drive. I was disappointed to see the price is $15+ for a small 3D printed component (but that's a conversation for another day).

Does anyone have suggestions? I'm open to very minor mods to the drive (this spacer being on the extreme side) and also any recommendations for data recovery services which members have sent Quantum ProDive ELS drives to in the past.

 

[Drake]

I'm a big fan of MacGyver-ing old HDDs in extremely dusty/damp environments with dirty hands and sharp rusty tools.

kidding... sort of. I've fixed many of these drives with o-rings+heatshrink. Awlays in a very clean area with a fan to stop dust from settling.
I'd consider this the last resort if there isn't an actual service available.

 

[3lectr1c]

as an emergency fix, you could try sticking it in the freezer overnight. It won't harm the electronics, but it may help freeze up the sticky rubber that's getting the head stuck. That and a light hit to the top of the drive may get it working temporarily again to get the files off.

 

[retr01]

That is interesting, @3lectr1c. What is your experience so far on that "emergency fix" deep freezing the hard drive? Isn't that cryonics and reviving the hard drive 70 years later?

 

[Volvo242GT]

As the title says, I have an unresponsive Quantum ProDrive ELS. This drive is from my family's 1993 LC 520 and has a lot of old school projects and silly doodles on it. As a result, I'm interested in restoring the information.

I see there's a spacer available on eBay for this specific drive. I was disappointed to see the price is $15+ for a small 3D printed component (but that's a conversation for another day).

Does anyone have suggestions? I'm open to very minor mods to the drive (this spacer being on the extreme side) and also any recommendations for data recovery services which members have sent Quantum ProDive ELS drives to in the past.

Does the drive seem to make a "skrrrick" noise, then do nothing other than spin up? If so, you might try the board from another known-working ELS170S drive. Possible that something got fried on the board, which is what I suspect happened to the LPS240S that used to reside in my Centris 650. Worked great until I connected the LED that was in my IIci to the terminal on the board. Stopped working as soon as I powered up the machine. Posted about it on the other forum and responses were that it had a head crash and likely had sticky rubber bumper syndrome. Decided to pop the lid off. No damage to the platters, and the rubber bumpers were not sticky at all. So, my thoughts are to grab another board, probably from an Apple ROMed 240 drive, swap it over and see if it'll boot one of my Macs. If it does, great. If not, swap the board back over to the donor drive, then set that one up for my IIci.

Might be worth trying.

 

[3lectr1c]

That is interesting, @3lectr1c. What is your experience so far on that "emergency fix" deep freezing the hard drive? Isn't that cryonics and reviving the hard drive 70 years later?

I’ve never tried it myself, but I’ve heard many stories of it working to temporarily fix dead drives.

 

[Stephen]

as an emergency fix, you could try sticking it in the freezer overnight. It won't harm the electronics, but it may help freeze up the sticky rubber that's getting the head stuck. That and a light hit to the top of the drive may get it working temporarily again to get the files off.

I've already tried this. Once for an hour (which had little to no effect) and a second time for 24+ hours. After the second attempt the drive will spin up, click a little, and then spin down with no further activity.