Fire damaged drives
Contents
Background information
Fire damaged hard drives/platter based storage can be recovered as long as the platters in them are intact and not damaged by the heat or reach its curie point(lose of magnetism due to excessive heat),
if this is the case then a full recovery is impossible
it is ideal if the label and and EPROM on the PCB are intact but not essential as tools such as the PC-3000 can read the data directly from the drive using propriety tooling
Below are the key points surmised
- 1. As long as both the platters and the ROM chip are intact, data is likely recoverable. Without, it is highly unlikely that data can be retrieved.
- 2. Time is Key, corrosion on the platters can cause them to be irreparable within a matter of days, the faster the data is extracted(safely) the more chance there is of a successful recovery.
- 3. A good way of cleaning a drive is to dissemble the drive and soak the external and internal elements of the drive and the PCB
in 99% isopropyl alcohol
This will not stop the corrosion, but it may remove enough of the pre-existing corrosion and prevent any more long enough for the data to be successfully recovered.
Use of a reflow oven on the PCB to eliminate any trap water under the components(be mindful while chips are designed to be exposed to reflow heat, they have already been exposed to the heat of the fire
so the use of a reflow oven by cause more damage) - 4. The required data in the ROM chip is stored within its service area
- 5.NAND chips are designed to withstand high temperatures due to reflow soldering method used during production.(this increases the cases they survive but does not guarantee it
- 6. 60℃ - 140.00°F appears to be the point at which platters within an HDD start to be damaged beyond repair
- 7. In previous cases, the internal drive temperature as reached in excess of 300℃
Handling the ROM/firmware chip
The reason why a ROM chip can not simply be replaced is because it holds calibration data which is unique to each drive, such as
Defects management system(DMS)
this system is split into multiple lists
- Primary defects-list: Details factory mapped defects within the drive
- Grown defects-list: Bad sectors that have grown using
- Translator defects-list: adjusts logical-physical mapping
Calibration data
calibration data to ensure that the the R/W head is properly aligned with the platters
there is also adaptive parameters and servo calibration data which are unique to each drive as parts are not placed perfectly in to a drive, so compensation has to be made in the firmware
it is possible for them to be perfectly, but it is cheaper for the manufactures to align these small errors in firmware.
Drives can technically be realigned but is a lengthy and complex process not to mention expensive, see Head Map Adjustments.
Head maps
As the name suggests the head map is a map of the heads and their location on both in the logical space(handles the logical space of the top of platter 1,
and the physical space(such as head 0 - is located on the top of platter 1).
It is also responsible for the order data is accessed in, enabling or disable a certain head within the stack as well as the adaptive tuning which ensures all the heads are perfectly aligned with the platters.
see head map page for more details.(doesn't currently exist, but I'm working on it. :))
Damage to drive
Heat
The primary issue of any fire is the damage that excessive heat from the fire can cause. In the case of hard drives, this is particularly notable as platters start to be seriously effects by temperatures as low as 60°C/140°F
the problem with heat is the platter's curie point which is the temperature at since they are no longer magnetic and as such lose all there data.
Despite what protection the drives internals may have, the ROM chip is located on the outside of the HDD and does not have the same level of protection, despite being on a similar level of importance
Corrosion through water damage
Typically, water or water based methods are used to extinguish fires, these methods lead to water entering the drives in the form of condensation and humanity which then deposits onto the platter.
Causing oxidation of the platter coating, which makes reading the disk impossible, as the corrosion can not be removed without damaging the magnetic coating.
Damage can also occur due to impurities within the water and liquids used to extinguish the fires, as they get carry into the drive on the water then settle on top of, around and under sensitive components
which can cause short circuits.
for Corrosion to reach a point of no recoverable it only takes a few days even if the drive has been properly cleaned
lose of magnetism
For most platter coating made pre-2020 the curie rate is 227°C/441°F to 160°C/320°F as they are typically made up of cobalt-platinum-chromium alloy with trace elements of iron.
certain drives made after/during 2020 use a process called
Heat assisted magnetic recording(HAMR) that has a higher curie point, typically 550°C/1022°F - 650°C/1202°F.
Location of drive during the fire
Storage method
One study* concluded that storage devices inside laptops fared better than those within desktops. Likely because the laptops encase the drives completely in its chassis where as Desktops do not 2.5" vs 3.5"
Type of drive
SSD's and platter based storage handle extremely high temperatures difference, particularly the NAND chips on the SSD's as they are designed to endure temperatures up to 300°C/572°F in order to be successfully soldered on to their PCB
through reflow soldering during the manufacturing process. This provides them with an advantage over platter based storage due to that fact. Another advantage SSD's have other platter based storage,
is that they contain no moving parts, or exposed parts, so they can not be contaminated like platters within HDD'S can be.
However, they are still prone to humanity getting under the components on the PCB and corrosion of the connections, possibly causing shorts.
Step-by-step guide with images
Insert step-by-step walkthrough with images and summary text here
Step 1 - Open drive in laminar flow hood
Step 2 - Inspect for shorts and other damage(ventilation hole on HDD likely contains lots of contaminates
Step 3 - Plug into power monitor and power drive on
Step 4 - Inspect for any further issues such as clicking noise, platters not spinning or unusual vibrations)
Step 5 - Move ROM chip to new board
Step 6 - Access data stored with the ROM service area
Step 7 - Retrieve the SMART data from the service area to see check on the drives overall condition, before the fire.
Step 8 - Copy a full bit stream-stream copy of the drive in case there is a failure afterwards.
Flow chart of order of operations
Insert a flow chart of steps and actions for each task (create using diagram)
Troubleshooting/tips and tricks
Fixes to any common issues that were encountered or could be easily encountered
Related Topics
Topics such as desoldering to chip off or firmware dumping for disk PCB repairs
Further reading
External references in wiki references can just be cited through the keyword link
- Reference 1: Video regarding the topic
- Reference 2: Donordrives.com
- Reference 3*: Data recovery in a case of fire-damaged Hard Disk Drives and Solid-State Drives