MIXONIC
One of Mixonic's CD duplicating machines incurred a hardware failure and refused to boot. With deadlines looming, Mixonic / GreenKey contacted Code Mechanic and requested help in getting one of their CD duplication machines working again.
After performing our initial discovery, it was clear that something was wrong with the SCSI chain on the target machine. We began our work by dispelling any residual SCSI voodoo and swapping out cables and cards as well as ridding the machine of unnecessary connectors and terminators. Through the process of elimination we discovered that one of the five Ultra160 SCSI drives had failed.
Unfortunately, the drive that had failed was the boot drive on the SCSI chain. If the boot drive was dead, we would need to reinstall every piece of software as well restoring the network and system configuration to its proper state. Performing data recovery on the boot drive was critical in getting the CD duplication machine back up and running in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.
The drive in question was on its last leg. It would spin for a minute or so and then stop, displaying very erratic behavior and making some interesting noises. Sometimes the drive wouldn't spin up at all. This implied that the drive was having trouble getting up to speed in spinning at its proper RPM.
Hard drives are much like record players in that their magnetic heads float above the platters much like a needle would on a piece of vinyl. As drives age, the lubrication that allows the platter to spin can get old and can become sticky. As a result of age and adverse temperatures, the viscosity of the lubricant can break down and the spindle can't get up to speed.
Warming the boot drive back up to its standard operating temperature before trying to power a machine on can sometimes work miracles for a dead system. That warmth represents the drive's standard operating environment, and if a drive has failed and has been powered down for any length of time it is not in its standard operating environment.
With that information in mind, we locked in the right temperature (bake at 120-150 degrees fahrenheit for 45 minutes) and warmed the hard drive up to temperature in a Kenmore toaster oven. After the drive was adequately heated we placed it back on the SCSI chain. Warming the drive up gave us enough time to copy all of the data off before the spindle ran into trouble and stopped spinning.
The recovered data was copied to a brand new Ultra160 drive, which was then reinstalled in the CD duplication machine. Recovering 100% of the data in question was quite a victory. Mixonic was off and running with a fully restored CD duplication machine, without the hassle of reinstalling their operating system, software, and settings.
COMPANY LINK: http://www.mixonic.com
*Code Mechanic contracted through GreenKey Systems on this project.
