by John Gaudio Part one of this article can be found here. Hard disk drives are essentially sealed against dust, smoke particles, and the like. A simple hard disk consists of a round disk coated with magnetic material, and a head that moves radially over the surface of that disk. The disk rotates and data is stored in concentric circles on the disk. Craig tells me that the head normally floats about 50 atoms above the magnetic material, and that sometimes the head crashes into the magnetic material. Head crashes are very bad things. They can damage the head, and/or the layer of magnetic material that stores my precious ones and zeros. I just learned that the easy solution, cloning, or copying the data from the problem drive without physically opening it up, didn't work. So Craig will now take my drive into the clean room, a room where dust and smoke particles are virtually eliminated, and open up my drive. There he'll examine the head and the magnetic material to see what's keeping the head from reading parts of my data. In a perfect world he might find some intermittent problem with the head, be able to correct that problem, and suddenly read all my data beautifully. That's not likely, but I can hope. For now, I'll wait for good news, and keep saying my prayers. Digitalmedix can be reached at 866-DIG-MEDX, (866-344-6339.) | 
