Abstract
The experiment is about reverse engineering in a laptop machine with a faulty hard disk. One is supposed to examine the laptop machine with a problem. The matter subject at hand is supposed to educate one on how to open up the hardware components in a machine with a suspected faulty operating system. Components involved in the experiment at hand would entail and highlight on the need for using tools in troubleshooting a problem and solving or either upgrading system components from conclusive detail.
The list of components that would be involved would include specialized screwdrivers, for this case in opening and loosening nuts. Other tools would include data cables e.g. address bus cables necessary for driving a hard disk externally on a different hardware. Furthermore, insulators for when dealing with electrical hardware in the testing of the hard disk. The formula or approach for solving the issue would involve the writing down of parts and documenting the parts as they are removed or detached from the hardware. Diagrams that would be involved in the running of this experiment are like drawing the overall layout of the computer or laptop motherboard and all its connectors to the hard disk mainly. This gives an architectural overview of the components. The drawings formulate the charts the graphs gotten from analysis of the experiment at hand. Programs to be used involve solving the issue include operating system software and troubleshooting programs e.g. Linux OS. The experiment involves the opening up of laptop disconnecting or detaching the hard disk from the motherboard before examining it. The HDD is then mounted onto external already working PC using cable connectors e.g. IDE/SATA to USB or vice versa data transfer cables. Dynamic and vital information are backed up before one starts working on the device hardware.
Observations
The specialized screwdrivers, for this case, ease the opening and loosening of nuts. The data cables e.g. address bus cables necessary for driving a hard disk externally on a different hardware and aids I data transfer for backing up lost information. In addition, insulators for when dealing with electrical hardware in the testing of the hard disk helped in prevention of unnecessary electric shock. The formula or approach for solving the issue would involve the writing down of parts and documenting the parts as they are removed or detached from the hardware. Diagrams that would be observed in the administration of this experimentation are for instance the hard drive’s overall layout on the computer or laptop motherboard and all its device connectors to the hard disk mainly. This in addition, it gave me an architectural outline of the apparatuses and their functionality. Here is a drawing I came up with in the experiment: From which I formulated the table charts highlighting on each components function, as gotten from analysis of the experiment at hand.
Programs to be used involve solving the issue include operating system software and troubleshooting programs e.g. Linux OS and the Hirens boot CD recovery operating system. The experiment involves the opening up of laptop disconnecting or detaching the hard disk from the motherboard.
Discussion
One new phenomenon I learned is the use of jumper blocks, specifically how they are used on PC motherboards to clear the CMOS data, changing the BIOS conformation settings. The method lets the laptop to boot if a recent BIOS configuration that made it incapable of booting up, or if one had forgotten the CMOS boot security password. Most laptop hard disk problems are unsolvable, i.e. once a laptop cannot boot from the hard disk even after running a system diagnostic on the hard disk, and then the hard disk can be considered as crashed and failed. The only hope for salvaging anything would be through retrieval of the data in the hard disk. One would wrap the hard disk in an airtight polythene bag and placing it a freezer for about an hour or two, thus, contracting the hard disk parts and reconnecting them temporarily, long enough to complete recovery. Data recovery tools are vital in information retrieval as they provide future data backup in case something goes wrong during the HDD repair.
Conclusion
This experiment enlightened me on the different non-mainstream ways of data recovery and the safest ways to handle computer hardware. I also had to learn on the different uses and broad compatibility of different hardware components i.e. one can run a hard disk externally using another existing full working system to retrieve vital data from an internal hard disk, simply via the use of IDE/SATA to USB conversion cables.
