Heads and/or motor broken... Swap?

[smandurlo]

Hello everybody,

If a hard drive has serious problems with heads or with the motor and, obviously, it is not possible to access the data, a swap of the internal disks in another drive, same model and firmware, can make the data accessible?

I can make a glove box to manage with them to prevent dust.

Thank you.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Without a couple of thousand in tools and supplies?

Not a chance in hell........

[smandurlo]

Without a couple of thousand in tools and supplies?

Not a chance in hell........

I am not asking what I need to make it possible, I am asking if doing it the drive that will receive the platters from the donor will read the data inside.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

I would say you have a like a 5% chance of success.

You have to think of ALL of the limitations here.

Like have the platters been damaged? (Super likely if the heads are damage or the motor slow-downs\Skipping from false starts have not scored them)

Can you find the EXACT same drive for parts? I mean it has to be EXACTLY the same.

(Note I am being VERY generous with 5%)

Edited December 12, 2011 by Kelsenellenelvian

[Tripredacus]

Plus I am thinking how you can possibly reseal the drive when putting it back together... Not to mention that some small piece of dust or debris could get onto the platter during the transfer.

[smandurlo]

of course it is not to resell the drive.

It is for data restoration.

Anyway, thank you for your reply

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Not resell ---> RESEAL

[Tripredacus]

Yes, the entire reason for the drives to be sealed (except for the vent) is to keep unwanted microscopic (or larger) objects away from the innards. Especially since there are some very powerful magnets inside of there, charged particle of all those things you hear about in those furnace cleaning commercials may decide to zoom over to their favorite magnetically charged objects if it isn't sealed... Or even possible to happen as soon as the drive is taken apart. I don't know of any friends who have a sealed clean room to even attempt such a task as a platter swap, much less let me in there to do it.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Seriously if you think you can afford to buy\purchase\acquire the tools and materials for your IDEA you would save money\hassle\time and gain a HUGE chance of recovering your data by sending it to a expert company.

While pricey they have a large amount of successes and you would be spending ALOT of resources for 1 single attempt at home, that which you will most assuredly fail.

Edited December 12, 2011 by Kelsenellenelvian

[smandurlo]

Not resell ---> RESEAL

I read it too fast, I am not native English speaker and I make silly mistakes time to time

Seriously if you think you can afford to buy\purchase\acquire the tools and materials for your IDEA you would save money\hassle\time and gain a HUGE chance of recovering your data by sending it to a expert company.

While pricey they have a large amount of successes and you would be spending ALOT of resources for 1 single attempt at home, that which you will most assuredly fail.

The IDEA was not for a single hard drive of mine, I have a rather good system to back up my data, but for my clients. I am having more and more people asking me to recover their data. I was exploring the idea to improve my possibilities to recover.

Thank you for your support. To me it seems it is possible only to swap heads and pray God the surface is not too damaged.

[jaclaz]

Some info.

The bla-bla-bla about clean-rooms is exactly that (bla-bla-bla).

There is not any actual need for a clean room to open and close a drive (we are not talking about reconditioning/buliding a disk drive, we are talking about having the disk work for the few hours needed to get the data from it).

You can get away with a poorman clean room (making one using an aquarium or a barbecue, or something like that, is easy, see an example here:

http://hardmaster.info/eng/articles/30-05-2009.html

Swapping platters is easily doable on SINGLE platter disks only.

On multiple platters disks (and expecially with the recent Seagate ones) it is simply NOT possible to do it without specific alignment tools and A LOT of experience.

Even "parking" the head outside the disk surface is a very delicate chore that needs a specific tool and/or, AGAIN, LOTS of experience.

Here is one specific tool for the Seagates heads:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hddsurgery-seagate-7200-read-write-head-change-tool-t17926.html

Here is one of the traditional "platters exchange tools":

http://www.hdrconline.com/platter-exchanger-tool.php

And here is the"newish approach" (transplant the whole spindle):

http://forum.hddguru.com/hddsurgery-spindle-replacement-tool-for-seagate-manual-t20514.html

jaclaz