Hard-drive data recovery

It takes a screwdriver and 5 minutes.

Really? Is it just a few screws and a ribbon connector or more. Uber don't solder... Where would I get a new board from? Btw it's a 320gb SATA not as I described earlier.

Cheers

The best way to do it would be to buy an identical hard drive on ebay and just swap. Need not be new as long as it works.

The donor drive needs to be as close as possible - I don't know that it has to be from the same production run, but close would be good.

The best way to do it would be to buy an identical hard drive on ebay and just swap. Need not be new as long as it works.

And Maplin have those star head screw drivers?

Maplin, ebay, etc etc

Truly great place this. Thanks for the advice.

U

Id offer to help but there isn't anything I can do that you can't really.

If you manage to swap the PCB out and the data isn't immediately visible drop me a line.

Now get yourself a gold star :)

http://www.wikihow.com/Swap-a-Hard-Drive-Controller-Circuit

A follow up on the fritzed hard drive...

I replaced the PCB on the drive (Easier than I thought) and the drive spins but doesn't mount. So I took it to a Mac repair place that just put a new power supply in my tower and they took a look.

Verdict: Still not working. They said that the heads are either not responding or stuck. Given the drive does spin I assume not on the discs themselves.

Youtube throws up mountains of DIYers gleefully pulling their drives apart, including this charmingly demented fella who uses a dentistry tool to pull a stuck head back off the platter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiEKZhDapo

The only reason I'm persisting with this btw is it's 320gb of music, some very rare and difficult to get again.

So... should I dive in and give it a go? If I opened it up and found the head assembly in the resting position, would it be easy enough to replace it with the one in the doner drive? It does feel like I've got bugger all to lose as I can't justify potentially spending hundreds getting it done.

Am I missing a trick? Some people seem to say tapping the HD while it's spinning might work...

Sorry about the long post. Some advice greatly appreciated.

If you open the drive it really needs to be in a clean environment as bits of dust and debris can fuck it up.

Sometimes putting a drive in to the freezer helps.

Don't open it.

Any chance you could get it to SE1 for me to take a look?

And don't put it in the freezer....at least not yet! Thats last resort territory...

And don't put it in the freezer....at least not yet! Thats last resort territory...

Freezer is the second to last resort

Think opening will be the last resort.

Opening it won't work. Not even worth trying.

The disk heads floats on a cushion of air so small that there is literally no way to open a HD without introducing contaminates that will damage the platters. Surgical clean rooms aren't even clean enough.

Opening it won't work. Not even worth trying.

The disk heads floats on a cushion of air so small that there is literally no way to open a HD without introducing contaminates that will damage the platters. Surgical clean rooms aren't even clean enough.

There are companies that can remove the platters and put them in to another drive but that is very pricey. If you are at that point what do you have to lose?

Western Digital head unstick and replacement process - HddSurgery - YouTube

Lynx you didn't mention that you were suggesting that a professional company with a microelectronic grade clean room did the work. It sounded like you were suggesting opening it yourself and/or putting it in the freezer ...neither of which will work.

A clean room disassembly and HD recovery will likely cost £3k to £5k depending on work required and volume of data to be recovered. Thats what Ontrack used to charge anyway.

From memory, I think there are only a handful of labs in the whole of Europe to do this kind of work.

A follow up on the fritzed hard drive...

I replaced the PCB on the drive (Easier than I thought) and the drive spins but doesn't mount. So I took it to a Mac repair place that just put a new power supply in my tower and they took a look.

Verdict: Still not working. They said that the heads are either not responding or stuck. Given the drive does spin I assume not on the discs themselves.

Youtube throws up mountains of DIYers gleefully pulling their drives apart, including this charmingly demented fella who uses a dentistry tool to pull a stuck head back off the platter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iiEKZhDapo

The only reason I'm persisting with this btw is it's 320gb of music, some very rare and difficult to get again.

So... should I dive in and give it a go? If I opened it up and found the head assembly in the resting position, would it be easy enough to replace it with the one in the doner drive? It does feel like I've got bugger all to lose as I can't justify potentially spending hundreds getting it done.

Am I missing a trick? Some people seem to say tapping the HD while it's spinning might work...

Sorry about the long post. Some advice greatly appreciated.

Uber...when you say the disk won't mount...what did it say in disk manager when they tried to view/mount the disk? Was the disk at least visible in disk manager?

Hi Stonehenge

By not mounting, I mean (OS X here) just not appearing on the desk top, in the finder or disk utility. Nada. Does spin though. I've got a SATA/IDE desktop dock so I know it's powering up.

Learning a big lesson in backing up data here...

Re a trip south, I'd gladly head your way but wouldn't want to put you out.