Switch Platters?????

[geekster]

I have a major problem. My wife's hard drive quit working. It makes clicking noises, but I don't think its spinning. She has a lot of data that she expects me to recover. I searched the web for any info to help me, but most sites were not clear enough on their advise. Is it possible to put her platters in an identical drive without losing the data? I need facts more than opinions in this case. Your input is appreciated.

 

[eyeCpc]

The clicking sounds are generally drive heads hitting the platters which is bad news to start with. And no you can't swap platters factory sealed air and water tight from one drive to another.

One little spec of dust or debris, moisture say good bye! If you are unable to read the drive at all you are left with the option to bring it or send it in to a professional data recovery service with another drive or blank media for anything they recover off of it. That will cost however.

 

[peterhuang913]

No, you can't switch out the platters. If the harddrive is already clicking, it's too late.

 

[wicked23]

You could always try the freezer trick to get off some of the data.

 

[eyeCpc]

The clicking sound is the head slapping the platters where you never want to hear that at all. If it was simply a case where you couldn't write to the drive but could still read from it there are a few different ways to recover data/files off of it.

Unfortunately the best way to proceed will see a price tag since only a pro recovery service will be equipped to open a drive up in a sterile particle free environment to recover anything from it. That can get very pricey at times!

 

[peterhuang913]

Actually, the clicking sound is the head slapping against the middle column. Once it does that, the head is damaged and so the data can't be read.

 

[Peter.Cort]

there are still ways to get the data off it, its just quite expensive to do so, so unless its very important documents that have a very relative use to something quite important then don't bother and just move on.

 

[eyeCpc]

Actually, the clicking sound is the head slapping against the middle column. Once it does that, the head is damaged and so the data can't be read.

Normally you would think that but there are times when that small 3 nanometer gap gets closed up as well between heads and the platters themselves. You know the rest there namely drive is toast!

Besides documents other things like family photos and other unreplacable items would be the reason for paying out a good price for retrieval. For lame things like the latest driver or Windows updates, mp3 downloads, etc. that can be easily found again you would be better off using a drive nuker to see any personal information wiped and simply tossing it into the nearest recycle bin. For the cost of recovery you can easily buy a new drive for that amount.

 

[Greg]

I've got old hard drives that "click" and still work fine.

 

[eyeCpc]

You are fortunate since the actual problem may not be the heads themselves. That would sound more like a broken tooth on a gear as one thing to consider.