Hard Drive Surgery - Amatuer Doctor

Status
Not open for further replies.

snappy

Beta member
Messages
3
You go backpacking for 9 months take 8000 photo's and 5 hours of MP4 video put it onto a new Hard Drive and a week later watch the hard drive die with your stuff inside. The quote for professional recovery is at almost $US1500.

The hard drive (A Western Digital 160G) won't spin-up and when my retailer tried to test it smoke came out when power was put in.

I am thinking the spindle motor is fried, there were no noise, no nothing when it died just quiet death and no spin.
**
Is it possible to remove the platters from this drive and install them in an identical new drive to solve the problem long enough to get my data back.

Does anyone know the steps in doing this? Anything special I need? Am I in way over my head?
**
Would hugely appreciate any help or references. Thanks an US1500.
 
Yep you reinstall the platters into a new drive, basicly a swap.

To properly do this you need a CLEAN ROOM. Doing this without a clean room you run a HIGH risk of ruining the drive.

Search around, unless you have a clean room this is not something you should handle.
 
OMG snappy.

My stomach churned reading that.

So sorry man, that's aweful. I cant even imagine. Good luck with the recovery!
 
i wouldn't recommend doing this. There is almost no way of not letting the heads touch the platters if you move them. They platters and heads are so close to each other that the touch of a finger would probably make them touch. They dont physically touch the platters, but are extremely close... so close that a strand of hair would not fit between them. Also, if ONE... JUST ONE spec of dust so much as touches a platter... its done. If not done immediately, it will be soon... very soon.

If you can possibly pull that off without professional help, then you MAY get it to work and MAY get the drive to work JUST long enough to get your data. Very small chance of success though...

sad story :-(
 
It takes time to destroy a HDD with one small spec of dust, hell i found one with out the cover coverd in dust and it still worked for 10 min :)
 
the distance between the heads and the platter are actually so close, not even a smoke particle could fit between it, and smoke is smaller than dust which is smaller than hair ;)

You get the idea.

Sooo yeah basically you can't swap out those platters, if smoke came out of your HD, that smoke probably ruined the platters
 
No because the platters sit right on top of the motor, and there are usualy 8 hex screws holding the platters down and there extremly hard to turn.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom