Hard Drive Recovery Possibility?

Hi peeps, I've had a 160GB SATA 3.5" hard drive pack up on me and need some help with possible solutions as to how to recover data.

I've done some investigating (yup, had it in bits) and determined it is a failure of the read/write arm(s) which keep returning to their start position without reaching the outer edge of the disk, it's repeatedly banging it's head on a brick wall so to speak. This is either from worn parts or a control/circuit failure me thinks.

Here's the dilemma...I have an identical size and make of disk and was wondering if it is possible to swop the 3 stacked platters from the knackered drive into the good one to recover the date. Or is something like volume information, disk I.D. and boot sectors etc going to prevent me doing so?

Anyone ever tried this or have any other suggestions.

Not CRITICAL data lost but some artwork that took ages to create, so not the end of the world and even though it was a system disk, I am obviously back up and running after a new XP install on an older drive.

Thankfully, I use another disk for the REALLY important stuff....phew!

Cheers in advance for any help.

reply to post by nerbot


You can try www.grc.com...
It usually works with pesky drives that seem dead.

However I would wager that the control board is bad. I would switch that out first before opening up the drive.
and risk total data loss.

Did you say you 'had it in bits'? As in... You broke the hermetic seals of the drive case to open the perfectly clean, sterile environment inside?

If so... You CAN save it. Maybe...but last I saw, the shops that could work with an exposed HD platter that has already been hopelessly contaminated with airborne pollution charge 5 figures on the low end.

Let me know if you have another solution come up though...or if 'in bits' meant something else and the case is still intact. If it hasn't been opened? Maybe...perhaps..a techie shop could do something without a clean room and bunny suits.

grey580
reply to post by nerbot

 

You can try www.grc.com...
It usually works with pesky drives that seem dead.

However I would wager that the control board is bad. I would switch that out first before opening up the drive.
and risk total data loss.

Hear, hear, try swapping the disk controller but, if the data is critical, take it into a clean room and have them swap out the platters.

Yes it will work but more likely it is the logic circuits not the drive arm. Don't change the platters, change the boards from the good drive to the bad one.

So great info peeps.

When I say "had it in bits", what I did was open the case, remove the circuit board to remove the arms/heads, and check everything I could. All went back together and same problem repeated.

I also installed it as a non system disk on the new up and running computer but no change.

Easy enough to swap boards and see if that helps, good idea.

Not worth spending money on so not sending anywhere and will use this an an excersise in tinkering.

It works. I've done it several times. It was always the boards that were bad. Let us know.

main thing to do is to stop using it...every time you try you could be grinding down more of the platter and the dust produced could be going into the other platters, don't bother with the average joe tech shop as they'll have no more tech tools than perhaps a screwdriver to open the drive up, what you want is an exact make/model/revision etc PCB that matches exactly your drive and swap that over first and see if the problem still exists and if it does its probably going to need clean room and that will cost serious money but sometimes i've seen where they'll do the fault finding for free and charge per mb/gb recovered and since you only want a few files it might be cheap

if all else fails.. search amazon or where ever you buy stuff from and look for a "usb sata ide hard drive adapter" and it will allow you to recover all your files.

as far as software goes i've had a lot of luck with EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional.

good luck.

damwel
It works. I've done it several times. It was always the boards that were bad. Let us know.

This is the easiest and most likely problem.

If you really want to swap the platters it can be done. Go buy a clear plastic box from walmart and and get some cleaning gloves. Cut holes and glue the gloves in and have at it. GO SLOW! I have managed swap platter's a long time ago when hard drive's came in 80mb ! hah

if the data is life or death that critical then bring it to an expert. If not then consider it a loss and start over. If you go trying to swap parts you'll for sure lose the data

You can use CloudBacko Software(www.cloudbacko.com...) for recover data. Last time I used this software to recover my data. It is fast and easy to restore your data. Have a try this software. Thanks