Hard drive recovery

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GreatestOne

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 15, 2005
Messages
488
HI all... my friend had an old 40GB Barracuda fail... there as a clicking sound and no data was being read at all... have any of you beeen successful in removing the disc from an old hard drive that may have failed mechanics but data is still good and mounted it on another similar hard drive and recovered data, kinda like treating it like a CD? I know the platter and mechanics are very sensitive, and being off 1mm could make i defective, but if i had some parts and time to mess with it, I just need to know if that possible.. like an amateur recovery job through the hardware. Thanks.
 
In theory yea, but in practice it can be very difficult. How valuable was the information on the drive? And now is the time to give your friend the old back your data up speech. Externals are cheap as are dvds.
 
In the world of hard drives, floating height of the heads and the platters, 1mm is like the Grand Canyon in "gap" between the head and the platters! They were made in clean rooms to specifically prevent dust/hair particles from polluting the hard drive, and the drive holes all have air filters to prevent particulate matter from entering the platter space.

An operation like this not being handled by professionals is, IMO, doomed to failure. If his data is worth that much, consider hiring professional data recovery help that specialize in these situations with proper tools, clean rooms, and procedures. Otherwise, your friend will have to consider this disk crash as a lesson to keep backups, unfortunately. :(
 
1mm? How about a millionth of 1 mm and then you'll be in the neighborhood. :)

Physical drive drive recovery in the manner in which you just described, in a non-clean room environment, done by an amateur without experience would equal an almost negative chance of success, and the loss of both drives in the process, entirely.

If the original drive is mechanically defective, you might as well kiss the data goodbye forever and save yourself a ton of frustration and effort.

Theoretically, it should be possible to take the platters from the original drive and put them into the exact same drive that's entirely functional, but because of not being in a clean room environment, you're going to ruin the entire thing just by opening the drive housing to begin with. Dust particles our human eye can't even see will be like fingernails scraping a blackboard in some respects and destroy the drive's ability to read or write data from the heads.

Most people don't realize that the heads on a hard drive never physically touch the platter surface; hard drives don't work like audio or video tape where the recording media comes into physical contact. The heads on a hard drive ride on a cushion of air created by the rotation of the platters - it's almost like surfing on wind in some respects.

So that tiny piece of dust can get into that incredibly minute space between the platter and the heads and that's that... instant dead drive.

I'd say tell the person the data is gone and move on...
 
Thanks, I was jus trying to be optimiztic I guess, but anyone know how the pros do it? Besides the clean room, so they have separate machines that they mount the disc on to read the data, because I assume once the mechanics fail, they have to take the disc out to read it on another platter or mounting machine.

Its funny how hard it is to "delete" data off a hard drive, but so easy top ruin it mechanically, unlike a CD, etc....
 
They'd have a collection of hard drives without platters, fully functional, then they'd pull the exact make/model of drive that matches the damaged one, and they'd simply remove the platters from the defective one and put them in their "bench drive" and go from there. It's not really a complicated process as long as you understand the basics and you've got the tools necessary to get it done, as with most any task.
 
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