Moving platters from one drive to another

A

arcsum68

Limp Gawd
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Oct 27, 2006
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So, 1 of 2 500gb hd's failed in my buds Maxtor raid 0 array and he didnt have any other backup, and is willing to try anything.

My boss says he has moved the platters of one drive to the other and been able to get it going long enough to get the data off so I have a few questions about it.

1 Is it really possible

2 How long will I have? I dont have a clean room, just a house :rolleyes:, so dont ask.

If theres a possibility it will work he will do it, so I was thinking I would ghost the good drive and then dump it on a new one, then move the platters from the bad drive to the good one and try to dump it on another new one and put them in the enclosure long enough to get the data off of it.

Crazy?!?!
 
Well, what kind of monetary value would he place on the data. If you do something like this, there is almost no chance for professional recovery to work later on.

It also depends on how the drives have failed. If it is an electrical failure in the controller, or a broken conductor in the flex cable to the heads, then this technique has a good chance or success. If the failure was with the heads crashing on the platter surface, then this would obviously be a waste of time.

Having it be in a RAID0 complicates things even more as if you can get the drive to work, you have to then try to make the Raid array work again.

I would look at getting some estimates from some professional recovery services before attempting it himself.

Don
 
DonDon said:
Well, what kind of monetary value would he place on the data. If you do something like this, there is almost no chance for professional recovery to work later on.

It also depends on how the drives have failed. If it is an electrical failure in the controller, or a broken conductor in the flex cable to the heads, then this technique has a good chance or success. If the failure was with the heads crashing on the platter surface, then this would obviously be a waste of time.

Having it be in a RAID0 complicates things even more as if you can get the drive to work, you have to then try to make the Raid array work again.

I would look at getting some estimates from some professional recovery services before attempting it himself.

Don
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He said he cant afford thousands.

He is a professional photographer so this is years' worth of work. I have been telling him to keep everything in 2 seperate places, but you know how it is, nobody really cares about a backup until they learn the hard way. He at least had one, but its not really a backup if its the only copy.

I suggested waiting until he could afford to do it, and told him I would try anything he wants me to, but doing this would pretty much ensure they will be destroyed.

I already swapped the external control boards and the drive does the same thing.
 
I don't think he moved the platters but rather the logic board. That actually has chances of success but moving a platter won't do anything for you since the data is on more than one platter anyways...
 
I'd think that with modern drives that has about a zero percent chance of working. Maybe with an old sinlge platter drive, but even then I'd be doubtful. The tolerances on drives are so small that it would be almost impossible not to mess something up.
 
yup as said, moving platters good luck!

well now maybe he will learn to back things up..
 
ScYcS said:
I don't think he moved the platters but rather the logic board. That actually has chances of success but moving a platter won't do anything for you since the data is on more than one platter anyways...
Click to expand...

i think this is the only thing that can get his data back.

 
Coming from working in the data recovery field I can tell you that your chances of success are basically nill. You have to have two identical drives and remove platters from one without damaging the heads and the broken one without damaging the platters. You then have to line up all the platters within a couple of microns of their original placement and recalibrate the drive so it can actually read the unique geometry of that platter stack. There is a reason data recovery is expensive. You'd be better off finding a matching logic board. Have you pulled the board off the bottom of the drive and verified it doesn't have any obviously burned chips? I've seen a number of burned motor control chips on Maxtors in that size range.
 
I have 2 identical drives, and already swapped that board.

I already told him I will not make any attempt to pull the drives appart.

Turns out he has alot of the older stuff on dvd, and alot of the newer stuff with him, so he is only missing about a years worth of stuff and it was all jobs, nothing personal, so he will be ok.

And I am sure he will take my suggestion this time around, instead of buying whatever. When he bought this I told him to get 1.5tb and setup a raid with parity. Things are much cheaper now, so I am guessing we will just go with 2 drives and keep them mirrored.
 
arcsum68 said:
And I am sure he will take my suggestion this time around, instead of buying whatever. When he bought this I told him to get 1.5tb and setup a raid with parity. Things are much cheaper now, so I am guessing we will just go with 2 drives and keep them mirrored.
Click to expand...

Umm, that's not backup though. Your friend should invest in a external hard drive or NAS to backup his data.
 
What he had was not a backup at all, it was just storage, I didnt know that.

What I told him to do was get 2 1tb externals, keep one on his system backing up local contents, then hook the other one up and mirror them before deleting the contents on the local drive. A NAS would really make it easier since he is on a laptop 90% of the time, I will certainly pitch it to him.

Thanks everyone
 
RAID is not backup, and backup is not RAID.

RAID (except for RAID 0 which is really AID not RAID) is to keep the computer running and usable if a single drive fails, it doesn't secure your data. It has to do with up time, not securing data.

BACKUP is about securing data.

For work, he needs a real backup solution.. For small data sets, and personal use I am starting to think dropbox is a great solution. But for larger data sets, something else is needed.
 
Wow, that is extremely cool, but it wont work.

A typical "day at the office" for him consists of 4-20gb of data, so something local is going to be neccessary.

Thanks for the info Lazn_Work
 
Man that really sucks, but there is no way I'd store non restorable data on a RAID-0 array... I just had to RMA one of my Raptors in RAID-0 bc it crapped out but it wasnt a big deal, anything on that array is totally reinstallable, I keep everything else on a 3rd larger hard drive and I mirror that drive to an external drive that is off 99% of the time as a backup. When he gets up and running I really really suggest doing something similar. Good luck!
 
Yeah, its a bummer, but a learning experience for him. Anything important of mine is in 3 different places, partially for function and backup. Crappy thing is the damn drive was off 99% of the time, it was probably powered on no more than 25 hours tops. I have had it for the last year at my house, and its been on maybe 3 hours.
 
I don't think recovery will cost "thousands"
I have a drive coming back from recovery right now, cost me under $1000 from ESS Data Recovery.

I started with Aero Data Recovery but they couldn't do it so they recommended ESS.
If they could have done it, it would have only been $300.

ESS has reported success and shipped the drive back to me today, total turn around time has been about 3 weeks. (including the time with Aero)

It'll be more with RAID, but shouldn't be too bad.
 
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