Hard Drive surgery

[Morpheus]

Has anyone here ever taken a hard drive apart to swap the plate/plates onto a working head?

Ive swapped over PCI boards before and had them work ok long enough for me to retreive data that was on them. But never have I taken the actual disk inside and swapped them with an identical working drive.

I do know that its been done before... I've read about it and heard about it second hand of people actaully doing this before... I am just curious if anyone here has any experience with a dead drive... dead from a bad head. And what if anything you did to get back lost data.

[boxboy28]

Cant say i can help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


But i know how your felling as i have thought about doing it to at times....................... its not gonna be easy my brother and best of lucky/skill too you!,,    Lay off the simulants before the operation!  them lil screws can get lost in places you'll never see.

[Roscoroo]

serious operation .


scalpel...

clean room

hammer

beer

prey to gods / goddesses  (deity of your choice)

beg ....

Frack it all ... toss in trash ..

[JB66]

Make sure there is no dust or other contaminates(sp).  A company I use to work for would send drives to be swapped(platters) to some company in Canada.  They charged a fortune.
Oh...wear gloves and don't touch the platters...but I think you knew that.

[Lizking]

WHy not replace the head (arm)?

[culero]

Sounds like a good way to end up with two broken drives rather than one

culero (bets ewe already knew that)

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by Morpheus
Has anyone here ever taken a hard drive apart to swap the plate/plates onto a working head?

Ive swapped over PCI boards before and had them work ok long enough for me to retreive data that was on them. But never have I taken the actual disk inside and swapped them with an identical working drive.

I do know that its been done before... I've read about it and heard about it second hand of people actaully doing this before... I am just curious if anyone here has any experience with a dead drive... dead from a bad head. And what if anything you did to get back lost data.

Just back it up before it goes out and then don't worry about it.

eskimo

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by culero
Sounds like a good way to end up with two broken drives rather than one

culero (bets ewe already knew that)

I've replaced the boards on drives before, many times actually. I would say the vast majority of the drives work fine, and long enough to retreive any data on them. That is when the drives are dead due to a bad board.

Head's and motors can be a more severe and permanate problem. When a head goes, as most of you may know, the arm can and does flop about over the plates destroying data. Although this is not always the case. And even when this does occur, not all of the data is lost.

You can send it out to a company which removes the plates and spins them in a clean enviorment, retreiving data that is left... if any. Most times, that cost does not constitute the data that will be retreived.


As for killing another HD in the process. I have an identical hard drive. It is used, and works fine, with nothing on it. It didnt cost me a penny. Most of what is on the dead HD is backed up. But not all.

It should be an interesting trial. I have access to a clean room so Im going to take them apart there. I really was just interested to see if anyone here as ever attempted this before.

[Seraphim]

Any small particle of dust, even smoke will kill many sectors of a hard drive (mainly because the gap between the head and the plate is less than any of those particles, about 1 micron). Replacing a board is fine, because its on the outside of the disk chamber. Using a clean room might be ok, as long as it is better than a class 10,000 room ( which means there is less than 10,000 ppm of any loose particles). Most companies that do a HD repair service are far cleaner than that, which is why they cost a fortune to repair. I dont do repairs, but I work in a clean room facility,I dont think i would try to attempt it, unless I dont care whats on the drive.
I do take them apart when they are dead though, just because the plates look cool =)

[beet1e]

As cheap as drives are these days, it hardly seems worth the aggro.

[Jackal1]

Beet, sometimes folks do things just for the enjoyment of seeing if they can accomplish what they started out to do.
A fun thing, ya know.

[Edbert1]

Write it off. Those HDD repair companies often are unable to recover data anyhow. I'd say you have less than a 1% chance of getting it to mount once your home-surgery is done, less of a chance to see your data again.

I'd suggest everyone buy one of those external HDD units, firewire or USB, sized appropriately. The built-in Windows Backup utility is feature-weak but more than capable of data storage. A 500GB drive will be able to do weekly backups of a 200GB PC for at least 6 months and maybe a year (depending on how much data you alter each week of course). On a rig used only for gaming it could last over a year since you are not creating/moving/deleteing documents all day long.

Set up an initial "full" backup and do incrementals every Friday. You can even shcedule them to run automagically.

Originally posted by Seraphim
I do take them apart when they are dead though, just because the plates look cool =)

I am a fan of those uber-magnets!