advanced hard drive recovery - please help!

[moose]

the most important drive in my inventory died yesterday. Western Digital 500gb, model WD5000KS (not the AAKS, which was the revision)

it starts to spin up, then clunk.. spin up, clunk. won't even get going to detect in windows or w/e.

it was actually my backup drive, and i had just moved everything on there off my laptop which was KIA, so just a perfect storm scenario.

a buddy of mine has a 500AAKS, but the control boards are different as well as the motor housing.. not sure if i can try a platter swap with that model or not. i NEED stuff off this, though not to the degree of $1k recovery companies. (dont have that kind of money)

i duno. just looking for any advice. theres a lot of tech gurus in here maybe someone has had this happen before.

[Anodizer]

I wouldn't mess with it until you had the money to get the data recovered if it's that important....

Messing with platters should be done in a clean room...  Sounds like your head actuator is bad...

That's a mechanical issue (obviously)..  See what WD themselves charge..  Data recovery on one drive shouldn't

cost that much I don't think...  Although I haven't needed to utilize it in a long time..

[moose]

my friend actually has done a platter swap before successfully, although the donor drive obviously cant be trusted afterwards. he doesn't have a true 'clean room' but something close enough.

going to try the manuf. route, although i would be amazed if i got anywhere with em