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Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

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I want to recover data from a drive that is clanking. Other than freezing and dropping, etc, that I have read as being possible solutions, I feel the best way to recover the data would be to exchange the platters onto another hard drive. Has anyone done this themselves? I am about to buy two drives just to do a test run. What’s everyone’s thoughts?

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Reply To: Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

In reply to Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

Do you have a class 10 clean room?

If not, you WILL have more problems from changing platters than you have now.
The tolerances inside modern hard drives are microscopic.
ANY dust that gets into the drive WILL trash the platters and the heads.

The last time I tried this was with a 10MB 5 1/4″ MFM hard drive, and the dust that got in caused more problems than I had.

If you decide to try this anyway, you need a clean dust free work area with a HEPA filtered anti-static fan blowing air across the work area.

Clean the outside of the drive with a damp lint-free cloth before bringing it into the work area.

Account for every screw, washer, spec of adhesive that comes off of the drive.

If the data on the drive is critical, you are risking adding to the recovery cost if you open the drive yourself.
You would be much better off sending the drive out to a data recovery service.

If the data is not critical, and you wish to try this as a learning experience, I wish you luck.

Chas

Reply To: Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

In reply to Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

You will have fun and lose money as TheChas has said although I seem to have gotten away with it as a last resort.
I change them out and do a mirror copy to a new HD and then trash all left over everything.
My other trick that works fairly well on vertical mounted HD’s is to set up to mirror with the “bad” HD on a level soft surface and do a mirror.
That not working I do the freeze and tap and mirror.
Last resort is the duplicate HD [must be exact duplicate and change out the bad part and do the mirror.
Hope this helps and have FUN and enjoy.
fred

Reply To: Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

In reply to Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

one method that you could try is to do it in a vacuum clean plastic bag. I think this is much better and easier than cleaning out the whole room. Get a bag that is transparent enough for you to see through. Prefably made of material that is not too soft because that will only cause the bag to crumble. Anyway, do some thinking from this idea and see if this is feasible.

Reply To: Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

In reply to Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

If it is clanking but still operable install it as a slave, buy a new harddrive and make it a master and install an OS on it. Access the slave harddrive and recover everything from it by transferring the data to the master harddrive.

Reply To: Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

In reply to Disaster Recovery for Hard Drives

If you need the data off of that drive. DON’T TRY TO DO IT YOUR SELF.

The heads of a hard drive actually fly so close to the platter a human hair on the platter would lood like a log on the highway.

There are hundreds of data recovery shops that will in a dust free clean room remove the platters and install them on an extractor.

They will them recover everything that is on that drive, repair the drive, reload your data and ship it back to you.

Do a google search for data recovery.

Good Luck Lee

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