Data Recovery

[khat17]

Alright. OP gave the go ahead to attempt since the drive will be junked. Unfortunately, was not successful. Had issues with getting the heads out of the park area and I think that was the main issue. Will be posting both drives back to OP tomorrow or later in the week. If the heads were easier to remove from the park area and not so close under the platter - think it would have been successful. But - hit and missed this trip. Apologies to the OP - was really hoping to recover something. And as @Chris said - have backups.

[Gillion]

So here's the update thus far.

The drive was sent to me. Received and confirmed the serial based on photos sent prior. The drive doesn't show up in Windows - it's a Mac drive. The drive periodically flashes in Disk Utility on Mac - so it's not being recognized by the system. The drive is recognized in Linux, but it shows up as a damaged file system. Attempts at recovery have been unsuccessful as the drive isn't stable when plugged in.

Checks show the drive has been parked for about 2 years since the initial failure. It was recognizing on a Mac then, but now it doesn't show up or mount. My recommendation is to purchase a new or used drive of the same make/model and swap the PCB. If that fails then the last step would be to swap the actuator and heads. That last one is risky, but it can be done - depending.

That's where things are now. Will update on the progress.

bare in mind to ensure that firmware revisions of the drive controller (PCB) is not too far off from the original disk.

[Gillion]

Alright. OP gave the go ahead to attempt since the drive will be junked. Unfortunately, was not successful. Had issues with getting the heads out of the park area and I think that was the main issue. Will be posting both drives back to OP tomorrow or later in the week. If the heads were easier to remove from the park area and not so close under the platter - think it would have been successful. But - hit and missed this trip. Apologies to the OP - was really hoping to recover something. And as @Chris said - have backups.

did you put the old PCB on the new drive disks to see if the old PCB works properly ?

curious if it is a mechanical flaw.

[khat17]

bare in mind to ensure that firmware revisions of the drive controller (PCB) is not too far off from the original disk.

Yep. Year, manufacture date, etc. These were checked and found to be close enough.

did you put the old PCB on the new drive disks to see if the old PCB works properly ?

curious if it is a mechanical flaw.

It's both the PCB and mechanicals.

• PCB swaped.
• Old drive did not read.
• New drive did not read.
• PCB swapped back.
• Old drive still doesn't read.
• New drive works fine.

Part of my problem was the closeness of the arms for the heads to the platter. I'm fairly sure I nicked it at least once. The heads also gave me some issues to realign, so that was another problem.