Hello,

Sorry my first post is a question but I have just come across this forum. We are based in the UK and offer mobile phone repairs and windows system maintenance. I'm also wanting to venture into data recovery for damaged or broken laptops, desktops and hard drives. Damaged laptops and desktops usually aren't an issue but I have a customer with an external hard drive which he has dropped and now says it isn't working.

The hard drive is a Maxtor Basics but the actual hard drive says Seagate 500GB. Ontrack Data Recovery attempted a recovery a few months ago but had no luck. I have removed it from his casing and connected it via my SATA adaptor removing any chance of a damaged usb port etc.

When I removed it from the housing I noticed clicking which I didn't when it was in the housing. I removed the cover off the hard drive and the head was towards the centre of the platter. Here is the link to the video of what is happening when it is plugged in:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eyu7bnmloy3g9 ... 0.mp4?dl=0

This is something I want to get into so any advice with this is more than welcome as I am eager to learn about how to do this professionally. Thank you very much and I hope I will be able to contribute in the near future.

Well, the customer has given the ok for you to experiment with that drive after he tried Ontrack, or does he still needs his file ?

If it was dropped, there is possibly damage to the heads, so a head swap is probable. If you are allowed to destroy it "in the name of science", you will need to start with finding a suitable donor and training for the exchange of the heads. Better to get a couple of similar drives to practice until you get the hang of it.

Thanks for the reply. No he hasn't, he wants me to attempt to retrieve the files.

I will contact the customer and find out as he might just give up with this hard drive anyway so might "donate it".

I do have a hard drive lying around from a damaged laptop I could practice on. What is involved in changing the heads? Any specialist tools needed?

Running it with the lid off wasn't a good idea unfortunately

This isn't gonna be a DIY fix I'm afraid, or for a beginner in DR.

Happy to take a look at it here if you wanna post it up to Peterborough?

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