So i am an intermediate level data recovery engineer

Lately i have a discussion about either its better to do a head swap or a platter swap??
Let's say a scenario where You only have 1 platter- so the alignment here doesn't matter
Would you rather do a head swap or do a Platter swap? and why?

Excuse me of my lack of knowledge. I came to the recovery industry myself and taught everything myself. So i am sure i am still lacking a lot of skills and experiences.

- Let's put environment on the other side (clean room and stuff)
- I know that everyone keep saying changing platters is the last resort. However i don't understand why if there is no alignment come into consideration.
- In my own experience lately. My luck in changing heads is pretty low. Got 1 case i needed at least 3 heads to be able to read out full data
Then i thought of why not trying changing the platters. And since then all the cases that have 1 platters. i tried changing the platters instead. Which gave me much more luck than changing heads before. So maybe my head changing skill are poor, or i am shaking of some sorts. I feel the heads are so brittle and so easy to die.

So Would you rather do a head swap or do a Platter swap? and why?

I love to understand the reasons and everyones opinion. Many Thanks!

It's getting to the stage where the platters have to come out to be inspected for damage anyway so the point is becoming somewhat moot.

I've always worked on the basis of if it's not broke don't fix it, mess with it - or even look at it wrongly. That's not to say you have to - if you're struggling with heads and not platters and alignment isn't an issue (and that used to be a major factor) then do what you are most comfortable with and gives you the highest recovery rates.

I've mashed a few sets of heads lately, they get smaller I get older. The cost and availability of donors is the only real issue doing it, the risk to the platters is minimal. The modern style combs help if you're still using heatshrink or similar as do good optics and plenty of working space so you can adjust your position to see what you're doing not always easy working in a small cabinet.

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Thank you for your opinion. Very well said Mr. Lardman. I am on the same boat with you

If you have problems with changing heads - you need to increase this skill if you want to continue in this field. Why not to change platters if it is look like it doesn't matter what method to use? HDD come from manufacture as finished device - everything were tuned to work well together by different ways (good example - adaptives). When you change heads you are kind of make this device as system kind of unbalanced and it could lead to problems (bad writing as example). if you change platters - you make this unbalance even worse. So risk to get more problems - higher compare to just changing heads. main rule for data recovery - you should use safest way how to recover data.

I think getting better at Head changes is critical before you even consider removing platters.

Like Mike said, if platter removal is required, then in all cases heads need to be removed, so why focus on the harder thing?

I would suggest getting a stack of donors or non customer drives to try. It's the only way you can improve.

Many guys likes to move platters to donor on rosewoods (and similar drives) instead of changing heads. In this case you don't need remove heads. And it is kind of tricky to change heads on them without special tool. I believe that is why topic starter asked his question.

Never considered leaving the heads on and just shifting the ramp, so in these cases it would be possible to just move the platters in and out.

I guess like all things it depends on tools, experience and a lot of practice before trying it for real.