Hello to all,

I'm a new guy here and I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
My hdd started to make that clicking sound so I ordered two donor drives (everything matches) manufactured within 10 days of my original drive. These drives were tested and are in perfect condition.

After some testing and having access to a clean room, I proceeded to a platter swap (relatively easy since the Diamondmax plus 8 only uses 1 side of the platter - with 1 head under the platter).

Now my questions are, should I plug it in directly as a slave drive, boot and then try to copy my data OR should I boot up with my 2nd donor and make a live pcb swap during hdd sleep? Is one of these 2 procedures potentially more harmful than the other?

Thanks in advance,

DC

Best thing to do is to image it to another healthy drive. What tools do you have for imaging?

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Did the drive stop clicking after you did the platter swap and ID correctly in the bios?

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Before performing a HS/PS a proper analysis *COULD* have helped ( on labs they call it Fast Hands Syndrome (TM) when action is taken before analysis... )
Anyway IF now the drive IDs fine and LBA more or less is accessible it should be cloned and clone analyzed.
I have the feeling (50-80%) that the problem was elsewhere but everything can be (remotely and without pro gear on your side it's impossible to tell) .

P.S. before reassembling, did you inspect the data surface for media integrity ?

I am not going to argue as I might really have Fast Hands Syndrome (TM) as BlackST suggested (even if the drive wasn't detected by BIOS).

Then again, what's done is done and the issue at hand is now about the next step since the platter swap (I have not plugged it since in any way). Also, there was no apparent physical damage to the platter (compared to healthy donor and to some other drives I cracked open ).

Should I plug the donor drive (and donor PCB) with my old one sided platter in to the computer?
Should I use the old PCB on the donor drive with (old platter) and then try to clone it with ddrescue?
Or as stated in my first post, should I let the BIOS detect the 2nd healthy donor and then do a live pcb swap during hdd sleep?

So many questions...

Thanks for you help!

If PCB is OK you can use its own PCB.
Should be easy to test ...

Hmmm...doesn't look too good.

The drive spins but then does a clicking sound and bios wouldn't recognize it. Tried a live PCB swap and I get the same sound.

I tested both PCB's on my 2nd healthy donor and they work perfectly.

Maybe there is physical damage to the platter after all?

DC

No, it did not stop clicking, but the clicking sound is different now (compared to original drive).

Bios does not detect it.

More bad news ... I plugged it in another computer, bios shows N40P. By reading on this forum it seems I can't do much more except find a pro in Canada (or maybe US) - any other options?

Mhdd is of little help, it says it won't work with this drive. By contrast, mhdd works perfectly with 2nd healthy donor drive...

DC

LISTEN :

The original problem now is difficult to determine.
Clicking can be caused by multiple problems, from bad PCB to heads (not necessarily bad) to problems on service area.
At present, but it was the same at the beginning, it was necessary to understand what the problem exactly is - and I still think it was a simpler problem.
A professional tool and know-how (how N40P work) is necessary.
The worst thing is that NOW it is necessary to determine IF there is media damage (occurred during moving media), imbalance , compatibility and some other testing and in any case the pro who will carry out the job will ask a lot more $$$ than if the drive was UNOPENED.

Even assuming you can access a pro tool, unfortunately I am not allowed to give you any technical detail about what to do, neither in public nor in private.
If data is (was ?) important, try asking some professionals in your area explaining honestly what was done, ask for a quote then decide.

Somebody needs a chill pill....

As Scott Moulton put it in his amazing instructional videos on youtube, people like me are not willing to pay 800$ (and more) for the data - BUT we are willing to spend 50$ to try - and in my case, to learn about something new.

I had fun opening the drives, discover what I can and cannot do; using new software like mhdd to learn about them. That's what physicists do, we have fun with problems we don't fully understand.

Now, as my best friend would say in his mother tongue 'grazie assai'.

DC

What an active little thread this turned out to be.

When I wrote about Scott's videos I merely wanted to point out this: none of you experts are going to lose money, simply because people like me are not going to deal with a professional for 50 family pictures and a couple of Word documents that we didn't back up. Now, for valuable data... that's a different story.

That being said, my own little experience with other forums (photography, linux, wordreference, etc.) lead me to believe that some communities like to share their knowledge with interested people. I am not going to quit my day job and start a DR business, but as I clumsily wrote earlier, I am a curious person (maybe due to professional bias) and for that sole reason I tried to salvage my drive and in doing so, I learned about a very interesting topic.

In my last post I asked for options in case I missed something (since I don't honestly think I can read ALL related posts on the subject).

For the time being, I offer my data to Hades.

Then good luck and happy tinkering. There's a great world inside HDDs.