Hi everyone, I recently had a Hitachi 2TB Deskstar drive that was enclosed in a G-Drive enclosure fall from a shelf while in use. The drive would no longer spin up. I just heard a few beeps and then it would stop on power up. I use this drive in a recording studio and it is used to store mainly audio media of my own. About a month ago I had a WD drive that suddenly had alot of bad sectors on it. After a few weeks I was able to recover 90% of my data (most of the data I was interested in was not damaged) and store it on this new G-Drive. I was just about to start backing up my new backup when this drive suddenly fell to the floor and quit working. This time, since I could not access the drive at all, I decide to call around to some HDD recovery labs for a quote. In the end, the price was anywhere from $850 to $2500 depending on whatever work was needed to recover my data.

I am also a software programmer and have been building computers and working on them since I was a young boy. I have NEVER lost a drive I couldn't recover myself. Once I had a laptop that had something heavy fall on it and it actually bent the case on the internal HDD. I open the hard drive and unstuck the heads from the platter by spinning the platters and giving the heads a nudge with a precision screwdriver. This allowed me to get my important data off, it crashed for good a few hours later. I don't have the cash on hand to recover the data on this particular drive and although losing the data is heartbreaking, its nothing that was unfinished work or that I cant live without. I just don't like to be beaten!

So, I decided to start researching possible DIY solutions. I watched some Scott Moulton videos and various other videos on data recovery on YouTube. I figured the heads crashed like my laptop drive had once done so I decided to open the lid on the disk. I noticed that this time the heads were not parked on the platters but where on their parking ramp found in these Hitachi HDD's. I thought "Hmm.. wonder why it wont spin up?" So I started the drive and gave the heads a slight nudge and they went over onto the platters by themselves and started the click of death! Now the drive spins up but the heads go back and forth never seeming to read any data or mounting. After more research I determine that I need to change the heads from a donor drive. Heres where the story gets to its point:

I found a few donor drives on ebay, both same model, MLC and within a month or so of the date of my drives manufactured date. I spend a week while waiting on my donor drives to come in the mail taken apart older IDE 3.5 drives that I no longer needed or didnt work anyhow. I was practicing head swaps, or just taken heads out and getting them back in safely. I destroyed the first 3 hard drives heads no matter how careful I was. I watched more videos, researched head tools, Boy are they expensive!! I decided I needed to build my own tool the keep the heads from touching. I built some crazy tools, none of which worked very well! The thing that I felt was most effective was cutting small pieces of heat shrink tube and using tweezers to wedge them between the heads carefully. I successfully got a set of heads out of a drive and back in without harming them! woo hoo! I was ready to work on my real drive. Donor comes in mail, I prepare myself..nervous and anxious! I take out the heads on my patient drive first, I mangled them a bit! My platters seem to be free of any visible scratches and I have managed to avoid touching them.. Although, keep in mind I am not working in an actual clean room. I just chose a clean well lit place to work. I then open the donor and and get all the parts unscrewed, wedge in my heat shrink tube. I stopped to relax and catch my breath after about 10 minutes of working as I was a bit shaky. I tried to get the heads out of the drive when the lower magnet caught them and shoved them on the platters!!! ouch! When I finally got the donor heads out I could physically see that they were bent to hell!

Next, I start researching more and more. I found this forum and noticed that not much information was obtainable from pros on DIY recoveries just by reading cry's for help from various other suckers like me!
Then, I begin to realize why DR is such an expensive task. The tools are expensive and it would maybe take me another year of practice before I ever did anything successful on my own. I'm good at technical stuff but this is just too damn hard! The videos of the pros online make it look so easy. It is almost impossible for someone with no experience and a life of luck with DIY data recovery to actually recover data from a drive that requires things like a head swap. My long rant and story on this is to show my respect for the guys who have the knowledge and success rate at doing these type of recoveries. I have decided not to destroy my last 2 donor drives and let my patient drive sit closed on a shelf for awhile until I can find someone who is a pro that is willing to even open my drive and try a recovery after I have attempted to do so myself. This could probably make it twice as expensive. I learned a lesson here and that's... DON'T OPEN YOUR DRIVE if you REALLY want your data back!! Like I said, I can live without the data and I take it as my first REAL loss of data that I declared useful. I lost years worth of master music sessions I will most likely never recover. Save early, Save often and backup your backups...and finally...send your physically failed hard drives to a PRO!!

Sorry for my long first post, I hope that someone finds my story useful and good luck with your recoveries.

Yes it is hard, but I think if you had a good lab to work in , training from a pro and the right tools for the job, it would not be as bad. Yes there is a HEAP of learning, but struggling with bad tools, on your own and no proper info makes it harder by orders of magnitude.

Coupled to the fact that most DIYs have other jobs family etc, so the focus just isn't there no matter how dedicated you think you are.

kudos for trying and for sharing your experience.

Yes, I may give it another go at a later time. I've been trying to acquire the tools needed for better success. My older IBM and maxtor drives are much easier to work on. The new Hitachis are hell. I figured it would be easier because of the parking ramp but I've had no luck in keeping heads intact while trying to swap them.

I got to thinking though, I just recovered most of this data from my WD drive that had all the bad sectors on it a few months ago. This drive wouldn't let me copy a lot of files because it found errors in them. It was always the same files it found errors in. It corrupted some of my files..well..a lot of them! Mainly audio files that I needed. The drive was a 1TB split into 4 partitions formatted OSX journaled for mac. The drive will also act slow and some partitions would just randomly disappear as I was trying to recover data from it. Could anyone recommend some good software to get back a few of these lost partitions and also try to recover data found in bad sectors? 2 of the partitions on the drive are fine and I have no trouble getting error free data from them. Other 2 are lost or corrupted. I feel like I may have a better shot at recovering the data from the WD since it still mounts, I will lose a few new files created on the new drive but no biggie.

Try ddrescue (freeware).

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks, I tried that and If I remember correctly it just skipped the bad data and gave me the good.. I would liek to try to recover more of the data that cant be read.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish that everyone who is contemplating head swaps and the like would read it FIRST.

One problem of DIY videos online is they really don't give the watcher a realistic idea of the difficulties and hazards, which you discovered the hard way.

I've been thinking about this problem (DIY recoveries in general) today as I was writing an article. I think I may write one on this topic and post it on HDD Guru. I'm going to start a separate thread . . .

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I'm sure with enough donor drives and practice I could perhaps pull off a head swap without damaging the heads. Every time I do it I realize something else I did wrong and could learn to avoid failure. Although I may get the heads swapped who's to say they will even work? Or maybe I've contaminated my drive even further with every attempt. Without proper hardware/software I could only hope the drive mounts (unlikely) and copy over important files. Desktop software probably won't allow me to clone the drive in a safe way that will keep the drive alive long enough to make a recovery. At this point.. It's a lesson learned and May continue to recover it since I have some time and remaining donors left. It's a long shot and perhaps a bit of luck will be on my side. From now on, it's backup central at my house!

Even with a perfect head swap procedure, you don't know if there is recovery-killing media damage on the platters. Your replacement heads will have to work perfectly. Lastly,you don't have the gear to deal with any complications that might be present or may arise. The odds are not in your favor, and that's nothing you should take personally.

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to add to what Jon said
perfect head swap does not guarantee perfect drive's work
You can perform clean HSA swap but drive might still not work because of number of reasons: incompatible heads, previous firmware damage, occurring firmware damage (because of non-original heads), previous platters damage, overall mechanical alignment, contamination
Even after all that you'll have to deal with unstable reading or bad blocks, that requires special tools

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I understand what you all are saying and nothing personal taken. Since I am not trying to go into the DR business and only wish to recover data from one drive, it makes no sense for me to by all the equipment and then learn the trade. Hell, Im in the music business and software programming business.. I have enough on my platter as it is (pun intended!)

I guess now the question is... Who recommends a DR company that might give my drive a chance on recovery for a decent price? I'll give up now and send it along if I can afford it! Thanks for not calling me an idiot and helping me to understand why Im in the situation Im in.. I dont blame anyone but myself for losing my precious data to begin with and also for believing I could recover it myself...everyone has to have a dream right?

You should understand that after your story DR guys would try to avoid your drive, it has some mechanical damage right now but the question would be - is it really bad.
Most companies do not want to give exact quote before they see the drive, so it is possible that you'll need to ship it first for evaluation

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.