To preface, I have a flow bench, DDI4, and PC3000 on site, and do recoveries as my primary job. With that said, I have a new situation that I have never encountered before and was hoping one of the members here could provide me with some guidance.

I have a Seagate ST31000528As Apple 1TB patient drive. Drive presented with a grinding noise as reported by customer. Opening the drive in my flow bench I can see that the microchip for the top head is completely gone. There is no debris visible in the drive from the head. However, there is a fine black powdery substance all over the platters and the internal little paper filter is completely black.

There is also a pretty deep groove near the spindle of the drive on the top platter.

Question 1.

I plan on using canned air to clear as much of the powder and any hidden debris from the platters after I remove the damaged head stack. Will this cause any harm that I am not aware of? I am not sure if the fine power will actually damage the replacement heads or impair data retrieval, but I suspect it would. I also have a product made by Max Professional called contact cleaner. It is an alcohol based spray that is non-conductive and stays liquid long enough to wash away gunk on contacts but then evaporates with no residue. If the air does not remove the debris I could use this to finish the job but something tells me it shouldn't be a first resort...

Question 2.

Assuming the platters can be safely cleaned to a point where a recovery is possible, I am afraid that the trench the original head dug into the top platter near the spindle (where the heads park) will damage the new heads. I have one donor drive in stock for this, and I don't want to make a rookie mistake that damages the heads.

What are the odds of getting data from the drive given the platter damage and will that trench damage the new heads I am installing?

Thank you in advance for your time!

Cleaning platters is a fine task that you must perform with care and experience. I wouldn't use new products on customer drives if I hadn't test them before. My advice is to use as much canned air as possible to blow off all the debris, and then, if you are planning to disassemble the platter stack, use extremely soft brushes first and micro-fiber velvet cleaning tools afterwards, in order to remove all the dust.

Needless to say the risks of platter misalignment, etc. you already know about.

The new HSA may last long enough as long as they pass the first round and you don't try to read I.D. cylinders at first where the notches or scratches are - so you must think of a good strategy to avoid them.

Cheers

Hi,

If you're new to MD, I don't think your chances are high to be honest.
Anyway, I think when heads reach the crash, they will die soon.
But using compressed air will not harm while removing the dust.

Thanks for the reply deftrue. Do you have any clever strategy ideas that might get me pointed in the right direction? The scratch is right where the heads park. I'm not really sure how to avoid that...

It can be a nightmare of a job, in my opinion . Examine entire surface with microscope first and see if other heads are ok. If not, some other crash happened.
And this is only the beginning...

1. You won't be able to blow dust away
2. Regular alcohol is not clean enough to be used on platters - it will leave residue (I was not be able to find ingredients for the solution you mentioned, so IDK if it would work but since it's extremely flammable but safe on plastics it's most likely isopropyl or similar alcohol. Also the can says - Electrical grade, the correct name is Electronic grade, so IDK if it's marketing but most likely it's not clean enough)
3. Dust is everywhere now, so platters packet have to be disassembled for cleaning. That means you need to know how to deal with alignment

There are at least two more things you need to do but I can't discuss it.

Bottom line: if you never did it - you will not succeed on this drive. You need to practice on some "guinea pigs" first.

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

But if you are willing to pay, I think you're in the right place to find someone to do it.

Strategy depends a lot on SA physical cylinders position, and also file system. I sometimes try to read file table at first, if present or accessible, reading exactly as much as needed and step by step. And then, try to map files with low LBA, taking care, of course, of fragmentation, etc. It's complicated and depends in lots of factors...

I already briefed our customer that retrieval of his data from the damaged platters is iffy at best. We tried to have him send it out for recovery but the escalation in cost was not something he wanted to pay. He told us the data is "kind of important".

In summary he understands that the odds of recovery in our shop are lower than with a recovery company with experience with damaged platters. I just want to do everything I can to educate myself before I make the attempt.