Seagate ST94019A 40GB laptop HDD question

[hayseed]

I have a Seagate ST94019A laptop 40GB Hdd. it contains data that I cannot afford to get recovered, but its not 100% important.

the disk has physical damage due to a broken head. its scratched. ok, if I find a donor drive, do I need to swap the PCB, or just the heads? do I need to match the firmware, manufacture date, ect?

let me know exactly what I need to find so I can attempt this recovery

Kindest Regards,
Hayseed

[pclab]

If it's scratched, nothing to do.
But how do you now it's scratched? Did you opened it?
If so, you killed it.

[hayseed]

No, I sent it to a recovery place that does a "Free" eval. They said it is scratched, but recoverable (WeRecoverData.com)

[hayseed]

I had a professional company look at the drive with a free evaluation. They said it is physically scratched, But recoverable with a "Logical" rebuild.

[pcimage]

I had a professional company look at the drive with a free evaluation. They said it is physically scratched, But recoverable with a "Logical" rebuild.

Hmmm

[fzabkar]

I had a professional company look at the drive with a free evaluation. They said it is physically scratched, But recoverable with a "Logical" rebuild.

I'm no data recovery expert, but that sounds illogical.

[harddrivespecialist]

Very weird diagnostics.

[hayseed]

I went ahead and popped the drive open in my clean box I just built. (I can care less about the data anymore)
barely cracked the seal and man, I see at least 10 specs of dust on the platter!!! DO NOT EVER USE WeRecoverData.COM

I sent the drive out in a box that had 4 inches of foam all the way around. they send it back in a plastic container.

They charged $27.00 to ship the drive back when it only cost 10.00 to ship it to them.

The platters are NOT SCRATCHED AT ALL!

im reading Scott Moultons material and I think I am going to try to recover this for fun. ordering a parts drive tomorrow (found on on ebay within 400 away from the current serial numnber. matching FW, ect.

I think i'll throw 50 bux away on a shot.

DO NOT USE WeRecoverData.com

[BlackST]

You see only one surface of the platter, unless you have an endoscope.

About the stuff you're reading, good luck.

[hayseed]

I'll get it. I'm pretty confident. If not, ohh well.. its wasted beer money.

[ppumkin]

Lol that company you used is "special"
Was there not a thread recently were they said they developed special techniques in transferring flash memory or something and in the testimonials there were things like - soldered the usb plug back on.. come on!

And charged you 27$ to ship back to you- it shows the lack of confidence - i have seen many reports were other clients send me HDD's with head crash and scratched platter unable to recover data.. even using cheeeeeep tools the ones that go beeeeeeeeeep and piss me off.. can fix the issue and I have a good rate or recovering data of these "unrecoverable" cases.

It amazes me some of these "companies".. and they actually stay in business.. I cant grasp this concept.