kzyswd wrote:What should I look for in the donor drive? How close does the codes has to be?
Here is some basic
matching guide information. It's still not a guarantee. You would improve your match if you had access to heads maps and preamp types. Even if you found a compatible donor and changed the heads without destroying them, there is still more work to do.
You would be better off sending this to someone for a head swap and see if you can reduce the fee by doing the data recovery yourself. Just be sure the DR company will guarantee the heads work and drive will ID. There used to be a company that offered that service but I don't know if they still do.
Before you kill your HD, look up
Dunning-Kruger effect. Right now you probably think you know a lot more about hard drives and DR than you really do. If you studied/practiced data recovery for the next year and re-evaluated yourself you would probably rate your knowledge close to the same level you think you are at now. This is not an insult, it's just normal human behavior