I have one of these 20 year old drive drives for recovery. I did have a donor, but didn't do a good job removing the heads so wanted some advice before attempting another swap.

This issue is that I cannot remove the black plastic stop under the VC with the heads in place (lower left). The heads do not come off the platter before the upper part of the stop hits the head. The stop can be rocked downwards allowing the heads to pass, but it puts a strain on the heads so they do not come off the platter cleanly. The lower VC can't be removed for the same reason.

What am i missing here....

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Remove the plastic stopper, then remove the heads.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

From my testing on the first donor, the plastic stopper cannot be removed while the head is on the platter, there is just no room. Bit of a catch 22 situation.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

You can try wiggling the stopper out from under the VC. But I remember working on these in the past and I was taught to just push the end of the stop down and slide them out. It helps if you have a third hand.

You can't remove the stopper with the heads in place. There is a spigot that goes into the lower voice coil and a 'wing' that goes under the head coil so it cannot be removed. Pushing down on the one side of the stopper does look like its the only way. A bit ugly but I've had worse...

Thanks for the help all.

_________________
HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

You nailed it, push down on the side nearest the platter.

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If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you probably don't fully understand the situation. ... Mr Kipling

https://www.mjm.co.uk/