Scratched platters

[drHDD]

It's very old ibm. If you opened it and close again even without clean room it will work for years. If TS could open drive and make photo without scratching platters by screwdriver it will be enough for me.

NO, IT WON'T Work for years !
Do NOT open that drive outside the clean room even if the platter is scrapped. It will just add more problems to the already damaged drive !
Ask the data recovery firm that handled the case to provide more details about the scratch and if possible some pictures of it, but at this point the best course of action it will be to get the needed software by other means...

I could take same model - open it, make picture on a bet and leave it working for while. How long it will work? What do you think?

[drHDD]

Why are you changing conditions? I didn't ask to leave drive open for hours. I asked open and make picture.

[pepe]

dust itself does not kill the data. If u run it dirty some damage can occur easily. If the platters are damaged, there is a good chance they need to be cleaned before any recovery attempt anyway, so taking a pic would not really affect the chances of recovery. IMO
(I am not talking about leaving it open for hours and powering it up of course)

[drHDD]

For the record i have a VERY OLD Fujitsu MPG_AT E from 2001. Those drives have very low capacity. The drive in question have some damage (a lateral small cut) on the side sticker on the right side of the drive so the inside of the drive was exposed to dust for a while (some hours).

Scan the drive with Victoria. Drive is one platter and one head only and the exposition to air/dust was "acidental" on the region of Portugal - Lisbon for about some hours only.

Result of the scan is a almost all the surface can be read without any issue untill 96% of LBA and then you get lots of errors and bad sectors. This is because the lateral opening is near the outer eadge of the platter and the LBAs at the end are at the outside edge (drive writes on platter from center to end).

If this happens on a very small capacity drive now do the same on a drive with more capacity and figure out what is going to happen

Not only heads are way more easy to kill but also each particle of dust will afect more data as there will be more data on the same size of platter.

Of course that it might depend on country and conditions of the region where you live. If you live in industrial place with lot of smoke, or near the sea with lots of humidity or near some dusty place, etc ...

And what?
10 years ago I lived in small but very industrial town. I do repairing drives. Some times I opened them to repair - like remove badly head, or other reason (I didn't use clean room on those cases). I tested them very hard after. I had success in about 7 cases from 10.
I agree - you can't trust drive if it was opened, but it doesn't mean it will die right now. Many drives worked years.
I am not asking users to open drives in each case. But some times (with some limits and conditions) it is possible .

[drHDD]

dust itself does not kill the data. If u run it dirty some damage can occur easily. If the platters are damaged, there is a good chance they need to be cleaned before any recovery attempt anyway, so taking a pic would not really affect the chances of recovery. IMO
(I am not talking about leaving it open for hours and powering it up of course)

Exactly. Thanks pepe!

[digisupport]

It's all up to your own standards.
I will newer ask a client to open a drive, no matter what.

[pepe]

neither do i. My clients are usually not from this forum. I prefer receiving the drives in an unopened state. Somehow i assumed the drive has already been opened, as the OP stated the platters are scratched and that he was the one causing the damage:

I got that equipment in broken state - so backup was no option even thou the scratches on platters i caused myself.

so if it was already opened by him, there is not much to lose and we can get a little bit closer to decide how to go on.
Sometimes I receive cases in really shit condition, after 2 or 3 DR firms and user tampering with a lot of contamination, where i start with cleaning the surfaces anyway, so i think it is not the end.

To the OP: I can evaluate the drive in proper environment if u don't mind shipping to Hungary, nevertheless have some years of experience with scratched stuff, but definitely do not own a 10K machine (as long as 10K is USD) to treat the surface, whatever it is actually. My concern is more about how to avoid scratched areas during reading.

[turbones]

Does anyone know how the Japanese company recover data from scratched platter? What technology, technique they use? So the company that Tomset talked about is the one drHDD found?

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Dear Sirs,

Only came here for a recommendations of a good data recovery service that can recover from scratched platters.

The hdd: Hitachi travelstar IC25N020ATMR04-0 P/N:08K0632.
Heads got smashed and when powered on it scratched the platters.
It came here back from local HDD recovery service with note that it's severely scratched and they won't recover anything.

If anyone is interested, I can open it up and take a photo.

Unfortunately, the HDD is from expensive tooling equipment and manufacturer refused to support this older equipment - and I left with a dead machine.

From whole 40GB HDD I need only 1MB binary file I understand that it can possibly be in the scratched region, but I'm willing to risk it if there is a chance to read out more then 10%.

Also any approximate price estimate of this service would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Petr

Hi ,
Acelabs is In Prague ,they Might Be doing DR In There Also ,Might Be a Skilled Tech There Can Work On His Drive