ok here a quick qeastion our company in the uk
has got a hard drive in for recovery seagate 160 gb barracuda

building site and they need the photos of the clients work etc.

the client had it to a well known company and they are telling him now
that when they where doing a transfer to another drive.
one of the engineer has said that the bottom platter has dropped out.

the qeastion we got is it possible to alignment the platter again.
we been told that the information is gone for good.
but lets say the top platter contains the information we needed.

at this point we not going ahead but can someone prove us wrong.
would pc300 sort this problem out.
from reading on the net its bye bye data

there is way to many company screwing up recovery work
and we getting the crap


thanks

It is possible but it takes a lot of time and VERY VERY EXPENSIVE equipment for signal analysis. Then is possible to realign platters with relative shift. I suggest you to forget this case as there is no simple solution. I had to spend about 1 year, part time, to work out a standard procedure for each drive family and it required buying (2nd hand, because brand new was not affordable and not worth anyway) VERY VERY EXPENSIVE gear. Plus investigating the signal path as there is no "official" deep documentation on drives. Ouch !

Can't I do this with a 16x loupe? With that, I can just see the tracks, and align by eye

Seriously, I'm guessing you're talking about a MFM?

If this story is true why can't you name them on here? Are you sure you didn't drop the platter? I can't see why a company would admit to dropping a platter. They must be really stupid.
This story sort of reminds me of when someone goes to the doctor to tell the doctor about a 'friend' who has got a embarrising rash but they personally need the rash cream.

Anyone else think this or am I getting cynical in my young age?

Hi,

For platter re-aligning on case of time-shifting (not off-track) i have a solution in my mind, but i need to develope more to get in usable state.

(In off-track case, you can align manually with measuring in scope)

Additionally, i agree, it is expensive!
This is why this solution not already done....

Regards,
Janos

Once i had a toshiba 2.5" drive with 2 platters , using the salvation data platter removal tool the bottom platter did not hold and slipped, only the top platter lifted out. By the time i noticed i had already put the platter remover on my bench and moved it ant rotated in the process. I was really worried - the 1st time this happened to me.

I pulled the other platter out, put the 2 disk back into the donor drive, put the disk back together and to my relief, the disk actually worked and ALL of the data was recovered. The drive has 60 GB of data, the disk was a 80 GB model.

In theory this should not have worked, there was no data missing or corrupted. A perfect corruption. The platters were removed as there was a seized motor and the heat gun trick did not work in this case.

So nothing is impossible, don't give up until you have tried it. You may get lucky!
This is a true story, i have learnt from my mistake and am now extra careful and double check everything now but as i said, it worked for me. I have not had to do this with any other brand of disk before and i hope i don't ever need to take a chance like this again but i thought it may give you some home at least.

Sorry - i meant "Perfect Recovery". Typing mistake.

Zed,

Some notebook hdd model from Toshiba can handle the platter miss-alignment by fw.
But the other model usually can't.

Regards,
Janos

I have noticed this in MKxxxxGAS models.

A well known company would actually admit to this? At least they are honest I suppose.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is impossible w/o much dumb luck

It depends what the company means by 'dropped out'

I know one company that calls sticktion : 'High motor start-up torque'

_________________
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/

all i know is a well known company in london.

what we might do is turn the platter slowly and see how far we get

not its a bin job