surface damage on Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB

[Devin]

Hello-

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB drive with a crashed head. There is surface damage on one surface of one of the two platters. I have purchased an identical drive and was planning to attempt a head swap. However, of course, I am concerned the new head will burn out / be damaged, on the rough surface race track.

Before I ask any questions, if this specific type of recovery has been addressed, can someone please point me to the discussion or link. I am looking through now, but haven't found one yet.

Thanks.

[CK]

Forget it, you realistically have no hope of getting your data if you have this level of damage. Your new head will be destroyed upon contact.

[Devin]

Is it possible to read in one direction? The race track is towards the outer edge. If...if... the heads could be parked near the spindle and ...if... I could read from the center of the spindle towards the outer edge, then I could capture whatever data possible before the head burned out.

[CK]

No.

During spin-up and calibration, the heads will sweep the surface looking for the SA and you can't force it otherwise.

If you were able to bypass this somehow, then could could control the imaging direction.

BUT....if you don't get a full image of a drive, you are likely going to have a lot of corrupt data.

Again......forget it.

[BlackST]

Partially correct : with special techniques it is possible to override the problem and read the good parts. This makes this kind of DR highly priced if data is needed "at every cost" (except, obviously, the part that has been ground away from surface!!)

[CK]

@BlackST - For practical purposes, this is not realistic.

I think there would be very very few commercial DR companies that would offer this level of service, it's not commercially viable.

The OP was looking for help doing this DIY.....hence my negative reply.

[HDD Spaz]

It is possible. But only for a pro.
I have used various methods such as altering limiting stop, hot swap, head selection plus other tricks to recover from such a drive. a full recovery is unlikely and impossible if you have never done this thing before. It is critical to have a clear understanding of where the damage is located in terms of LBA.

If the price is right nearly anything is possible.

[Devin]

HDD Spaz- what software did you use? what is LBA?

also to all- are the files stored in "cylinders" on the platters for this drive? meaning, that when a file is being written or read, it is being done so on all 4 platter surfaces simultaneously, being stored in a vertical, "virtual" cylinder? one idea I had was to not try to read any data off the damaged platter and mix my original good platter with some other platter as a dummy.

CK- thanks for the healthy dose of realism. but my bad drive is already basically lost to eternity. so I have nothing to lose by trying. and in the process I will learn something about hard drives.

[HDD Spaz]

I have shared enough FREE information. It's not in my interests to disclose any more. Sorry.

[dobrevjetser]

Mixing the platters is a bad idea. Search this forum for the 'alignment' issue and you will understand why.
You are correct that the info is stored consequently on the different platters.

Dobre