Greetings to all,

I got an old drive in for recovery recently, Seagate ST320014A - 20GB U SERIES X. Clicking and HM error in terminal so I got a donor and did a head swap.

First of all I must say that a head swap on these drives, especially with one head, is such a pleasure. I like the design of having the top magnet embedded into the top cover.

The patient drive's 'observation hole' on the side of the HDA had been breached so the drive had a head failure as well as being exposed to dirty air coming in. The platter itself had a deep scratch along the outer edge. My guess is that someone poked through the 'observation hole' with something sharp and scratched the platter. In other areas the platter was pitted and contaminated with dust and bits of magnetic layer.

I knew there was pretty much 0% hope of successful recovery as the scratch goes right through the SA area, but I had nothing to lose. As predicted the drive didn't init and wrecked the donor head stack - next power cycle confirmed donor head was now unhappy.

I've added some pictures of the state of the platter. Would you guys be able to recover from a scenario like this?

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

I'm guessing that's a no

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Hi,

It's a fairly old drive so I'm guessing it has only one SA with no second SA as a backup. Are you sure the SA is at this point on the HDD?

I've made tools in the past stopping the actuator from going on certain parts of the platters if they are damaged. It only works if it's on the inner and outter edges though so you can try.

If I were I'd gently park the heads on the platter past the scratch on the outter edge. Then I'd insert my tool (piece to jam actuator) so the actuator arm cannot get back to the point of the scratch. If it can't get there and a second SA exists or the SA is not actually on the outter edge you may stand a chance of it booting.

Good luck!

The drive has only one head so I would imagine just the one copy of SA which I would assume is on the outer tracks, which is where the scratch is. I don't think this job looked promising from the moment I got it.

_________________
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town