I have two HDDs that need data recovered. One isn't that important (WD1600BEVT-75ZCT2 DCM:FHNTJHB) and one is (WD1200VE-22KWT0 DCM:HCAJANB). I think both drives have wrecked heads (click of death). Both HDDs experienced a fall before failure. I also have numerous dead drives from work I can experiment on free (I'm technical support for a product the company I work for sells). I've designed a clean-chamber to do my work in. I'm looking for donor drives for them (already bought one for the wd1600 still looking for the wd1200). What approach to recover these drives? I'm willing to send the wd1200 to an actual professional for recovery is it's around $300 or less (let me know if you're interested, North East US), the other the data is worth less than $100 so it's worth risking fixing it myself. Should I try to move the platter/s or replace the heads? From what I know moving the platter and PCB to a new drive would be easier on one of these 2.5" WD drives if they are single platter, but would probably be easier to replace the heads if they are multi platter. So the big question is has any opened these sorts of drives up and knows their configuration? 0 negative or critical comments please (I've read enough on here to have my fill).

If the drives are indeed mechanically failed, then for $300 or less, the best approach would be DIY, backed up by practice for mechanical work technique, develop some safe approach in how you execute the mechanical work so the new parts do not get damaged, then lots of research for what your best shot would be in terms of what tools you will use to access the drive and subsequently recover the data.

The reason I am saying this is because no reasonably good data recovery company will do this for $300.

I recommend you practice first and come up with a solid plan for what to do after executing the mechanical work. Very high chance the drive will not work as you will expect.

Best wishes

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts