Does anyone see any hope for recovery of this disk? It's a seagate 7200.11 1.5TB. Disk was not subjected to mechanical shock - was sitting in a server in a rack, and just suddenly died.

Only opened (not fiddled with any any other way) in a clean room to inspect before buying a donor disk for a new headstack. That was definitely a mistake to the demise of the clean room - disk was full of black powder, probably from what used to be a head. Some significant scoring close to the spindle at least on the top platter, all platters / sides seem to have the same ring of crap deposited on them on the outer edge - appears fairly well bonded to the platters. Didn't touch or attempt removal though. Very difficult to see condition of other platters / sides. Is recovery (by someone that's more experienced than me) even remotely possible? I figured I could probably change a headstack, but I have no idea where to begin with this mess, or if it's even possible...

That kind of damage suggests that other platters are affected too
If that's the case - it is nearly impossible to recover any useful information

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

Very slim chances, in any case only a partial recovery (was the drive in a RAID?) and the major problem is the cost of the attempt without any guarantee of success.

Duplicated post, sorry , please remove

Duplicated post, sorry , please remove