Help needed with Seagate momentus 7200.4

[HDnewbie]

Hi!

First of all i must say i'm newbie when it comes to handling hard drives though i have a strong background on IT and some electronics.
I've been checking for info on this for a few days and this is my last try on this.

I have a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 damaged because of a laptop fall. The disk started failing so, first thing i tried to do was copying all the data into another drive but during the process the drive malfunction stopped the process.
I tried to used Diskwarrior and everything seemed to be working fine (with Preview) but all of a sudden while copying it got stuck and i have not been able to access the hard drive anymore.

I tried to open it and see if the heads were stuck, they were stuck and took them to their original position carefully , but i had to go through a couple of "clicks" before they went back to their place.

When i start the disk, it spins and i get some buzzing , and it stays like that. It keeps spinning but nothing else. The HD doesn't show up.
This is the sound i've been able to record when the disk starts...it does that and remains spinning for as long as i have it turned on.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0A04azFuwRY

I'd be very thankful if someone could help me with this.

Thanks in advance and sorry for my english , as it's not my mother tongue.

[ShaneWard]

When the laptop fell on the floor it could have partly damaged the heads, then when you tried to copy all your data it made matters worse.

I also have a feeling that you opened your laptop outside a clean room enviremoent and this would have completely damaged your drive. When you moved the heads off the disk this would have completely finished them off. I'm sorry to say but the data you got off is all you're going to get. This disk needs to be taken to a Data recovery pro and it will be very expensive.

The best thing to do is if you dropped your laptop with it still running, you should have turned everything off and sent the disk away to have your data copied, once a hard disk is dropped, especially when its running chances for the heads and meda damage are VERY HIGH.

Another thing is having Backups is always a good idea.

Hope you managed to recover what you needed.

[HDnewbie]

Thanks a lot for your kind response.

Is it possible to replace the heads by myself? I have access to a clean room environment (it's where i opened the disc). If possible, where could i check upon pricing of the components?

Thanks a lot again in advance.

[ShaneWard]

There are two things that could be wrong, just the heads are damage and a slightly damaged area of the disk that caused it and located in a unimportant area of the disk.

The worst, which I feer might have happened is that the heads were damaged and the system area of the disk was also damaged too, so even if a new set of heads were replaced, the drive would not work anyway because the system area on the disk has been badly damaged.

It would be wise to send the disk off with a detailed list of things done and see what a data recovery lab could say, otherwise find a hard disk that is exactly the same type, and move the heads from the good drive to the bad and prey. If it does not work, you have two broken drives. Be ready for that.

Since you managed to copy some of the data, this would suggest that the heads were okay, but they reached badly damaged area of the disk and broke, so if a new set of heads was used, the same result would occur.

Again, if data is important it would be wise to have it sent of to a lab FIRST before doing anything irreversible because tampering with the internal workings of the drive is like sky diving with a parachute these monkeys made for you...

Attachments

MONKEYS.JPG (31.03 KiB) Viewed 4259 times

[HDnewbie]

Thanks a lot once again.
I'll give it a thought.

Best!