First off, I don't care at all about the data on this drive.

So I have a 640GB Samsung HM641JI laptop drive that failed three years ago due to a drop. It was a mechanical failure and it wasn't spinning up. I took the cover off and removed the stuck heads from the platter and boom! it spun up. I plugged in via USB to a Windows 8 machine and it just freaked out the computer. No luck through an internal connection, Linux machine, or MacBook Pro. I tried it in the Windows 8 machine again and it didn't show up, so I checked the bios on a desktop and nothing. That was all a few months ago. Testing it now in a Windows 10 revival of the laptop the drive broke in, it doesn't show up through USB or internal SATA. I checked both sides of the PCB and there is no visible damage. On the platter, there are many visible scratches. It still spins up fine and the head even moves across the platter. My guess is a corrupted file system, but I really don't know. I want to salvage the drive to use as a portable hard drive. If I can, I know I won't get all of the space back, but 95% not physically damaged platter space is a lot of the 640GB total.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, just remember, I don't care about the current data and I would buy a new drive instead of getting professional repairs; just tell me anything I can possibly do to fix it.

Thanks in advance.

-Dan

Post a picture of the platters, ideally if can capture the scratches.
P.S. Can't fix scratches.

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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

Sorry about the light; it was the only way to make the scratches visible on camera. Also, update, the drive spins down after about 20 seconds when plugged in via usb.

you can do many things with your Hard Drive follow this Video



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJr-D-iykSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJr-D-iykSE

You can bin the drive or make it a clock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aydfoZ7NpE

Sorry these are your only options.

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http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
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It's toast. Toss it and move on!

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Alright, thanks for telling me everybody. It was just an effort to make use of old stuff so no big deal.

Fubar, sorry.

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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