Lardman wrote:
It's not a pcb problem, don't waste your time trying to swap them. To me it sounds like the heads are wedged between ramp and edge of the platter, but you can never really tell until it's opened up.
We don't care about confidential data, any decent DR pro will be happy to discuss their policy and privacy measures with you. Most of us will offer a blind recovery service but you will lose any guarantee about file recovery success. It's up to you depending on the value of your data.
If you're really concerned about the contents I suggest you drill a few holes into the platters before putting it in the trash.
I have tried to open it, and everything appear normal with head arm that is parked correctly and not stuck on the plates. (I know is not advisable without clean room but I haven't much alternatives I have tried to use nebulized water, a dehumidifier and a HEPA filtration system to reduce the dustiness of the air and create a somewhat better environment)
What could be the cause of this problem?
The noise is every perfectly the same I have attached in the recording, it has no slightest variation, led is always on and doesn't blink.
as soon as I insert it, it is heard spinning distinctly, the arm seems moving produces that sound for the time you can hear in the attached file, and then seems sleeping and I no longer hear any mechanical movement or spinning, the led remains always on whole time, also disk temperature seems pretty hot considering it's attached for few minutes doing nothing.
(I understand the talk about professionalism, privacy policies etc. but even if there is a way to recover them without accessing them, the risk of compromising the confidentiality of the information in this case is much greater than the risk of losing them, so in this case is not viable send this HD to a lab.)