I have a 250gb Hitachi Deskstar drive that stopped functioning. It spins and the arms click back and forth. It has a music collection of about 200gb that was given to me on it, so I am doing my best to recover it. Before it died, I was able to get some data off of it by plugging it in to 110volts, and then unplugging it seveal times. I finally ordered a used drive off the internet with an identical serial number. The boards inside also have identical numbers on the chips etc. I am using the power supply and board etc from the guts of the iomega housing. The platters are intact and it spins at full speed. I thought it was the board or the arms, so I put in the parts from the new drive. No luck. When I plug it in, my computer recognizes it as a faulty usb device, and the arms snap back and forth continuosly. Iomega gave me a price of $1,000 to recover the data which is not worth it.
Any suggestions?

The suggest on Hitachi..

Dont tried to turn on again, i had some cases with head crash, caused by that even IBM/Hitachi has that head crash tendency so turn off inmedialty and dont tried to turn on again, the most common with that syntomph could be a MHA problem so, will be need be worked on clean room by a DR company,

Best Regards

OK. No Joy. Is there any other adjustments that I can make t fix it?

There is a secret screw under the PCB. Data recovery companies turn this screw, recover the data, and charge a fortune. Since it's a 'secret' screw, I can't tell you where it is. All we can do is give advice that is out of your ability range. That way, we make it sound like it's really a difficult job.

Sorry, I'm in a mood

If you've already messed about inside the drive, changing heads etc, chances are you've made any DR possibility very very slim indeed.

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