Clicking Hitachi drives are 99/100 down to bad head(s) and not fixable with software, and in any case the CLAxxx drives are not supported by PC3K yet anyway, they are completely different architecture to previous models.

As you say the data is not important then I suggest you don't waste your money on parts' and scrap the drives as you intimated,

If however the data is required then we can take a look for you.

As far as confidentiality goes we are Police vetted and do work for them and other government bodies, who don't have issues bringing sensitive drives into us for recovery, provided we follow the correct procedures (which of course we do).

Cheers

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Thanks for your offer of help. I found a site selling donor drives, however they wanted around $200 per drive, so we're scrapping these ones.

I have opened a cupboard which contains around 600 old hard drives, all makes/models, ranging from really old Quantum 10GB drives, right up to 3TB drives. I am working my way through all these and using the PC3K to make master resource backups in the database. Hopefully I should have a pretty decent collection once done. I'll also back up what I can on the Atola. It will also give me good practise trying to reapir any faulty ones I find (hopefully).

At the start of the year the department had a huge clearout of around 3000 old and unused hard drives, which were crushed. I wish I'd managed to keep hold of some of them. I've managed to convince the bosses that we need to keep hold of drives in the future, at least a couple of each for donor purposes.

Thanks once again,

Mark