Dear all,

My HP 6710b laptop's HDD Hitachi TravelStar HTS541616J9SA00 (5K160) has sufferred a 1 meter falling damage onto the parket floor.

After that the drive would stop working (duh!)
and would emit the following clicks and beeps (recording is made from a close-up, the drive DOES start spinning, together with the laptop power-on):
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By7zyv ... 2&hl=en_GB
Sounds like the head mechanism is rubbing (squeaking) against something (it being the platter and hence my nightmare-ish worst case scenario )

Can this drive be repaired? I have an access to the multimeter and even to the clean room and, due to my enthusiastic attitude and occupation, I would go for a DIY solution, if it is possible (I have sufficient theoretical and 6-months practical electro-mechanical knowledge)
Hence I kindly ask you to point the safest+cheapest way feasible under these circumstances..

Thanks! Any additional information you need?-just ask

I currently reside in the Northern Italy, South Tirol region


-- 
sledge

Access to a multimeter and a clean room sounds nice but won't help in this matter. The heads have been damaged in the fall and they have almost certainly damaged some disk surface areas as well. Head replacement on this disk is extremely tricky for a novice and invites failure. And even if you succeed in replacing the heads successfully you're still likely to encounter media damage which will prevent your further recovery efforts. If the data has value you should refer this to a professional. One of the more vocal contributors to this forum is a fellow countryman who can no doubt offer his opinion to you.

sounds to me like the slider skiming on the surface of the platters a bit m8... Imho u are into some damage there. If u have access to the clean room and planing on DIY option ONLY - take it to the room , open the drive and take a look at the top platter and filter. Dust on the filter = very bad. Scratches are bad too. None DIY unfortunatly.

Dear Alexii and msurgeon,

Thank you for the information, I'll go for the "at-least-try-something" method, and will post the pictures from the clean room

Will keep updated,

-- 
sledge

I think it is "at-last-killing everything" instead of "at-least-try-something" method...
It takes much more than a clean room and a multimeter. But as it seems data is no longer important, at least you'll see how 5K are from inside.

Dear helpers,

From what you said, I infer, that the heads are malformed and thus are touching-scratching the platters' surface.

I did not open the HDD yet (avoiding needless degradation afterwards).

I am hunting after an [close-to-]analogous HDD on e-bay, to perform the head replace.

My Hitachi 5K160 specs are in the attachment.

I am hunting down on ebay after the following two HDDs;
please advise me the candidate more-likely to fit the head replacement:

http://nv-systems.net/pics/ebay/hitachi-160gb.JPG
http://www.chephren.net/public/ebay/auc ... 60gb-1.jpg

The latter has the same-month timestamp May-07. According to the Scott A. Moulton a two-weeks difference would most probably be incompatible already, however: does this apply of the 'cure' taken will be only the head-replace?, and the sticker is not completely identical to my HTS.

Waiting for your generous pieces of advice.

With hope,

-- 
sledge