Hi,

Just a final check to before I give up. I am trying to recover a disk for a non-profit alcoholism home. They don't have money to pay for a professional recovery company so I foolishly took it on since any attempt was better than nothing. Looks like nothing might have been better judging from the time I've spent.

Looking for any help from the real gurus out there.

The drive is a WD3200JB-00KFA0.
The first step I took was to go find a donor motherboard and thanks to ebay I bought a couple working drives from different sources.
The original motherboard was 2060-701314-003 and both the drives I bought were 2060-701314-001.

Replacing the board failed to work, replacing U12 on the board also failed.

In desperation I did a headstack replacement following the hints at
http://hddguru.com/articles/2006.02.17- ... k-Q-and-A/
working in a makeshift clean room. I hated to open the drive up as I knew I would have to fight the axis problem but after many hours of playing I think I have a paperweight on my hands.

Anyway anything else to try? My guess is that the second I opened the drives up I lost all chance of recovery but then again I'm not an expert.

Anyone out there interested in helping out a worthwhile non-profit for a small fee and the donor parts I bought? One of the 2 hard disks that I bought still works as it is untouched at this point.


thanks
Mike

That is my guess as well, unfortunately. I would have happily tried to help but now it's out of our capabilities. Please keep us in mind for future affordable recoveries, before opening the cover.

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bcometa,

Thanks for the reply and offer to help in the future. My goal in working with the various non-profits I work with is to prevent these sort of disasters in the first place by making sure they follow good procedures for data retention and but in this case one slipped through my fingers. It is nice to know there is someone to turn to if it happens again. Do you personally offer a service or is it a case of finding the good advice and the proper hardware swaps?

Just so I understand. When I opened up the lid and assuming my makeshift "cleanroom" was clean what are the real hazards of not being able to recover it? Is it just the alignment issue or is something else? Are the data bits on the platter more fragile somehow when the lid is open? As far as I can figure out the alignment issue is the huge issue but there are some tricks that some folks have figured out how to get around it.


Thanks again and understanding with my cluelessness with the specifics of disk drives.

Let's forget the alignment issue.
To me, the real deal is that even assuming your "clean" room was indeed clean (allow me to kindly doubt that), changing heads on these drives requires A LOT of experience and proper equipment. Having said that, and even if you dont describe the behaviour of the drive after your attempts, I bet the head swap didn't go as well as you think it went.

And THEN, there is the alignment problem.
AND the not-so-clean clean room you used.

Sorry I understand the situation and I 'm not trying to lecture you, just putting down the facts here.

I could help but I'm too far away.

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What were oryginal symptoms ?
Did it work at all ?

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Northwind,

Lecture me all you want. That is the way one learns. I appreciate even your reply to the post. Clearly I was a fool here.

Laptokowiec,

Sorry for not describing the behavior before or after my attempts. It is the same in either case. The computer fails to detect the hard drive. The platters spin up and the head fail to find the boot sectors (or whatever the first hunk of data they seek)) and then bang against the stops before giving up and spinning down. Occasionally (more before than after) the system will detect that there is a drive but the drive will be the wrong type.

---

For practice before trying to open the real drive I pulled the heads out on a similar working drive (another caviar of a different capacity) and put them back into just to make sure I could do it. That went OK and I wasn't nearly as careful about dust as I was on the real drive but then again that doesn't prove anything either. Could have been just been beginners luck or something. On the subject of dust I total agree with you that my space was nothing more than a hack and would not qualify as a real clean room (though my allergies loved it).

Clearly the theory that the head replacement didn't go like I had hoped is correct or the heads are still majorly misaligned. Does that mean the data bits or lost from the platters--Ie no longer there at all? Obviously in my case they are lost as I'm sure anyone who is able to recover it would want earth money to recover it but it would still be interesting to know from the knowledge standpoint. If nothing else I can figure out how much I should really beat myself up over this at this point.

Part of my curse is my electronic knowledge and sideline hobby of fixing broken electronic stuff along with the volunteer stuff I do. Obviously drives are an area I know nothing about and it clearly an area left to the experts. Thanks for your comments.