Thank you guys, really appreciate it At one stage I had two working drives, each with the same serial numbers on the PCB, model numbers, etc. Upon switching the PCB's between them, each drive would then 'flicker' as in the recording above. Upon switching the PCB's back, both drives were then fine and read/write the data as usual.

I also conducted an experiment before I exposed the drive to a non-clean room environment to see how much data corruption would occur. I found that opening up a 320GB (prefilled to 200GB) drive of this model in a non-clean room environment resulted in only a loss of 5GB of data, if I used the platter shield. I was able to recover all but 3% of the drive. Exposure was 6 minutes. For this reason I've been optimistic about the process so far

Best regards,
Megamox

Actually the experiment was performed on a test drive and those components I kept separate. The good news is I replaced the ROM and have just recovered about 250GB of data so I'm happy Had it been a firmware issue or worse, platter damage, I don't think I'd have had the expertise to attempt it.

This is all so fascinating to me, I wish I had time to pursue this subject further but I'm already tied up with my major field of study, as I'm an electronic engineer.

Thanks and regards,
Megamox

Yes, I do honestly wish I had found all of you before I experimented and I can believe I'm very lucky It's a shame this forum is not advertised enough, I believe it is an essential resource.

EDIT: In case I can be of help to anyone needing advice on electronics, feel free to let me know

Regards,
Megamox

Proof that DIY can work if done carefully. And you get lucky.

_________________
On a clear disk you can seek forever.

I take it the home repair DIY route doesn't end up in much success here? Perhaps my years repairing laptops might have helped in my approach to the problems, I don't know. This is the only time I've ever attempted this.

Regards,
Megamox

The important lesson is to have backups. Then you don't need DR services. Did you learn it?

_________________
On a clear disk you can seek forever.

The lottery would have been nicer Yes I'm designing a new Back up routine at the moment, hopefully it will not expose me to the same level of risk. I can see how this experience can be quite traumatizing.

Regards,
Megamox

It need not be painful or arduous or anything. I always advise my home/office customers to do it in two phases.

1- I recommend imaging the entire system. And keep several older versions of your backups so that you may jump back in case you imaged a messed-up system. You would use something like Acronis True Image, or Macrium Reflect, or something. Everyone has their favorite.

2- And then I suggest making an entirely separate file-based copy of your own user-generated data like pics, email, music, projects, documents, that sort of thing. This is the irreplaceable data. This is handy for transport to another system too. For this you can use a file sync program like FreeFileSync or DirSync. Perhaps even the Windows Explorer. There's tons of choices to pick from. And once you make the first copy, subsequent mirror operations blast by in a moment, as only changes are saved. No need to be copying 500GB of media over and over. Makes more sense to operate on only the files that have changed.

Of course your needs and schedules and style of working will be different than mine. So my methods mightn't apply to you. For example:

1- I image my system once every 6 months or when I make significant changes, like spending all day doing updates and installing new applications. I do it sometimes when I get bored! I have no rigid schedule. This grabs it all. It takes about 1 hour.

2- I do a file sync operation to grab my projects and user data. This includes new Personal Journal entries, pictures, game savestates and hi-scores, videos, business records, investigation reports, program settings. Things like that. I do this perhaps once a week or something. This just grabs the changes and updates and deletes. This takes just a few minutes

As you can see there's really all kinds of methods and programs with which to do these things. And now that I've shown you how I do my backups, how you do yours is your business. But the end result is that you have two copies of anything important at all times.

_________________
On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Great advice. I actually use Acronis to preserve my primary boot partition state, I think I'm on my 23rd iteration of the image. I use a program called Beyond Compare to sync my data between back up locations, I just wasn't very on the ball about making sure the newer folders were being synced to.

I'm still no clearer in the end about what caused the hard drive failure, but I suppose it's academic.

Regards,
Megamox

Yes perhaps if I had opened the drive immediately and gently released the heads while turning the platter counter-clockwise, I may have avoided the rest of the effort? Seems like there are a multitude of causes. Someone should write a book on this, it would make interesting reading I'm sure.

Regards,
Megamox

I've got to take my hat off to you, well done!

It's VERY rare for DIY attempts like this to come off.

I guess that a perfect donor and a methodical procedure worked for you, and you got very lucky!

You're obviously a very skilled tech nevertheless, and persistent!

Buy a lottery ticket today and enjoy your data

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

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