I have misaligned platters and have exposed my HD to air in a non clean air environment. Is there anything I can do to recover my data?

Thank you.

Jeremy

You will need to take it to a professional data recovery lab. Anything you do from now will cut the chance of recovery dramatacally.
make sure you tell them everything so they are fully informed and can take it into account when they work on your drive.

how did the platters get misaligned? It implies that non-clean air is not all the drive was exposed to.

And also, is your data valuable?
With those actions, you just raise the recovery pricing.

I have both solutions, unless the platters are scored. But I am afraid the price is too high...
What brand and model of disk is ?

Western Digital Scorpio Black

WD5000BPKT
7200 RPM
SATA
500GB

Also, I could just post a picture of the label. Thanks for offering your services, what country or state are you in? Thank you.

Jeremy

Italy.

How did the misalignment happen? Removed hub and platters then one platter rotate or... ?

The misaligned platters occured because I handled the disks because I thought a platter swap to a working HD would solve my issue. (prior to being aware that the discs had to stay in the same position to be read properly) So basically I contaminated the platters with dust, blew them off with a computer can air blower, also rubbed them down with rubbing alcohol to get rid of any dust that may have contaninated the discs. By this point I had doctor surgery gloves since I realized how important it was not to handle platters wrecklessly. (even though I already did do that)

So basically I had a messed up drive, tried to do a platter swap with a working drive, and ruined both drives. I just want to find some people who is able to read misaligned platters, to maybe read them individually? I figured that should be possible, to read the platter on top if it's possible to read it that way without having to use the platter below that platter. Also, I potentially have reversed the platters as well. The platters were left out gathering dust without a plastic bag surrounding them and so that's when I blew them completely off with a can of pressurized air.

It gets even better......post having replaced the platters I used the platters inside of the working hard drive, oh wait did I say working? Not anymore....So basically I damaged my platters because of shear stupidity or more like lack of research. I hope there's people near California who can help. Thanks, I guess this turned into more of a lesson thread than a solution thread. Don't be shy, I'm willing to negotiate a fair price for whatever work would be required to read misaligned platters, especially mine. Thank you.

Jeremy

Also, just wondering.....if I can get a hard drive that only has one platter on it. If I completely clean my platters and stick them in seperately, would I be able to gather my data myself, so long as I handle the platers with complete care throughout said process? Thank you.

Jeremy

Nope, that does not work like that.

I think your better chance of getting some data is to contact a pro and explain him the situation, and be prepared to pay (if the data is valuable of course).

IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE GLOVES WERE POWDER FREE. (My dad is a dentist)

Thank you.

That makes a huge difference, well done on the powder free gloves.

If you are serious about recovery then expect to pay BIG money and potentially have no data to show for it.

Lol. I dunno, I figured that would have been an immediate assumption on the rubber gloves. I guess it would have been better to use new dish washing gloves or something. I really don't know, I still do want a way to have this situation resolved, I no longer trust myself to do it, so is there a kind soul out there willing to take a look? Preferably someone in the United States. I'll listen to someone from any country tough. I cant say no just because you are from a different country. Let me know. Thank you everyone, yes including you, Spaz. lol


Jeremy

The first problem is to know if you are willing to spend - and it's gonna be a 3 zeroes figure, to me - and if you are willing to accept a partial or total data loss.
Note that you are going to spend in any case regardless of the result for parts and effort.
Ah, I almost forgot... you won't get an answer or outcome "overnight", it may take an unpredictable amount of time.
So said...

Nobody ever told you that you should make backups of your important data?
You ignored it as you may ignore the next advice:
Trash the drive and forget about your data on it.

Maybe he's searching a solution, not something like "serves you right!" ; my point is about avoiding frustration and false illusions, only this.

Curious enough here, Jeremy, what was your hope opening up the drive and swapping platters?

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Jason Davies, TechRx Inc.
techrxgb.com
920.884.1195

happens almost every week. Did you ever get a platter or a platter set on an envelope asking you to get data from it ?

Get this.....I was hoping to recover data, I later found out about how important platter alignment was. Also figured I could for sure he data off the top platter. So in the end I messed up more than one drive, Luckily I don't care about all of them. With Platter misalignment I know my chances are low, but who the **** can do it and has done it consistently? Everyone Ive looked into in the Los Angeles area has no clue what the **** they are doing and all have told me Im completly screwed. **** them, because I know that's not true.....sorry if you guys here in LA are noobs, that doesnt mean my data is unrecoverable. People are idiots. Aaahhhhhhhh

So, how malignant is it to have misaligned discs when trying to get some people to recover my data? Also, why cant I just use a single platter HD to recover each platter, seperately.....

Firmware needs to match I guess?

Thanks

@OP - read these links. They may shed some light.
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=12671
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6562
http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_Tracks_and_Zones.html

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts