I have a drive that has been dropped and has the usual scoring at the outside of the top platter (other platters seem okay). How would you handle imaging this drive after a head swap. I have heard of people cutting off a head and imaging what they can from the good platters and then trying to image the bad platter with another set of heads. But might there be an option of completing a hot swap with another board and then sending the heads to Max LBA and imaging backwards? Just looking for ideas and your experiences of imaging these type of drives.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Is it me or is the top platter not used in that drive so it matters not, if as you say the rest of the platters are ok?

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DataWreck Data Recovery Services
www.DataWreck.co.uk

Nice thought, but it is a single platter with two heads. Just looks like one head because of the angle. It does look like the damage is limited to the outer edge of the platter, were the heads jammed between the parking ramp and the platters?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I'm not so sure. Take a look just above the ramp and slightly to the right. Is that debris jammed between the platter and the chassis? Maybe the missing head? Ah yes that is what I saw as well.

I would examine the media in more detail on both sides. Reason being is that I believe the damage is likely more extensive than just what is easily visible at the edge of the disk.

And what is that? Like a Tahoe (LT), maybe? If so, not quite an easy drive to recover when dealing with media damage. Recovery results are typically unsatisfactory to the customer's expectations.

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

Well you are all kind of right. Its difficult to see from just one picture from one angle, and the light does reflect making it even more difficult. This is a Toshiba DT01ABA200. This drive has two platters, 6 arms, but with only 4 heads. This is perhaps why it looks like the top platter is not used. The top head is obviously toast, but the other 3 heads look okay. I cannot see any damage to the lower platter, but obviously views are limited. Would be interested to know how would approach this recovery 'presuming' there is only damage to the top surface of the top platter.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

Irrelevant, but that's a terrific macro picture for a smartphone!

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Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery