We (my company) are going to start to work our way into the physical repair/recovery of hard disks. For years we have been performing logical drive repair and recovery and would like to step it up. We've recently had one of our own drives fail (Seagate Barracuda 7200.12). The drive will power on while making a grinding noise, click twice then immediately spin down. We have two exact type drives to use for parts.

After reading around the web a bit it appears that the platters are not easy to swap on this drive series. Does anyone know of a good platter tool? I can find the proper tools on here to safely move the read/write heads off the platters and then remove them.

Thanks!
Matt

The first step in data recovery is proper diagnosis.

Where did you get the idea to perform a platter swap in this case? A platter swap is definitely not indicated if the motor is spinning properly.

Jon

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I agree with jon. pretty much the only time you would need to do a platter swap is if there is an issue with the motor. That does not sound like the case in this situation. With this family it could be firmware, but more likely it is bad heads and/or media damage.

I agree with Jon and doubt that swapping the platters would help in this case...it likely would just make things a lot worse. You may want to spend some time researching how hard drives work before you start investing in the necessary facilities and equipment needed to offer physical recoveries. In the meantime, find a good lab you trust and outsource.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

To add to Luke's advice, please don't experiment with client drives and risk losing their data.

It is a good practice to try any procedure on another drive at least once to be sure that you're able to perform it competently. BTW, an (unnecessary) platter swap at this point would probably ruin the chances for recovery.

I also agree with Cleanroom that this is most likely a heads / media issue. But don't rely upon a remote diagnosis.

Jon

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Most pobably in this case bad heads and scrached platers, but as other people here said you, then most important is to have a good diagnose, opening drive without clean rom and necesary tools is not god idea.

If data is impportant and if data is not yours externalize this case. i think you can fin any recovery pr in Maryland area.

if data are valuable for you, listen experts like Jono, Luke and others, and outsource

there was mentioned, that proper diagnosis is the key for data recovery.
Befor you start opening drives, first thing you will need is clean environment, at least clean bench.
Then you will need tools for head exchnage and tool for spindle release and platters exchange.

You may want to rethink getting into physical recoveries if your replacing the motor on a fully spinning drive. Just saying....

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.