This is a WD40EZRX which had been dropped. The platters generally look okay apart from where the heads impacted the platter surface near the edge, they were probably parked at the time of the drop. There is also other minor damage to the platter edge, probably caused by client trying to mount the drive repeatedly. If we can get past this initial damage I think the chances of recovery are good. What techniques do you use to mitigate this damage after a head swap?

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

Just scrape off any lose material and burrs, and clean up any dust particles you can see. Then hope for the best. The heads shouldn't be close enough to the platter surface there to be affected, but you just never know if there's unseen damage to the remaining surface. I've had cases like this where almost 100% was recovered, and others (like the one this week) where just could't get anything.

Perhaps you should do what Gillware does and invest in a nice burnish and glide machine: https://gillwaredatarecovery.wistia.com ... qfz8xr96jf

You didn't need that extra $50,000 anyway.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Guess that machine only works with single platter drives so that rules out 95% of all drives. Now if it did multi-platter with dampers I might have purchased two lol.. Thanks for the advice.

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

Yes heads don't read out there, so clean it up and new heads in will do it.

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

That part of the platter is way under the ramp, very far from where the heads will start reading.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

Indeed. I was not so much concerned about where the damage is, more the effect on the new heads as it passed over the area.

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

You have absolutely nothing to worry about. I've seen a ton of drives look like that in situations where they didn't even suffer an impact. Sometimes the actual ramp itself will rub the platter right there on that edge.