Hello

My ST1000LM010 that I think it was from a seagate expansion ext harddrive series was making clicking sounds and not recognizing.
Sent it out for a quote for data recovery and was told one of the head out of 7 heads was not working. The cost of full recovery was too expensive that I had to cancel, but they accidentally gave me the recovery data for what they could read with the working heads, which I got back around 25% of my files.
Im thinking its worth a try to replace the heads my self, but couldn't find an exact match of the drive. Anyone have an idea on the compatibility with a slightly different codes on the drive?

Not the easiest drive to swap heads in, even for some pros.

It's like asking a student nurse to perform a triple heart by-pass on their first day.

Sorry to say I'd give your chances of success on this beast as less than 1%

Not what you want to hear I'm sure, but fact nonetheless.

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

aww

Not the most important data on it but still I need to give it a try before giving up.

Haha

Pretty accurate.

_________________
Web: https://www.day1data.de

So, would something like this have compatible head?

cant seem to find one with site WU

Not compatible

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

What should I look for in the donor drive? How close does the codes has to be?

Use this and read a bit: search.php

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

I did read every thread about this drive, but still not completely sure what exactly to look for.
How can I tell which drive is a 6 head vs 8 head model?

Here is some basic matching guide information. It's still not a guarantee. You would improve your match if you had access to heads maps and preamp types. Even if you found a compatible donor and changed the heads without destroying them, there is still more work to do.

You would be better off sending this to someone for a head swap and see if you can reduce the fee by doing the data recovery yourself. Just be sure the DR company will guarantee the heads work and drive will ID. There used to be a company that offered that service but I don't know if they still do.

Before you kill your HD, look up Dunning-Kruger effect. Right now you probably think you know a lot more about hard drives and DR than you really do. If you studied/practiced data recovery for the next year and re-evaluated yourself you would probably rate your knowledge close to the same level you think you are at now. This is not an insult, it's just normal human behavior