I have a very old 2.5" Toshiba 30gb. Model MK3021GAS.

I have put the platter into a working donor drive but the head still just cycles to the center of the platter and to the edge, over and over and after a minute it just parks and does nothing. Is this platter garbage?

Thanks.

You run hard disk without top cover?

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Sistrum Data Recovery
http://www.sistrum.mk/en

No but I can hear it.

Drive would not spin correctly due to bad bearing.

I did not use a flow hood but I have a clean area to work in (I put the original platterms from the donor drive back in and it worked fine).

I did not swap pcbs. I didn't know this mattered, I will try this today.

Hi,
How Many Platters is This Brother ? . Sometimes You Could Heat The Motor Bearing And Copy your Data But Sometimes Not

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

Yes it's 1 platter.

Which pcb? The little one hooked to the head assy or the main one thats on the underside of the drive?

The main one. Don't touch the head/preamp assembly.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Swapped over the main board, still no luck. Hope lost?

I wouldn't say all hope is lost, but severely diminished. It's sad because this may have been an affordable recovery had you gone to a pro at the beginning. Now I doubt anyone will want to touch it for less than a couple grand.

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

if donor heads are incompatible u need to swap mha as well.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

2 different "pros" wanted $1400 and $1500, so I figured I'd try.

And this is why you leave it the pros... There is a reason why it costs so much. Hell, we try and avoid doing any form of platter swap if possible. If that drive had more than 1 platter in it then you are likely hosed to begin with. Drives with multiple platters have alignment of the platters themselves. Moving them just a hair out of alignment (literally) will mean data is unrecoverable.

When you swapped platter over to the new drive, did you check and make sure the drive itself had matching model number, hard drive code and country of manufacture? How did you remove the heads from the platter? Just pull them straight across?

Was the spindle actually stuck on the old drive or was there head stiction?

Sorry sound like I am grilling you but I think more information is needed. Just asking questions.

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Remember, take your time. Be persistent. If you have doubts stop. Check, then proceed again.

MK3021GAS has heads on ramp normally and these drives suffered from the bearing drying out.
Apart from that i agree, it should be done by a pro to avoid stupid mistakes.

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

Boy did I come across arrogant and pompous little know-it-all there (still green under the collar here myself). Was really late at night and should have waited before posting. Just re-read everything and things are much more clear. Missed the 1 platter part. Sorry about that. Please disregard my post.

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Remember, take your time. Be persistent. If you have doubts stop. Check, then proceed again.