I read on the forums that this drive is tricky to recover, as when you create an image of this drive you need to keep it open in order to fine tune the alignment of the heads, is this correct?

Also does anyone know if this drive has ramps for the heads?

Drive Info:
Western Digital (WD5000AAKS )
MDL: WD5000AAKS-65YGA0
Date: 29 Oct 2007
DCM: HHNCHT2MHB
SN: WCAS82257175

Thanks,
Rendered

You need the data? Ask a pro. It's beyond you because maybe h/s or p/s to be performed - at this point data usually becomes not important

I brought this drive to a recovery house, and they quoted me $1500 CND for an image of the drive. This drive is part of a RAID system, where two drives failed within hours of each other, seems the ICYDOCK enclosure I had caused the drives to fail. The repair tech told me he would need to do a head swap, and that if I could bring him an exact duplicate, he could use the heads from that drive, and the PCB to perform the operation. Upon explaining this to the wife, she looked at me with this puzzeling look, like i was crazy or something, which i soon learned was the look she was going after,

So after a bit of grumbling, I started to do some researching, getting all the tools I may need to perform this job but stumbled on some posts that discribed the WD drives as a real pain, for head alignment after the head swap, and I just wanted to confirm this with some pro's.

Rendered

It's not the best drive to learn on. Actually, ANY drive with important data is not one to learn on. Being very optomistic, I can guarantee you won't get it right the first time, and you won't get a second chance. If you do it yourself, just be aware you very likely won't succeed, and you'll ruin the chances of anyone recovering anything as well. This isn't like a CPU swap. This is more like brain surgery. It requires a steady hand, the right tools, a great deal of skill, and lots of practice. Think of how likely you would be to succeed in doing brain surgery after reading in a medical forum, and maybe reading some articles, and you'll be able to estimate your chances of success.

Let everyone screw drives and data, is the best way to learn.

I completely understand your point, as it stands, my raid system is down, as well as my data until I take action, either by re creating a new raid with 2 new drives in an 8 drive array, or trying to restore this one by hand. I have done some tests with other drives i have laying around which are lower capacity drives, and I seem to be able to get the new heads on the drive, and do a mock recovery of files i initially put there for this purpose, now these drives being 40 gig, as campared to the drives I need recovering which are 500Gig WD.

I have been browsing the forum for a while, and was considering a head replacement tool from HDRC, but due to the negetive comments, I decided that I would create my own tool, which seems to work great for my purposes. I am very aware of all the caveats, and issues that may happen, I have been in the PC hardware/software side of things for well over 25 years, and over those years I have had the time to open, and examine many a parts, and drives.

Are you aware of the WD issues for recovery? IE: manual head alignment?

Thanks for your time,
Rendered

100%. I just can't find anyone willing to help me prove it.

Rendered, accept the 1500 $, it's cheap. Otherwise your data is not worth it, then why worry ?
Anyway, advice here is probably free, troubleshooting NOT. If something good happens, good for you, if not and need further help, no one and no recovery house will be glad to help you - at least at the same price if you had not open the drive... Your experience in PCs does not mean you are able to do what it takes in your case, anyway you have a good occasion to prove yourself your skill(s). I feel we can't help you anymore , neither help in "remote disk surgery". Good luck.

Hey rendered.

To answer your question, the problems with WD drive heads has been that the head bearing shaft was screwed to the cover. This is bad because once you take the cover off, the bearing is no longer in a fixed position so there is no alignment between the head and data on the plater. On lower capacity drives, where the data bits are physically much bigger, people have had sucess in a clean area running the drive open while copying data to another drive. They did this by doing a head swap (HS), then sticking a skinny screw driver in the bearing shaft screw hole. Now they have a handle, and they slightly moved the head stack around while the drive is booting up until all the sudden, it comes to life. Now the user has to hold the screwdriver very still for as long as it takes to get the data that you need. Clearly this is very tedious, but that is all part of data recovery.

Now this is the way WD drives used to be. I suspect they dont do it this way any more unless they are stuck this way by somebody elses patent. I think the WD2000s were like this and there were no ramps in the WD2000, but dont know about the WD5000. So there you go, a usefull and educational answer to your question. If you want to find out more, hunt for other forums. Also check out Youtube videos. They have all kinds of very good stuff to see exactly what you are getting into. Maybe somebody here knows exactly what the inside of the WD5000 looks like and is willing to just tell him. It is always best to know before you open things up. But if you can live without your data, maybe you can make this a learning experiance but your chances of a sucess are low. These are very very delecate and if you just slightly catch the head chip on the plater as you rotate the head on, things can be ruined.

Now the bonus. When doing a HS, the paper method is very good. Cut strips 1 inch long and half inch wide of post-it-note paper. Fold them in half around a tiny screwdriver so they are open as thick as the platter disk. Widen out a tweezer, and let the spring action hold the paper by the edge. With the heads already moved close to the platter edge, slip the paper on the plater about the midpoint of the head arm where there is a larger gap. With paper completely inserted, now gently slid paper along plater toward the head tip and stop when paper touches the tiny head chip. Use tooth picks that arnt magnetic for proding and pushing. The springyness and the thickness of the paper has now lifted the head chip off the plater. Do this for the rest of the platers, then rotate head stack off the disks. Voala, a head stack with papers in between keeping the head spread open. Now these will slide right back onto the platters with no sweat. Just make sure you inspect the head gap before you do so to make sure each head is spread pretty good. You dont want to catch the head chip on the edge when inserting.

Extra Extra bonus. About dirt. Its not that big a deal for data recovery. Dirt is only a big deal if you want the drive to last a long time. For data recovery, vacume your work area, and keep the vacume at hand. Also a can of clean air. After you disassemble and study the drive, you will have dust particles again. Ignore them till its time to close or power up. Then stop, and vacume your table again. Then spray clean air to blow platter clean. When drive spins up, dirt cant get on it. Its spinning. So relax and concetrate on getting the data.

I hope you enjoyed that post, but I can bet real money some joker is going to whine whine whine about it. I tell you now, dont waste your breath. Whiners arnt welcome.

Bad News... WD Drives still have the head stack axis set by the lid screw.

Information is fine. However, encouraging someone to do something that has a .01% chance of success, and a 95% chance of permanently removing anyone's chance of recovery, is irresponsible. Unfortunately, You can't yet download wisdom from Emule.

Bummer, must be a patent thing. And since data is getting extrordinarily small, the success of HSing is diminishing as drive size grows. Further complicated by that stupid WD lid.

I hear your point, but its not like people can get electricuted, and these days people really want to know. If their stuff isnt worth $1500 to them, they may still wish to try with as much advantage as humanly possible. Its little lose to the repair world because most these folks wont spend any way. Its the difference between hobby computing and professional computing. Ill diddle with my own stuff, but my companies are going to want me to send their vital stuff out to get gurantees. Lots of things can go wrong, but there are a few things we can do. In these forums, we can make things crystal clear so that people can decide for themselves.

Well, you can make things crystal clear. Personally, I like helping people, even for free. However, I'm not going to craft a lengthy message, explaining exactly what needs to be done, what tools, the pitfalls, etc, in essence writing a small book, just to have the OP say something like 'Whoa! WAY over my head. I'll just toss it. Thanks anyway'. Honestly, most people don't want to know. If it's really just you that wants to know, it's your responsibility to learn, not mine to teach.

Also, be aware that, in addition to hobbyists, there are also professional businessmen here. You can't expect the same open attitude in an industry based on trade secrets. Just as you can say whatever you want, you can't demand anyone else to offer up life's secrets for free. Some things will just never be on the Internet.

Clearly nobody is stopping you from helping. Just don't be surprised people here don't waste their time helping someone to actually lose their data. There is really nothing that can be said here that will significantly help the OP's chances of success, other than to take it to a pro. No, that's not greedy me trying to get more money for another ivory back scratcher. It's just good advice.... Take it to SOMEONE, or you'll never see your data again.

@rchadwick : you are loosing time trying to educate people. There's a strange crazy form of information-applied communism running nowadays (luckily not everywhere and luckily people make other damages so the need for PROs will continue and rise)
You're perfectly right that most people don't want to know but maybe are only searching an easy way or a honest advice to solve the problems... it's like having a problem with your car ignition and someone posts 3 pages condensing a degree in mechanic engineering. All useless.
BTW Why not widespread the formulas of nervine gas, VX and maybe the fabrication process in order to make them at home, just for research purposal and in the name of the progress and of the freedom of information ? Get lost.

@rendered Please take some advice from a new guy learning data recovery. This is not at all easy. I have watched many videos and read many books. I have many tools and still struggle. When someone watches a youtube video of Scott (nothing against Scott as I will be taking one of his classes) doing a recovery or speaking of it, this is very generalized. @Stts have you ever attempted a head swap or platter swap? I ll bet not, especially on these drives. Something I have recently learned is aligning the platters (around the spindle not just keeping them aligned together). This is not an easy task neither is the head alignment. I hope I dont sound like a jerk or a know it all I am just trying to give advice based on what little experience I do have.

I think I found a guy that I could learn from

Well jerkykid...you can knock me all you want, but you didnt point out anything I said that was wrong. And since you already judged me, I will leave it to your wonder wether I have done it before. And if you already know about these tecniques, then this post is not for you so move along. We dont want the flies you atract.

hmmm....I dont believe I judged you, I however do think that advising someone about something you know very little about is a bad idea. As far as me wondering about what you have or have not done, I really could care less. What you have accomplished here is making some other members mad and in general ruining it for other people (closed forums). Maybe you should just pay attention to your kit cars and quit pissing in someone elses pool.

BlackST: Thanks for the advise, I'll remeber that.

rchadwick: I don't think stss encouraged me to do anything, I asked for some advise on this drive, I am planning on doing a head swap with? About the book, why not make it a sticky then? I'm sure that other users that DO have 'some' knowledge, and have proven to themselves that they are able to perform the head swap, would appreciate it.

Just some background on where I come from in the forum/IRC/fidonet scene.
I used to be a @ on some really old IRC channels, before www existed. I provided loads of info, that was repetitive, and I gave huge to the people in the community that needed it, and we all seen people come and go over the years it becomes a cycle of patterns. you get to know the feeling of the people that make a quick poke in, ask a Q, get nasty if no one answers them before someone else posts..., then exits, stage left...

jerkykid: I have been down the same path, viewing scott's video's (Which are very informative), and from this I realized that I have the skills needed to perform this, IMHO, if it's a simple head swap, and no issues with swapping the PCB, and bad sectors match from the P/G List, as I will be re-inserting this to the RAID array, in a degraded state. Ouch!

stss: I appreciate your post, This is exactly what I have heard regarding the head alignment, and thanks for confirming this..

Also, thanks for the extra details on the paper trick and the dust issues, I was going to use the paper method at first, but couldn't figure out how it could be used without damaging the heads in the process.. so i made my own tool that I adjust depending on the spacing of the heads/platters

Rendered

SIMPLE head swap? We tried to warn you....

Thank you rendered, that was very nice of you to say. And I am glad you found the info I shared usefull. You are correct in assuming that I dont know everything. But I share what I have, and I am here hopeing I may learn something new. Its clear learning here is going to be a lot of persistent work, so I will be patient and take it as it comes. Keep us posted on your progress and share the details of the tool you made if you are so inclined. From the PMs I get, many others want the comeradery but are fearfull of the hassle. I dont blame them a bit and hopefully things here will chill out down the road when the flames tire out.