truth of the matter. It's more expensive to have your boiler changed than data recovery costs.. And only c0cks change their own boiler....And most die..................

It's these people with sticky fudgey fingers that p1ss me off the most.... If you can't cook, buy ready meals. If you can't drive, get a taxi. If you can't recover your data, get a pro ....

It's really get up my platter extraction tool when people say "It can't be that hard!?"

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

If you can't cook, buy ready meals. If you can't drive, get a taxi. If you can't recover your data, get a pro ....


LOL maybe a bit simplistic...

Patient: Doctor! my arms fallen off
Doctor: Have to go private that will be 25K Euro
Patient: Wow that expensive just to sew my arm back on!!!??
Doctor: Well you could always buy some string, some needles, staples some antibacterial wipes and some penicillin and .......
Patient : Yes! Do it myself , Hmmmmmmm (It can't be that hard)

2 weeks later...see below...

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

Thats probably the best post in 6 years of the entire HDD GURU forum. Well done.

I like this one a lot.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

If by once in a while you mean years and years of research, testing, experimentation, frying one or two or fifty hard drives then yes, there are tons of stuff out there. If you say you have a burned out drive every month then maybe you should stop using Seagates. That would be the easiest and most cost effective way to solve your problem.

Hey guys I can't help to notice how popular DIY hard drive recovery is, so I though I would post this link to help beginners out

http://www.wikihow.com/Swap-Hard-Disk-Drive-Platters

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Zero Alpha: zeroalpha.com.au
Find Cheap Donor Drives App: https://www.zeroalpha.com.au/donor-drive-app Updated February 2026

They seemed to forget a step or two in that list.

Oh no, maybe on a N40P it can work !

Try

http://www.wikihow.com/Sew_Your_Arms_Ba ... .html.aspx

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All went well until I plugged the drive in.

The thing is, it's a practiced skill, so sure you can learn to do it. I do not try to perform hardware drive recovery myself but I am a curious type of person and ask a lot of questions. I found some of the people at Drivesavers to be patient enough to answer some of my questions, especially when they are working on a job I have sent in. From what I can gather, success depends a lot on judgement of what approach to use, based on past experiences and personal opinion. There are mechanisms that allow direct, granular control over the hardware, but what do you tell it to do? This stuff is in all kinds of machine code, and the software that controls the machinery many of these places use was written in-house for their private use. They have microscopically pure Clean Rooms for opening drives, thousands and thousands of archived hard drives to raid parts off of and so on.
It's a deep topic. I do use all manner of software recovery utilities, Prosoft, Spinrite, R-Studio, 3 or 4 others...I have baked, frozen and dropped drives at times to try to get them to unstick or wake up, but if I don't hear ANY seek activity upon power-up, or I hear the terminal 'click of death' , I know to not even bother. I send it out and spend my time making money to pay for it rather than entering into a new career. I'm just not willing to devote that amount of research, study and practice into a sideline.
That's the way I look at it.
Of course, if you are bound and determined to acquire this skill set, you will, through time, persistence, research and practice. And Google.
Try deepspar.com, see what you think.
I hope that adds a little perspective to the magnitude of trying to pursue mechanical-level hard drive recovery.

You are the data recovery industries worst nightmare.

I once found my grandfather lying on the floor. I decided to revive him by putting him in the oven, strangely enough this didnt seem to work, I then put the crispy old fella in the freezer for a few hours, again, no sign of the cold old crispy fella coming round, I then dropped him from a great height, again, no sign of life. It turns out he only drunk too much and was having a sleep, not a serious problem. Now he is dead.

now I am a murderer. You get the point?

Fretts, are you a data murderer? Computer says....'Yes'

That's ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous.

What's even worse, it seems to be common practice. No comment.

P.S. on HDDGURU forum, after saying that HDD regenerator , freezing, dropping and baking drives are "procedures", do you expect red carpet ?

P.P.S. you stop when you hear drive clicking... that's EXACTLY where pros start - and start earning. A lot.

It is ridiculous.
I did not kill my inebriated grandfather and neither did you.

If you meant sending a drive out for recovery after I had beaten it senseless is ridiculous, it would be, but that's not what I meant. I meant that upon first inspection, if the drive is clicking or doesn't show any seek behavior on power up, I do send it out and spend the money. If, on the other hand, I have given up on the chase, and the owner doesn't consider the data to be precious, my Hail Mary move, before trashing the drive for its magnets, is to try those long-shot "procedures". To be perfectly frank, I have yet to experience any success with them. I suspect they address head stiction and bearing issues that aren't all that prevalent anymore.
Besides, my remark about what I have tried is peripheral to the main point I was making to the original post, that it's a deep topic, requires skill, study, money, dedication and patience... much like what pcrepair said much more eloquently than I. If "Jim Morrison" is a guy like that, then sure enough, he will find his way into it. I attempted to make the point that it isn't a trivial pursuit where you can throw a couple of canned solutions at it and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the reborn drive to pop out the other end. Fair enough?