SD tools are by NO means a "large" investment.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

precisecheck,

Just do a favor to me. Grab any two WD drives you think are compatible (I mean it ANY two from your inventory) and are fully working. Now replace heads on them - start the drive - then put original heads back to original drive and donors to donor and start the drive.

Only then you will know it's not as easy as you think. After this operation, all you will have in hands is nothing, but two screwed up WDs. So as a conclusion, you have completely ruined your chances of your personal drive already.

Rest, your attitue - "I don't want any pro. I just need to work them for me. Remote support preferrable" That means that you are not willing to spend even a penny on your job, yet expect that a pro will tell you step by step procedure - even remote support. WOW! what a confidence!

I put my remark as sarcastic, but sorry, I couldn't help commenting after seeing peoples reaching the height of foolishness.

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I just hate spammers...It was a Spammer, who ruined my life!

@precisecheck...

You are asking for knowledge that will bring you ca$h . Pay for it.

Hello All,

I wanted to thank those that gave helpful advice. When alignment is mentioned is it physical head alignment when doing a head swap ( Make sure they go onto the platter in a aligned manner) or are we talking about making sure the heads align when looking through the ACE or SD software interface?

Regards.

Ruben

On many WD drives, the heads are held in place by the lid, which functions as a bearing cap. Remove the lid, and you've lost the original factory alignment. Have fun trying to find it again.

With drive with multiple heads, a different set of heads likely has different characteristics which can result in another type of alignment headache. These two types of alignment issues are discussed elsewhere on this forum.

My other advice: if you don't have a thick skin, you shouldn't be taking so great a personal "risk" by asking questions on an open forum. You get the bitter with the sweet . . .

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http://www.datasaversllc.com

Funny ...

One of these days I will make an auction for know-how on ebay. Just for fun.
I wonder how much could be the value of solutions for WD alignment...

BlackST,

Great idea! Whoever has any useful information and would like to get paid for it let me know. I guess money talks and bullshit runs a marathon.....

Regards,

BlackST,

Great idea! If anyone is interested in getting paid for this information let me know. I guess money talks and bullshet runs a marathon....

If money talks why asking then ?

Hi:

If you are really interested in DR work and would like to open and start a company you will need to at least have some knowledge before trying to swap heads on a WD drive and destroying clients data. I am sorry but I know of others who have invested over 6 months of personal research time into this to find the results. Plus they did not do it on a clients drive either. They purchased drives and practiced on these drives, each model and each step of the way. You can not expect someone to tell you on an open forum how to do this job. If you have read posts as you say you will see here that everyone thinks a head swap is necessary for their drives. Or on second thought a platter swap is needed. Many time this is not the case on all of this and a proper diagnose needs to be performed before any actions are taken on these drives. If it is your own personal data ok go for it. But considering you are not out soucing this work it tells me it is data from another person. So why risk this chance with his data and destroy his only hope of getting it back.

If you want to do DR work then follow some advise from other. They are not be critical of you only offering advice to help save someone elses data. Here they see this all the time and how someone has screwed up a head change or a platter swap and lost all hope of ever getting data back from this drive.

You should do some of the following before ever working on a drive that belongs to another person.

1. Invest in an stock of older drives of all models and sizes. Start to learn how to repair these first. Practice on head swaps, platter changes, recovery techniques, and working in SA of these drives. When you are good with them and can fix all these problems then go on.

2. Invest in a stock of tools. You will find there is not many out on the market to get. You will need to make your own tools for many work inside the hdd to help you with your work. There are a few head change tools out but you will need to invest in them and learn to use them.

3. No tools is a bad tool if used correctly and you understand how it works and can use it to perform what it is intended for. You speak of SD tools and how bad they are. Well have you ever used them an tried them and do you have any knowledge of their function. There are other tools on the market that you can invest in and purchase. Do your research on this one but they are necessary to have

4. After the purchase of your tools get to know them. how they work, how they are used, and for what purpose each one of them is for

5. You should invest at least 6 months into research and learning all these drives and working with them together with these tools. You should have a feel for this work and how to do it before you even start working on someone elses drive.

That is why this information is guarded and not for sale. New drives come out each day and it take experienced DR companies time and research to learn all there is about this drive and how to repair it. Most company invest in a stock of drives to use them in R & D work they do not do it on their clients drive. Most of them do not stop until they can find a way to repair these drives. Some work over 20 hours a day to do this.

So to me when I read from not only you but many others asking how to change heads on drive then guess the only answer that anyone can give you is find out it can not be told on an open forum. Sorry but some techniques and knowledge can not be given out publicly only in private.

This is nothing against you at all. It is only becasue this knowledge in the wrong hands will destroy data on drives. So if you would like to be part of the DR community and receive help from others then do like others have done. Learn your stuff, ask questoins, and do not bost in public and cry for answers that will never be given to you. Make contacts and keep your work private and you will go a lot further than the way you are going now.

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Iorana Haraharaini

In regards to head alignment. I tend to lean towards the theory that small differences in the heads are what cause the biggest problems with head alignment. I'm not saying that the lid doesn't play a part in maintaining that alignment, but in my experience I have found that I can remove the lid, and not really focus on putting it exactly back in it's original position and the drive will still come ready. I spent a couple of days just going through an inventory of WD drives I had, and for the most part I simply removed and replaced the lid. On all but 1, the drives came ready as if they hadn't been touched. On a few of them I actually removed and replaced the heads, with the same result. As long as I kept the same heads in, it would work fine.

However, when I actually swap heads out, that is a different story. Getting the drive to calibrate afterward has proven to be a b*tch at times. On some drives it seems impossible to get the head alignment just right. You may get it to catch and then lose it. This is when it would be good to have the ability to micro-jog for sure.

Buy many new WD drives - identical - later WD desktop drives like 320GB, 500GB.

Original heads almost always work in original drives with heads swap
Donor heads almost always never work in patient drives with heads swap.

Make deductions.

I seem to have a higher success rate with donor drives closer to the failed drives mfg date. If I get further away from that mfg date the alignment gets worse. Anyone else notice this?

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Yep, I try to match Manf. Date as close as possible. Also, if it's a Dell Drive, match the Dell P/N - did a nice headswap this week with a dell matching part and didn't worry about top cover alignment. Imaged 100%.

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Data Recovery Ireland

are you talking about ROYL family ?

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ZeBong
" что случилось в России - останется в России "
" Россия еще раз"

why not take alignment discussion private