Hi All,
I am about to attempt a head swap on a 80gb Maxtor. I found a suitable donor and from what I gather, this drive only has 2 heads (an upper and lower) surrounding 1 platter. Just looking for a bit of advice here - when removing the head from the platter, I've read you need to prevent the upper and lower head from touching each other. Does anyone have any good approaches to taking off the head stack and putting it back on the faulty drive? I read some people use post-it notes folded up, others use flat straws, etc. These things are so frail, wondering what most of you guys do with this step

Thanks for any tips

Why do you want to change these heads on this drive? Have you even diagnosed this problems? What is wrong with this drive in the first place. All you guys seem to think that a platter change or head change is going to get back your data for you. Good luck. Many times clicking inside your drive is not head problems but can be related to other things as well. Not all drives need head chage and you need to have the proper tools to determine if this really needs to have the heads changed on it. But from what you are saying you have already opened this drive.

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Iorana Haraharaini

I think no one should provide information in this thread. Very dangerous for data.

Agree

DIY is bad is these physical cases. Then they f**k up the drive and wonder why they get quoted $1,000's for recovery on what would have be a $500 recovery.

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

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

agree with pcimage and poehere ..

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datarecovery trainer and harddisk repair professional
http://www.diskanalyzers.com

http://hddguru.com/content/en/articles/ ... k-Q-and-A/.

Ur HDD , ur data. U are free to gamble with it. But be prepared to lose it all if u want to attempt DIY. Not as easy as u think. Gl m8.