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Hard Drive Transplant

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Talapus:

--- Quote from: kureshii on September 30, 2009, 06:35:56 AM ---Mind you, while it's simple enough in concept to be described in one sentence, in reality it involves finding a dust-free environment, VERY careful disassembly of said drive and handling of platters (get one fingerprint or significant speck of dirt on those platters, it's game over unless you're lucky). In other words, not something you want to try if it's your first time.

--- End quote ---

I've taken apart dozens of old hard drives, and I agree that it is very difficult not to damage the platters. You will need a full set of hex wrenches, a couple screwdrivers, and some kind of pry bar (for busting through seals and such). If you manage to make it work, quickly transfer everything to another drive (since you compromised the seal and filters). And be sure to rescue the magnets from the dead drives. The magnets from a 3.5" drive are alot of fun to play with, but the best ones come from much larger drives (I've salvaged several from a pair of 12" drives that are scary).

Lupin:

--- Quote from: bloody000 on September 30, 2009, 05:54:59 AM ---Well, since you have a bunch of them you can try doing it on your bad drives first(not the freshly blew up ones).

--- End quote ---
I'm going to use the circuit boards from the damaged (bad sectors) drives to make the blown-up drives function long enough to get the data from them.


--- Quote from: fohfoh on September 30, 2009, 06:12:20 AM ---Grab a external case and test it out first. If it doesn't work... other methods are going to be very very messy.

--- End quote ---
The drives are dead (the platters won't spin since the circuit board is toasted) so the drives won't run even if I use enclosures.


--- Quote from: kureshii on September 30, 2009, 06:35:56 AM ---What I've read before is, if the 2 drives are of the exact same model and make (or if you have other reason to believe this procedure is feasible), you can transfer the disk platters from the failed drive to the working drive. If all goes well, the new drive will read the old platters, and you can recover your data off the drive (assuming the platters are intact).

Mind you, while it's simple enough in concept to be described in one sentence, in reality it involves finding a dust-free environment, VERY careful disassembly of said drive and handling of platters (get one fingerprint or significant speck of dirt on those platters, it's game over unless you're lucky). In other words, not something you want to try if it's your first time.

You definitely want to do lots of reading up, and practise on an old/cheap drive or something. You will likely also need specialised tools; platters are not easy to remove without contamination (try disassembling an old drive).

Some details can be found here.

--- End quote ---
I won't be transferring the platters. It requires too much effort. For instance, you need a clean room to perform such a delicate operation. The platters of the drives are completely sealed by metal film(?) so transferring them will only cause me more problems (like how to seal the drive again)


--- Quote from: BotMan2 on September 30, 2009, 06:39:01 AM ---You can check if the main assembly (platters) only depends on a removable ribbon cable (or many ribbon cables) to connect to the main board of the HD. IF so, its theoretically possible without doing any soldering.

--- End quote ---
There are no ribbon cables unfortunately. I think the board is connected to the platters via pins. How the hell did Maxtor build this?

I have to buy some screwdrivers with hex tips to see how things are.underneath the board. There seems to be a deep gap between the board and the rest of the drive.

If this fails, at least I have some new paperweight :D

Mag-X:
Never tried this before, but if it makes an difference, when I was in school, we found an old drive in the junk lab that had been taken apart with the platters exposed and finger prints all over them. It actually worked for several days in that condition. :o Tons of bad sectors though.  :P

Talapus:

--- Quote from: Mag-X on September 30, 2009, 12:41:12 PM ---Never tried this before, but if it makes an difference, when I was in school, we found an old drive in the junk lab that had been taken apart with the platters exposed and finger prints all over them. It actually worked for several days in that condition. :o Tons of bad sectors though.  :P

--- End quote ---

That is true of older drives. The newer the drive is though, the more likely that contaminants will result in a head crash.

bcr123:
Lots of times boards are interconnected with a sort of rubbery block that presses against a set of pads on the circuit board, once you take out the screws gently lift up on the circuit board to see how it's attached, if it's pins just gently rock is back and forth, if it's the rubbery block thing it'll just come off without any force at all.  The other option is there may be snap connectors on the underside of the board that you'll need to disconnect. It'll be pretty obvious once you get a look under there though.

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