Guide: Open hard drive surgery

[booman]

Wow! that is an insane tutorial. Thanks Gizmo for taking the time to take pictures and post it. So very informative. I don't think I could do that with such confidence. I would end up guessing and destroying all of it.
Now I know who to ask when a drive stops working.
Did you pay yourself $25 for the article?

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by booman

Did you pay yourself $25 for the article?

Heh, no. Daniel ~ doesn't pay his slaves.....err, servants.......err, well, we don't get paid.

[aztec61]

Originally Posted by gizmo

Heh, no. Daniel ~ doesn't pay his slaves.....err, servants.......err, well, we don't get paid.

Daniel's a big, fat meanie.

[danrok]

Pay is for mere mortals.

[Daniel ~]

Which is why I'm always broke, which you why you get titles rather than money, well half of it, the other half is that you might want to go off site to spend it...

I just can't see where that would benefit any one.

[jcp411]

Interesting guide there gizmo. I was wondering if you are familiar with the seminars given at some of the hacker conferences on this kind of thing?

[Gizmo]

I know of them; I've never been to one. One of these days I'd really like to get to one of those hacker conferences, though. I'd probably be a bit out of place; a 40-something amongst a bunch of people half my age. LOL

[Aedan]

I wouldn't assume that they're all 20-somethings you know.

[Samuknow]

There might be some teens there too.....LOL

[Daniel ~]

Just go as a Fed! ":O}

[barneygumble742]

i recently had a 400 gig WD drive crash on me after months of controller issues. when i bought it, i went noah style (2 of every kind) and i wanted to swap the platters. i called a data recovery company and they said its not a good idea that i do it because a standard drive has multiple platters inside that need to be aligned at the microscopic level. i'm sure he also didn't want me to save $995 and swap platters successfully.

moral of the story: always have backups. IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU...SOMEDAY. i never followed what i preached.

[Gizmo]

It depends. I'm no expert, but it is my understanding that modern drives don't have the microscopic alignment requirement. In the old days when one drive platter was actually dedicated to the servo data, that was for certain true. However, the servo data for maintaining tracking are embedded with the regular data stream now, so I don't believe that the platter-to-platter alignment is as critical as it used to be.

[tuck2001]

Hi!
Thanks for a great guide!
Whould you have any idea if this might work on a ThinkPad 80 GB 5400 rpm Serial ATA Hard Drive?
I think it consist of two platters..

Thanks for reply!

[Gizmo]

A two platter drive is almost guaranteed not to work, from what I understand. The main reason for this is that the drive makes certain assumptions about the positioning of the data on each platter (I think some drives may even read from the platters in parallel for improved data transfer performance). If you don't keep relative positioning of the two platters, things don't work right. AIUI, there are timing marks on the platters that data recovery houses can use to ensure the proper alignment of the platters when they have to swap the media, but reading those marks requires equipment and knowledge that I don't possess.