I used to do this on a budget for folks who nearly trashed their drives. Back in the 90s it would cost around $5000 - $10000 for regular people to have their drives recovered. Today it starts at around $100 and up.. and that was my price back then... so I don't do it anymore. I used an acrylic box with gloves and vacuum pumped it. Not a professional way to do it, but I had a 90% success rate. If I didn't get the data, I didn't charge.
That's awesome. Did you reeplace the heads by used with the same models and first 3 characters of the s/n? Did it works and did you recovered your data??
I actually might have also learnt a couple of surgery skills to perform on my failed drives LOL My silly joke set aside, thanks for the great content you delivered here. I'm quite impressed with how far you had to go for something coming up seeming not that big of a problem at the beginning of the operation. BACK UP YOUR THINGS, PEOPLE!
Easy said than done. Back in early 2000's. Terabyte of data on hard drive is expensive. I had some in raid and heat killed the drive. After 15 years I have them lay around and some of the drive missing. Now I don't know if that could be recovered
@@BlueRiceHave you ever done it to replace the heads by used with the same models and first 3 characters of the s/n? Did it works and did you recovered your data??
@@chris01479 i never perform head replacement but i replace the PCB which i dont know if thats incorrect one or theres something wrong with the head. i didnt want to dissect it since i dont want to mess it up even further. there's one movie i have on the HD that i dont know the name of. i remember watching 2 min into it and want to watch later. the movie was a master piece. the most beautiful movie ever made. im willing to pay 1k just to recover that movie..bascially paying to find out the name of the movie.
Super interesting video ! I've lost count of the number of friends and colleagues who have lost precious photos etc because their hard drive failed. It's so important to take regular backups as not everyone can afford this kind of rebuild.
It's why u need to clone ur HDD regularly at least each month, so that when ur HDD fail and u could just use the clone one and sent the injured HDD to the clinic
Hi. Please explain why you did not fix the platters to each other for keeping their relative position. You used to tape the sides with scotch tape in some of your videos. Thanks, keep it up.
I learned long ago to keep at least one other backup drive for important data. My DVD/CD burned came in handy for that. But now I have well over 200 discs taking up space. When the main HD fault happens, there is no data loss, just cash loss, replacing the drive. I was wondering, if the head arm is stuck, or the platter doesn't want to spin, if there is an oil for the bearings. I have seen on larger greased joints in things, the grease gets hard like glue. Just enough lubricant to get the data if needed.
I see, this drive had heavy impact. Heads was rip off and probably spindle bearing was locked too. Only solution is move platters to functioning drive and pull data off. Edit: Good work to extract data from dead disk drive.
I was amazed that there is a way to read multiple platters after reassembly, since there is no chance at all that the platters were re-installed in the exact same rotational orientation relative to each other.
What blows my mind is the level of care that needs to be taken when handling this. I was just watching a video from how a nuclear core went critical because of a scientist's screwdriver slipped.
That's a head separating comb. Prevents heads from touching each other when they are out. It also keeps them leveled with the ramp. That part is a tool, not part of the drive
Please add the Spray used and the brand of the lint free clean room wipes you used at 5:33 in this video. Please add them to your 2019 gear list. Thanks in advance :)
Amazing work and it's all magic for us lay folks. Very interesting to see that data is recoverable in some cases. So interesting and thanks for sharing your expertise and for the great video too.
To get the platter unstuck from the arm reader, find a screw in the middle of your hard drive and then unscrew it and try to see if it would spin again. Never open up the hard drive or that's it.
Good vid man as usual. I have a doubt about platter extracion When there is more than one platter, are they supposed to came together to mantain the realtive position from one to another I mean, take them out as a unit and punt them again as a unit I recall reading or old vids that they have tools the inmovilize the disk stack during extracion. MY guess is you dont need this anymore because somewhere the SW tools you use can deal with it. Cheers !!
Somewhat related... Back in MFM/RLL/ESDI days when you had to low level format disks yourself some high-end controllers had ability to specify head skew. Cylinder skew was available in many better controllers and utilities, but head skew was rare. By having both of these values optimized (by trial end error) you could gain 10-20% speed increase even with 1:1 interleave. Additional gains could still be achieved by overclocking ISA bus by soldering higher frequency oscillator, but skew optimizations were best you could do without modifying hardware.
If a drive is operated over time in a certain orientation such as label side up, and you try to run it label side down, the bearings can wear in such a way that can cause the knocking you hear.
@@r100curtaincall And the cost of the tools is very high. Most people may not realise this but the head comb, which is used to secure the heads on the servo arm during handling, is actually the single most expensive tool he is using in the process of performing the mechanical work on the drive. It is made of titanium and a set of those can cost over a thousand dollars.
@@douro20 Yeah they're super expensive. The tooling required to make them is as insane as the task that it is used to perform. Many people diss hard drives now in favor of SSDs, but they are a true mechanical engineering marvel all their own, from assembly to performance. I daresay they are probably one of if not the fastest precision micro instruments ever created by man.
Great video as always. I enjoy watching you work. I assume the head damage, in this case, was caused by the slow (or stopped) platter meaning the heads were no longer flying properly. Is that correct? If so it's very fortunate that there was no platter damage. Cheers, John
The fact that the spindle failed, actually saved this drive from platter damage. With sliders missing and suspension on the loose, it would only be a matter of a few power ups :)
@@hddrecoveryservices Exactly, we could have a nice shredding platters on new head stack assembly ... one thing to point it out is the aligment, the platters were previously marked so the cylinder remains, therefore the data is more likely to be extracted. As you do my friend, I always create a head map for detecting either weak heads or zones on the platters. You are my hero, keep going man.
Great video, really puts into perspective on how the work is done. I've had some ideas on how repairs were performed, but no idea what tools were used! I have a question: Would this repair work if the platters were transplanted into the working hard drive instead of replacing the reader head? Thanks for your video and look forward to more of your work!
You can't take out platters without taking heads out. If the motor is not damaged and chassis are not contaminated by platter dust we don't swap platters
I am watching you work like a hungry cat watching a fish bowl... That is amazing tech people dont realise what they have in their hands.... You can do anything with the right tools. (Bows to Asia) and the right minds.
Kindly send a link to get free PC 3000 software, actually I done the same process on three WD 3 hard drives, donor 1 then agin donor 2 and so , but allas, no one show in computer bios, without PC 3000 how can i get data from hd drive
Hai Brother, Is there any marking in the platter to find it's top and bottom Side? Is there any another way to find the top and bottom side of platter. Please reply
No there is not. Our platter stand is notched for the disk number on the part that screws it down. It helps keeping them in order, especially during cleaning process
Doesn't platter alignment have to be maintained critically close for it to recover any data? I was under the impression it needed to be within thousandths of and inch, otherwise its just a headache. Is there redundancy between platters that allow for them to be out of alignment of each other?
Weird, somewhere I had read that you have to keep all the platters perfectly rotationally aligned with each other because the system assumes synchronization between heads.
Hello, I once heard or read that when you replace certain parts on HDs that the parts need to come from the same model# and DCM of the new HD. Like for instance, I have a western digital WD10EZEX - 00BN5A0 with DCM: HANNKT2MHB so would I need an exact HD match to pull parts for that? Also, is there a torque specification for the screws that has to be exact?
At what basics you replace the heads? Should they have a same DCM number , after that did you make any change in the module? do you have any books or online courses for hard repair ?.
Your platter swap tool: How does it keep sector alignment across platters? I remember in the past use of sticky tape to keep the disk stack in alignment during platter swap. Is there a video that demonstrates this tool you used? Thanks!
How do you re-align the platters after moving them around? Is the angle at which they originally were important, or is it self read from info on the platters? Does it matter if the individual platters are not as they were, or are they read at different times and the indexes are on the platter themselves? Thanks.
I was thinking that I could do this my self if I needed to, boy was I wrong! Thanks for this great video. I'm putting your name in my address book! :-)
@@ucupi Its not inly software, its special hardware aswell... ive recovered data myself without fancy tools, or software but any attempt at platter or head replacing failed, as most of these drives have firmware on the platters and these platters apparently need allignment (?) maybe youtuber can confirm this. Anyway, I recomment going to a recovery lab FIRST if data is important. ive only tried my own drives or friends harddisks after they learned the price (most offer diagnosis for low or free price, actual recovery costs money).
@@CodeAsm any side effects to doing it without specialized tools? I'd assume data loss is basically inminent if you try to do this the ghetto way, but the hdd would be reusable.
@@KotauFPS ghetto style is posible depending on the case. Dd, ddresque, testdisk and the best Rstudio might do the job for allott of software isues people might have. Hardware isues depends. Replacing flashrom, capasitors connectors, sure. If you have a cleanairroom and use gloves, maybe. But too many try and then go to a recovery company and actualy made it worse. If you wanna learn, and probably lose data, go ahead. Investigate why those paid hardware and software is so good, why are they using custom hardware? The hdd also have special controllers, maybe learn how to controll those
@@KotauFPS Dust is the main culprit. You MAY get lucky, but generally a spec of dust rotating at 7200rpm is like crashing into a boulder. That's why every shop has one of those fancy clean booths: you can spend 30mins swapping parts, but a single spec of dust or even a small hair can destroy the drive.
On some type of hard drives, platters shouldn't be never separated otherwise sync will be lost and all data then would be unrecoverable. How do you know if a particular model of hard drive can be subjected to the separation of each individual platter? Is it possible to check and clean platters on those models where platters should never been separated?
what type of hard drives should never be separated? Over the years I've worked several thousands of hard drives, with a significant portion of which had to be split. Some drives are just harder to balance after the split, but they all can be taken apart. The key is to know what you are doing,.
Ohh i didn't know. I've read many post on hddguru forum where a lot of pro say that only on few type of hard drives you're able to separate platters without having sync troubles and get near to impossible to rescue data. Example on Barracuda 7200.11 and .12 i always read they've suggested to use special duct tape in case is needed to swap platters and if you don't do that you loose sync. Syncing those again is near to impossible (that is what i always read). Anyone has never wrote that there is a technique that can let separate platters on those models without going out of sync. Maybe you're a better technician than them or they're intent is to make avoid other people to do that.
@@danielemalagoli2751 If your talking about platter skew, he marks the edges of the platter before unscrewing the spindle and lines them back up again when reassembling.
Kindly send a link to get free PC 3000 software, actually I done the same process on three WD 3 hard drives, donor 1 then agin donor 2 and so , but allas, no one show in computer bios, without PC 3000 how can i get data from hd drive, please help me, I will be very thankful to you
In case i have a cleanroom-device like this, can i just open my dropped wd-blue mobile, take the old head out, put a new one from a similar drive in, swap these chips and everythings fine??? please say yes
In short, the answer is no. Mechanical procedure is only a part of the process. It would be way more financially suitable to just hire a professional to do it, than tool up
What keeps the platters absolutely centered when you disassemble and reassemble the stack? Isn't there bound to be a few micrometers of slack? Also, do the platters need to maintain their rotational orientation relative to each other?
Either he can read the data from each platter individually and then rebuild it, or the tool he is using is somehow holding the position exactly. I believe the former of the two is more possible
Working for Data Recovery with Kroll for several years and I'll let you know... he was lucky. If you do this, ALWAYS mark your platters someway somehow. Cause some drives don't care, others are picky as fuck.
ive heard from many other reputable companies like ACSData that if you get the platter alignment off just a hair, your whole chances of recovery are now 0. The platter timing and alignment is done by a machine, once that is lost, you NEVER get it back no matter what u do.
Great video. I'm just wondering how all sliders detached. I'd have thought one or two might if perhaps it was dropped, but all of them?? Also, how do they stick so well to the platter? Was there contamination or did they embed due to physical shock? I'm amazed that the platters were still ok
I was lately watching other HDD platter transplantation video and the guy stressed that the platters MUST be aligned vertically or else game over. It doesn't seem to be the case here as you even rotated the platter outside of disk assembly at 5:08 and no way your arms can be that precise... So what's the lesson here?
I was almost literally on the edge of my seat. Fascinating work! I could do that, but I don't have the equipment... and especially, not familiar with the software. Great Job.
@@hddrecoveryservices I have a doctorate in information systems and leadership. Unfortunately, as a former computer repair technician, the doctorate was more about leadership than tech. No matter. I truly enjoyed the video. Thanks.
aren't the plates synchronized between eachother? i've heard they has to be turned all at the same angle, but here it works despite you clearly rotated plates randomly can you talk about that?
What would you say happenned if my drive is beeping every second, not spinning, which resulted from laying it on a tinfoil while it was connected to the computer? Would you say "anything on the PCB could have been shorted/burned"? Like I said, it doesn't spin up but it's "alive".
I am not gonna say it's not important, but we work with tools that can let us work with individual surfaces one at a time, so position is not a concern for me. With that being said, I keep them lined up as close to original and humanly possible
I'm working at a computer shop. I always sell something else then Western digital when it comes to external hard drives. Western digital likes to solder the USB port directly to the drive itself. This sucks for data recovery. Because you're basically lost when your usb connector gets damaged.
And this is exactly why I've already transitioned from using portable mechanical hard drives to solid state drives. SSDs still can fail too but less likely from drops.
Magnetic data storage can actually be much more reliable than flash. All flash media suffers from problems associated with the way that the charge is stored in the memory cell, and there are only so many times a cell can be written to and erased before the cell degrades to the point that it cannot be written to or read out. Also with the density of modern flash storage the distance between the cells can also cause problems where the electric field used to read or write a cell can cause cells around it to become corrupted, a problem known as read or write disturbance. Therefore flash controllers use very strong error correction codes to ensure the integrity of the stored data, and data bits are always spread across cells to help minimize wear. These are all problems which don't exist with magnetic storage.
@@hddrecoveryservices Well that's a good thing I guess! But there isn't much you could do, right? Can't see opening a helium-filled laser welded drive without complete destruction, then how to fill it back...
Great video I was just curious what did you do that saved this drive that the previous recovery shop could not due. And can you tell me approximately what this repair cost the customer.
In this industry success rate grows hand in hand with experience and expertise. Another shop cares about delivering data to the client as oppose to attempting to get paid even if it comes at cost of client's data getting permanently damaged. It is the right approach, and it is a core thing that will be discussed in one of the episodes in nearest future.
Nice video man, why did you erase parts of the firmware on the chip and then recalculate the checksum? Wouldn't filling it with 0s just empty that portion of the eeprom?
Those modules are on the disk, not in ROM. It is done do disable bunch of offline activity that the drive comes with to not accumulate defects and such.
I got an SSD drive suffered a short circuit by a drop of water in the sata interface, is it possible recover the data on IT, or back the drive usable again?, it's still detectable but looks like it's not able to read partitions, my suspect is that some electrical component blowed up, like a resistor or fusible, is possible to repair them? thanks!!
Awesome video, may ask, i saw someone doing a procedure like this before, he mentioned that each disk should stay in the exact same position in order for it to keep the same sector aligned, care to comment on that ?
RUclips recommended your video, at first I thought you were working in a hard disk company's lab. Excellent job done!
I am glad you liked it Kevin!
Exactly the same situation here.
Me too. It looks like the lab
Same here!
Huge respect for your patience! I think the customer was delighted to receive the data back! Thank you for uploading!
Thanks, yeah the client was very much please
I like when he beautifully discusses the problem and solution of the recovery procedure. Keep it up good work.
Thank you
I used to do this on a budget for folks who nearly trashed their drives. Back in the 90s it would cost around $5000 - $10000 for regular people to have their drives recovered. Today it starts at around $100 and up.. and that was my price back then... so I don't do it anymore. I used an acrylic box with gloves and vacuum pumped it. Not a professional way to do it, but I had a 90% success rate. If I didn't get the data, I didn't charge.
That's awesome. Did you reeplace the heads by used with the same models and first 3 characters of the s/n?
Did it works and did you recovered your data??
This is your daily dose of Recommendation
Full rebuild harddisk
Wonderfull to see a real professional at work. I wish that you were accessible in the UK. Thanks
I seen expensive Hard Drive repairs on RUclips, this by far has ASMR elements. The guy is literally performing surgery on the Hard Drive
Yeah! The air-filter noise makes it feel like a quality working environment! Very impressive!
This is a masterclass work here. I am really thankful to get this recommendation and seeing how a pro do their job...this is just awesome to see
Glad you like it!
It's like surgery
Computer surgery
They done a surgery on a hard drive
Brain surgery*
That's a mild way to say what it actually is, hardcore computer pornography.
Hardrive dental work, amazing.
That was VERY interesting, i had no idea a HD had a few platters, you're very talented.
Thanks
Wow, that is cool. I have sent several drives off to get the data off of them over the years. You can def make good bank doing this.
i bet they were seagate lol
@@hippa2dahoppa2 I'm hoping M.2
Amazing Video ! one of the first video of HDD recovery and rebuild i have ever seen ! so meticulous and careful in each step ! Great Job Bro !
Thank you :)
best video of an hdd hardware recovery that i have ever seen on the web
I actually might have also learnt a couple of surgery skills to perform on my failed drives LOL
My silly joke set aside, thanks for the great content you delivered here. I'm quite impressed with how far you had to go for something coming up seeming not that big of a problem at the beginning of the operation.
BACK UP YOUR THINGS, PEOPLE!
Easy said than done. Back in early 2000's. Terabyte of data on hard drive is expensive. I had some in raid and heat killed the drive. After 15 years I have them lay around and some of the drive missing. Now I don't know if that could be recovered
@@BlueRiceHave you ever done it to replace the heads by used with the same models and first 3 characters of the s/n?
Did it works and did you recovered your data??
@@chris01479 i never perform head replacement but i replace the PCB which i dont know if thats incorrect one or theres something wrong with the head. i didnt want to dissect it since i dont want to mess it up even further.
there's one movie i have on the HD that i dont know the name of. i remember watching 2 min into it and want to watch later. the movie was a master piece. the most beautiful movie ever made. im willing to pay 1k just to recover that movie..bascially paying to find out the name of the movie.
Super interesting video ! I've lost count of the number of friends and colleagues who have lost precious photos etc because their hard drive failed. It's so important to take regular backups as not everyone can afford this kind of rebuild.
Absolutely, thanks for watching
Hmmm. By recommending me this vid, Universe is trying to tell me to backup my important data... THX!
Haha totally
It's why u need to clone ur HDD regularly at least each month, so that when ur HDD fail and u could just use the clone one and sent the injured HDD to the clinic
Nice video I have two wd 1tb with same issues been saving them for price of recovering to come down. Definetly a wd defect
You are awesome man, I know it is really hard to recovery data from broken hard disk.
Hi. Please explain why you did not fix the platters to each other for keeping their relative position.
You used to tape the sides with scotch tape in some of your videos.
Thanks, keep it up.
I was wondering that - I thought the platters had to be perfectly vertically aligned??
I was wondering about the alignment as well...
@@gustavinus we keep the alignment by etching the drive and setting it back lined up by etches
@@hddrecoveryservices Do you have a video of this process? And what's the tolerance on alignment (in radians) ?
@@donbeckham I don't
I learned long ago to keep at least one other backup drive for important data. My DVD/CD burned came in handy for that. But now I have well over 200 discs taking up space. When the main HD fault happens, there is no data loss, just cash loss, replacing the drive. I was wondering, if the head arm is stuck, or the platter doesn't want to spin, if there is an oil for the bearings. I have seen on larger greased joints in things, the grease gets hard like glue. Just enough lubricant to get the data if needed.
Great video, very educational in respect to hard drive rebuilds and recovery. Good video.
Glad you liked it
I see, this drive had heavy impact. Heads was rip off and probably spindle bearing was locked too. Only solution is move platters to functioning drive and pull data off.
Edit: Good work to extract data from dead disk drive.
just stumbled upon your channel, and now subscribed!
Welcome Max
I was amazed that there is a way to read multiple platters after reassembly, since there is no chance at all that the platters were re-installed in the exact same rotational orientation relative to each other.
What makes you so sure they were not set back the same?
@@hddrecoveryservices I don't mean top/bottom/position in stack, I mean turned a little. Are the platters keyed to the spindle?
What blows my mind is the level of care that needs to be taken when handling this. I was just watching a video from how a nuclear core went critical because of a scientist's screwdriver slipped.
Dont forget to break out your 1 inch air impact and really torque em down.
At least 7 ugga duggas!
You said that's it, but I never saw you put back the part you removed at 8:55. Is that just a plunger to keep the actuator and heads from moving?
That's a head separating comb. Prevents heads from touching each other when they are out. It also keeps them leveled with the ramp. That part is a tool, not part of the drive
I don't really understand how i'm not subscribed , new account anyways , Thanks for helping the community , and like always , ThumbsUp!
Welcome to the channel
1:50 I tilted my head to the right to see what he was doing xD
Haha, removing the head screw
@@hddrecoveryservices hi :) your video is very cool! u are cool :D i have a question, what do you use to cut heads?
Nice! Not many REAL hard drive videos coming out these days.. solid state junk... lol .. thanks for posting these, I love the hd surgery videos!
Please add the Spray used and the brand of the lint free clean room wipes you used at 5:33 in this video. Please add them to your 2019 gear list. Thanks in advance :)
Yeah I will. Thanks
@@hddrecoveryservices keep up the good work👍🏽
@@hddrecoveryservices hope u do it soon enough😅
@@hddrecoveryservices Bro you still haven't added it to the description, please reply here at least.
Mr muscle :D
It was my understanding that maintaining the phase relationship between the platters was critical ?
On some it is more critical than others, but it really boils down to ability to work with individual heads.
I think he can get away with it because of the thousands of dollars worth of specialized software/hardware he uses ....
Nice work. I use 1 or 2lb fishing monofilament to pluck those sliders off. Less chance of scratching the surface
Amazing work and it's all magic for us lay folks. Very interesting to see that data is recoverable in some cases. So interesting and thanks for sharing your expertise and for the great video too.
Thanks Lisa
To get the platter unstuck from the arm reader, find a screw in the middle of your hard drive and then unscrew it and try to see if it would spin again. Never open up the hard drive or that's it.
Good vid man as usual. I have a doubt about platter extracion When there is more than one platter, are they supposed to came together to mantain the realtive position from one to another I mean, take them out as a unit and punt them again as a unit I recall reading or old vids that they have tools the inmovilize the disk stack during extracion. MY guess is you dont need this anymore because somewhere the SW tools you use can deal with it. Cheers !!
He marks edge on the platter, you can see him aligning every platter when loading on to donor chassis
Somewhat related... Back in MFM/RLL/ESDI days when you had to low level format disks yourself some high-end controllers had ability to specify head skew. Cylinder skew was available in many better controllers and utilities, but head skew was rare. By having both of these values optimized (by trial end error) you could gain 10-20% speed increase even with 1:1 interleave. Additional gains could still be achieved by overclocking ISA bus by soldering higher frequency oscillator, but skew optimizations were best you could do without modifying hardware.
@@Videotubelord Take in mind that the density is insane, I think (not sure) that you wuold be in micrometer order or more.
@@38911bytefree There is another video, where he shows that.
Really shows the importance of a good backup strategy.(and testing said strategy)
Yep 😁
If a drive is operated over time in a certain orientation such as label side up, and you try to run it label side down, the bearings can wear in such a way that can cause the knocking you hear.
Positioning the drive just right sometimes does improve performance during imaging
HDD Recovery Services So does smacking it with the end of a screw driver can sometimes can unstick things 🥴
Sounded like a bearing was out and causing contact chatter. That said also sound pretty close to head crashing.
Most likely the spindle got bent and parking ramp was binding with the edge of the disk
I was thinking that the drive is dusty but my screen was :D
That's funny:)
Beautifull! i though data recovey was way easier, now i understand why it is expensive
;)
Yeah it can sometimes require an extensive amount of work and special equipment...
@@r100curtaincall And the cost of the tools is very high. Most people may not realise this but the head comb, which is used to secure the heads on the servo arm during handling, is actually the single most expensive tool he is using in the process of performing the mechanical work on the drive. It is made of titanium and a set of those can cost over a thousand dollars.
@@douro20 Yeah they're super expensive. The tooling required to make them is as insane as the task that it is used to perform. Many people diss hard drives now in favor of SSDs, but they are a true mechanical engineering marvel all their own, from assembly to performance. I daresay they are probably one of if not the fastest precision micro instruments ever created by man.
i have hear that hard drive cant or never been repaired but here it is repaired everything is possible in this world
Recovering data is basically fixing the drive but it's only a temporary measure. You should never use a 'repaired/recovered drive after the fact.
you can just depends on how much you wanna spend to recover the data
How does he keep platter alignment? He does not seem to do anything in that regard. What am I missing?
He didn’t.
Roger Williams He did, don’t spread misinformation if you don’t know the facts
If a data sector is located fully on a platter (can be accessed by a single head) then such alignment isn't necessary me guess
above he says they etch the platter and line up the etches
Fantastic video! But a gentle reminder, its now 2020, if you haven't yet backed up your data somewhere safe, consider doing it now!
Great video as always. I enjoy watching you work. I assume the head damage, in this case, was caused by the slow (or stopped) platter meaning the heads were no longer flying properly. Is that correct? If so it's very fortunate that there was no platter damage.
Cheers, John
I think he said the drive was dropped. I imagine that is when it was off which meant that the heads were parked.
The fact that the spindle failed, actually saved this drive from platter damage. With sliders missing and suspension on the loose, it would only be a matter of a few power ups :)
@@hddrecoveryservices Exactly, we could have a nice shredding platters on new head stack assembly ... one thing to point it out is the aligment, the platters were previously marked so the cylinder remains, therefore the data is more likely to be extracted. As you do my friend, I always create a head map for detecting either weak heads or zones on the platters.
You are my hero, keep going man.
Obviously you have done this many times, you are so quick
This is what I do for living, so I do this everyday
Just a tip, it would be SO much easier to read the text on screen if it was much, much smaller, and just located in the bottom like regular subtitles.
Dude, its fine.
Great video, really puts into perspective on how the work is done. I've had some ideas on how repairs were performed, but no idea what tools were used! I have a question: Would this repair work if the platters were transplanted into the working hard drive instead of replacing the reader head? Thanks for your video and look forward to more of your work!
You can't take out platters without taking heads out. If the motor is not damaged and chassis are not contaminated by platter dust we don't swap platters
@@hddrecoveryservices okay understood, thank you for your reply!
Thank You for sharing with us all this very interesting stuff
This is a wonderful quality video. Thank you.
Thank you!
Nice work and great specialized tools!!
thank you!
I am watching you work like a hungry cat watching a fish bowl... That is amazing tech people dont realise what they have in their hands....
You can do anything with the right tools. (Bows to Asia) and the right minds.
Thank you for this video, good job. Do not hesitate to present pc3000....I want to learn more about it.
PC3000 is a tool that has a huge variety of features. We demonstrate a little bit at a time in almost every hard drive recovery video
@@hddrecoveryservices thank you
Kindly send a link to get free PC 3000 software, actually I done the same process on three WD 3 hard drives, donor 1 then agin donor 2 and so , but allas, no one show in computer bios, without PC 3000 how can i get data from hd drive
Hai Brother, Is there any marking in the platter to find it's top and bottom Side? Is there any another way to find the top and bottom side of platter. Please reply
No there is not. Our platter stand is notched for the disk number on the part that screws it down. It helps keeping them in order, especially during cleaning process
@@hddrecoveryservices Okay Brother. Thank You
Perfect Friday evening video. Thank you, Erkin :)
Doesn't platter alignment have to be maintained critically close for it to recover any data? I was under the impression it needed to be within thousandths of and inch, otherwise its just a headache. Is there redundancy between platters that allow for them to be out of alignment of each other?
you can clean by make to drop of alchole on the surface and after 3 minute it will be analysis so you can clean by cotoon
It leave residue this way. There are many ways to clean disks, I guess whatever works for the one doing it is the right way
Weird, somewhere I had read that you have to keep all the platters perfectly rotationally aligned with each other because the system assumes synchronization between heads.
I've read that money grow on trees... Wait that was Russian Pinocchio book hahaha.
Hello, I once heard or read that when you replace certain parts on HDs that the parts need to come from the same model# and DCM of the new HD. Like for instance, I have a western digital WD10EZEX - 00BN5A0 with DCM: HANNKT2MHB so would I need an exact HD match to pull parts for that?
Also, is there a torque specification for the screws that has to be exact?
Does the orientation of the individual platters in relation to the other platters matter?
Yes, but we keep it lined up
HDD Recovery Services you didn’t though...
Hi wow amazing stuff. I have a question how do you deal with platters alignment to each other?
At what basics you replace the heads? Should they have a same DCM number , after that did you make any change in the module? do you have any books or online courses for hard repair ?.
different brands have different rules. some need adaptation, some work just like original. No books, just PC3000 manual, forums, and years of grind
@@hddrecoveryservices thank you so much , do you have any PDF version from PC3000 manual ; if you don't mind :) .
Your platter swap tool: How does it keep sector alignment across platters? I remember in the past use of sticky tape to keep the disk stack in alignment during platter swap. Is there a video that demonstrates this tool you used? Thanks!
I think I did a review of the tool in "ST2000DL003 too bad so sad" video
How do you re-align the platters after moving them around? Is the angle at which they originally were important, or is it self read from info on the platters? Does it matter if the individual platters are not as they were, or are they read at different times and the indexes are on the platter themselves? Thanks.
I thought that platters need to be aligned (take out and insert all at once and not one by one). Is it critical only for some models or cases?
I was thinking that I could do this my self if I needed to, boy was I wrong! Thanks for this great video. I'm putting your name in my address book! :-)
Looks easy...u need all the tools..&the one pc3000 without it bye bye data....
@@ucupi Its not inly software, its special hardware aswell... ive recovered data myself without fancy tools, or software but any attempt at platter or head replacing failed, as most of these drives have firmware on the platters and these platters apparently need allignment (?) maybe youtuber can confirm this.
Anyway, I recomment going to a recovery lab FIRST if data is important. ive only tried my own drives or friends harddisks after they learned the price (most offer diagnosis for low or free price, actual recovery costs money).
@@CodeAsm any side effects to doing it without specialized tools? I'd assume data loss is basically inminent if you try to do this the ghetto way, but the hdd would be reusable.
@@KotauFPS ghetto style is posible depending on the case. Dd, ddresque, testdisk and the best Rstudio might do the job for allott of software isues people might have. Hardware isues depends. Replacing flashrom, capasitors connectors, sure. If you have a cleanairroom and use gloves, maybe. But too many try and then go to a recovery company and actualy made it worse. If you wanna learn, and probably lose data, go ahead. Investigate why those paid hardware and software is so good, why are they using custom hardware? The hdd also have special controllers, maybe learn how to controll those
@@KotauFPS Dust is the main culprit. You MAY get lucky, but generally a spec of dust rotating at 7200rpm is like crashing into a boulder. That's why every shop has one of those fancy clean booths: you can spend 30mins swapping parts, but a single spec of dust or even a small hair can destroy the drive.
On some type of hard drives, platters shouldn't be never separated otherwise sync will be lost and all data then would be unrecoverable.
How do you know if a particular model of hard drive can be subjected to the separation of each individual platter?
Is it possible to check and clean platters on those models where platters should never been separated?
what type of hard drives should never be separated? Over the years I've worked several thousands of hard drives, with a significant portion of which had to be split. Some drives are just harder to balance after the split, but they all can be taken apart. The key is to know what you are doing,.
Ohh i didn't know. I've read many post on hddguru forum where a lot of pro say that only on few type of hard drives you're able to separate platters without having sync troubles and get near to impossible to rescue data. Example on Barracuda 7200.11 and .12 i always read they've suggested to use special duct tape in case is needed to swap platters and if you don't do that you loose sync. Syncing those again is near to impossible (that is what i always read).
Anyone has never wrote that there is a technique that can let separate platters on those models without going out of sync.
Maybe you're a better technician than them or they're intent is to make avoid other people to do that.
@@danielemalagoli2751 If your talking about platter skew, he marks the edges of the platter before unscrewing the spindle and lines them back up again when reassembling.
@@awesomeguy11000 i haven't seen that on video, at what moment you see that he marks the edges?
Kindly send a link to get free PC 3000 software, actually I done the same process on three WD 3 hard drives, donor 1 then agin donor 2 and so , but allas, no one show in computer bios, without PC 3000 how can i get data from hd drive, please help me, I will be very thankful to you
Great work!! A quick question, I thought you had to keep all the platters in alignment?
Me too, i've been taught that misalignment would cause complete data loss.
Alex Cortinovis Yeah would be good to get a reply..
@@neilbedford2756 He replied some comments below, look for the comment of
worroSfOretsevraH
16:17 whats that thing you remove there?
In case i have a cleanroom-device like this, can i just open my dropped wd-blue mobile, take the old head out, put a new one from a similar drive in, swap these chips and everythings fine??? please say yes
In short, the answer is no. Mechanical procedure is only a part of the process. It would be way more financially suitable to just hire a professional to do it, than tool up
@Lego Mini Movie Productions - In other words the company that included the word "Insert company name above." wants to charge you a sh!t load of money
@@HuntersMoon78 if it's a dropped hard drive, the chance for a consumer to fix it drops to 0. It's better to leave it to a professional or something
what a great job man! Respect!
Thanks Ramon
I thought the disks needed to be oriented exactly right to each other so not one of them was twister even 0.01 degree from the other?
What keeps the platters absolutely centered when you disassemble and reassemble the stack? Isn't there bound to be a few micrometers of slack? Also, do the platters need to maintain their rotational orientation relative to each other?
they are held by years of experience :)
Isn't there any need for the platters to be aligned since data is interleaved?
Are the platters timed/indexed to each other?
legit was wondering the exact same thing. I thought the the platters always needed to be treated as one unit
aparently not
Either he can read the data from each platter individually and then rebuild it, or the tool he is using is somehow holding the position exactly. I believe the former of the two is more possible
Working for Data Recovery with Kroll for several years and I'll let you know... he was lucky. If you do this, ALWAYS mark your platters someway somehow. Cause some drives don't care, others are picky as fuck.
ive heard from many other reputable companies like ACSData that if you get the platter alignment off just a hair, your whole chances of recovery are now 0. The platter timing and alignment is done by a machine, once that is lost, you NEVER get it back no matter what u do.
At the end, on your left, is that the laminar flow work-table with lights on?
Great video. I'm just wondering how all sliders detached. I'd have thought one or two might if perhaps it was dropped, but all of them?? Also, how do they stick so well to the platter? Was there contamination or did they embed due to physical shock? I'm amazed that the platters were still ok
Heavy impact damaged spindle that slowed the drive down and heads got pulled by disks
@@hddrecoveryservices Ahh, right. I see. Thanks for that.
I was lately watching other HDD platter transplantation video and the guy stressed that the platters MUST be aligned vertically or else game over. It doesn't seem to be the case here as you even rotated the platter outside of disk assembly at 5:08 and no way your arms can be that precise...
So what's the lesson here?
I am a robot. Precision is my soul :)
Don't the platters have to be lined up perfectly to prevent data loss or is this a myth I saw out there on the webbernet?
Please do a video on what causes stiction and how to repair. Is it just relubricating?
stiction??? now there's a new one.
@@Bman130958 Sometimes the heads STICK to where they aren't supposed to be. The head doesn't go to the park ramp.The heads sit INCREDIBLY close.
Some amazing skill here. I'm really curious as to what you ended up charging for this case.
I just have a question.. do you need to align the HDD discs, donuts, after replacing the head reader...?
appreciate your videos and answer.
Cheers
So it doesn't matter how you line disks they can be in any direction right ? Dont neet to be in same direction in same line
I was almost literally on the edge of my seat. Fascinating work! I could do that, but I don't have the equipment... and especially, not familiar with the software. Great Job.
It's not too late to start :) this industry still has a few years I think
@@hddrecoveryservices I have a doctorate in information systems and leadership. Unfortunately, as a former computer repair technician, the doctorate was more about leadership than tech. No matter. I truly enjoyed the video. Thanks.
How do you know if a donor drive is from the same family, what details are necessary to match up from the drive?
aren't the plates synchronized between eachother? i've heard they has to be turned all at the same angle, but here it works despite you clearly rotated plates randomly
can you talk about that?
What would you say happenned if my drive is beeping every second, not spinning, which resulted from laying it on a tinfoil while it was connected to the computer? Would you say "anything on the PCB could have been shorted/burned"? Like I said, it doesn't spin up but it's "alive".
I thought you had to keep the platters in the exact position to recover data., Is this not a thing anymore?
I am not gonna say it's not important, but we work with tools that can let us work with individual surfaces one at a time, so position is not a concern for me. With that being said, I keep them lined up as close to original and humanly possible
the guy in the video is he lile the owner or what ?
Are your plastic rolling chairs grounded to your non anti static floors?
I'm working at a computer shop. I always sell something else then Western digital when it comes to external hard drives. Western digital likes to solder the USB port directly to the drive itself. This sucks for data recovery. Because you're basically lost when your usb connector gets damaged.
Not just that but WD like to encrypt everything, so if you take an Elements drive out, it is unreadable without format if USB-SATA bridge board fails.
@Joe Al I mostly recommend seagate drives. They have a sata connector inside, so you can get data off when the USB port is damaged.
Wow, this is impressive stuff. You certainly have skills sir...
And this is exactly why I've already transitioned from using portable mechanical hard drives to solid state drives. SSDs still can fail too but less likely from drops.
Will transfer too all my data from HDD to SSD. My HD have more tan 10 years!
Magnetic data storage can actually be much more reliable than flash. All flash media suffers from problems associated with the way that the charge is stored in the memory cell, and there are only so many times a cell can be written to and erased before the cell degrades to the point that it cannot be written to or read out. Also with the density of modern flash storage the distance between the cells can also cause problems where the electric field used to read or write a cell can cause cells around it to become corrupted, a problem known as read or write disturbance. Therefore flash controllers use very strong error correction codes to ensure the integrity of the stored data, and data bits are always spread across cells to help minimize wear. These are all problems which don't exist with magnetic storage.
Was wondering about helium drives, I guess with those any opening / work on the mechanics is not an option, right?
honestly they don't come in. I maybe saw a handful
@@hddrecoveryservices Well that's a good thing I guess! But there isn't much you could do, right? Can't see opening a helium-filled laser welded drive without complete destruction, then how to fill it back...
They open very easily actually. Just with an excato knife
@@hddrecoveryservices Wow interesting, wouldn't have thought
May I ask why is it necessary to copy the firmware or whatever is on the original board to the new drive?
Great video I was just curious what did you do that saved this drive that the previous recovery shop could not due. And can you tell me approximately what this repair cost the customer.
In this industry success rate grows hand in hand with experience and expertise. Another shop cares about delivering data to the client as oppose to attempting to get paid even if it comes at cost of client's data getting permanently damaged. It is the right approach, and it is a core thing that will be discussed in one of the episodes in nearest future.
Nice video man, why did you erase parts of the firmware on the chip and then recalculate the checksum? Wouldn't filling it with 0s just empty that portion of the eeprom?
Those modules are on the disk, not in ROM. It is done do disable bunch of offline activity that the drive comes with to not accumulate defects and such.
so it dosn't matter if platters line up with each other?
I got an SSD drive suffered a short circuit by a drop of water in the sata interface, is it possible recover the data on IT, or back the drive usable again?, it's still detectable but looks like it's not able to read partitions, my suspect is that some electrical component blowed up, like a resistor or fusible, is possible to repair them? thanks!!
I have a WD WDBAAU0010HBK-01 and the heads/sliders ar very damaged, do you know where can a I get some new ones?
Awesome video, may ask, i saw someone doing a procedure like this before, he mentioned that each disk should stay in the exact same position in order for it to keep the same sector aligned, care to comment on that ?