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Broken HDD drive

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Mato2

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May 30, 2020
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Hello everyone,

I have a problem with my hdd drive. I was casually using my pc, when I restarted it to switch to another OS. Unfortunately, after restart, I noticed that bios is taking too long to start and also noticed that one of my drives was missing. After some time I was correctly booted to my OS, however, without one my disks. Checked my logs and drive was umounted correctly without any errors.

So the investigation began. I've connected the disk to another computer and again... failure (with error: comreset -16). I opened the disk and noticed that the platter was not spinning after boot(the arm was correctly docked). I tired to replace the connector plate (from another disk) and the platter started spinning, slow, but still... Due to this, I bought exactly the same disk (wd6401aals), and switched the plates. Now, the platter is spinning correctly (I guess), bios detected it (the arm moved), but with 2TB size (mine was 640GB), so I guess the plate has to have some encoding or something like this. Finally I tried to heat it in the oven just a little bit, but in vain. So, here is my question. Is there a way to get access to data on this hdd drive? Also if it is not the right place to ask this question, could you please point me to the right place?

Thanks in advance.
 
Wow, you should have never done surgery on the drive! It's probably contaminated at the least and maybe damaged. I would confer with Gillware. They could have done everything you did but in a sterile environment and knowing exactly what they're doing (no offense).

Bottom line - never open your hard drive up unless there is no data on there that you care about and your're just curious.
 
You have done everything wrong.... and now you decide to post.

"so I guess the plate has to have some encoding or something like this."
It called a servo track and formatting.

It might be possible to retrieve data from your mishandled platters, but how much is the mystery, as is the very high cost of retrieving the data.


........................................

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949
 
I was trying to be bit subtler! I would say that your ability to retrieve data via a professional service has been greatly reduced due to your actions. Hard drives are incredibly delicate devices with tight tolerances and they are sealed from the outside world. The platters are easily scratched thus wiping out data.
 
I was trying to be bit subtler!" I was not!
This was an involuntary murder of data and a hard drive. The OP did not have nor was there any attempt of gaining the knowledge needed to delve into a hard drive. He obviously has a brain, enough knowledge and tools to completely disassemble a drive, but can not spend 5 mniutes on the Internet to gain knowledge why he should not, but his original post took longer.


........................................

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949
 
Hi, after reading the whole conversation I realized that you did a big mistake to open the hard drive even you know that you have your data init. It could be some reasons behind your drive was not showing up or was taking too much time.

You can try and get into the BIOS of your computer by tapping away on the ESC or F10 key as soon as you power on the laptop. Once you access the BIOS check if your computer even recognizes an HDD.

Secondly, If you are not able to access the data on the hard drive, you can try an alternative solution i.e. data recovery programs like stellar data recovery, recuva, testdisk etc. These programs are able to retrieve data from inaccessible hard drive, unresponsive hard drive, formatted hard drive, lost partition hard drive easily. In your case, you can try your luck because you have opened the hard drive which leads to hardware problems of the hard drive. In a logical issue, they can help you. Thanks
 
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