Swap platters?

[mACKnIFE]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Will I be able to read the data from it?

Any ideas?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Not unless you're a hard disk manufacturer or the Nat'l Security
Agency or maybe if you're willing to spend a few thou and pay a
company that specializes in that kind of work. Consider a hard
disk drive to be a "black box".

*TimDaniels*

 

[Mike Yetsko]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Will I be able to read the data from it?

Any ideas?

What failed? I've swapped PCBs on hard drives with very little problems.

But if it's actually in the bubble... Last drive I took apart and managed
to
get back together again and work reliably was an old Radio Shack 8Meg
unit. And then only because it was BIG and had room for my klutzy fingers.
And had an access hole I could pin the heads apart and off the media through
and let the thing spin for about an hour before I let the head down actually
on the media...

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

As far as I know, nobody on this planet can do this. Once the platters
are loose, they cannot be read in a HDD anymore. What is possible
is transferring the head-assembly from an other disk or transferring
the whole stack of platters.

However without experience, a clean room and the right tools your
chances of success are close to zero and you will likely do more
damage to the components.

Will I be able to read the data from it?

See above.

Arno

 

[J. Clarke]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Of course it's possible. Getting them aligned properly so that the tracker
are concentric with the spindle is another story--I don't know if the
technology to do that exists but I do know that if you have to ask the
question you don't have it.

Will I be able to read the data from it?

Almost certainly not.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Will I be able to read the data from it?

Any ideas?

Your chances of success are about zilch.

When I need to go down this route, I always remove the electronics -
logic board right down to the read/write heads and all the bits in
between.

Just getting the read/write heads back onto the platters without
damaging them is in itself a near-impossible task; the average human
(myself included) wouldn't be able to touch the r/w heads without
damaging them. They are attached to the arm with such fine wiring the
flimsiness of which resembles tin foil / aluminium foil. Consider that
they're about 0.3mm x <1mm and you have a better idea of the delicacy
required.

It sometimes takes me a day just to make the jig to do this job.

Odie

 

[Winey]

What failed? I've swapped PCBs on hard drives with very little problems.

But if it's actually in the bubble... Last drive I took apart and managed
to
get back together again and work reliably was an old Radio Shack 8Meg

And by any chance was this drive an "8 inch Winchester" and was it
made by "Shugart Associates" ? And did it need a +24V power supply?
Was it an "SA 1004" ?

Two platters? Noisy as all get-out?

How long ago did you do this? The Shugart Associates (company long,
long gone) was a hot item about say 1980 or so. I once had one of
them, hooked it up to my CP/M system and thought I was king of a very
big hill. That was then. This is now. The --cache-- on some drives
is 8 MB!

--W--

And I agree with all the other posters. No way in heck can you by
yourself swap platters and hope to have a working drive afterwards.

 

[Mike Yetsko]

And by any chance was this drive an "8 inch Winchester" and was it
made by "Shugart Associates" ? And did it need a +24V power supply?
Was it an "SA 1004" ?

It was the SA 1008. Noisey as hell. HOT as hell in operation too. The
SA1004 was a 4Meg unit, but RS never sold that, just the 8Meg. Until
they went with a redesigned controller and went to the 5-1/4" drives.

Most people I know of with the things eventually replaced the drive
with an 80meg unit (forget the manufacturer at the moment) of which
the RS system would use 64Meg. It stopped being an office heater
when I replaced the drive.

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Will I be able to read the data from it?

Any ideas?

Then you'd have two non-working drives ?

If you're thinking about recovering data, I don't think
you've thought this through.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hi,

If I buy an identical hard drive to my crashed one, is it possible to
take platters from the crashed one and put them inside the working
one?

Unless your motor unit is damaged you don't replace platters,
you replace the head stack (and EC assembly if necessary).

Will I be able to read the data from it?

If done properly, maybe.
If it really physically crashed it will crash almost immediately again de-
pending on how much damage the platters sustained in the previous crash.

 

[mACKnIFE]

Of course it's possible. Getting them aligned properly so that the tracker
are concentric with the spindle is another story--I don't know if the
technology to do that exists but I do know that if you have to ask the
question you don't have it.


Almost certainly not.

Hum... This is not very encouraging hey? I'm starting to lose hope... Should I?

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

Cache as big as the drive itself?

At that time, 8MB RAM would cost as much as a house.

 

[J. Clarke]

Hum... This is not very encouraging hey? I'm starting to lose hope...
Should I?

If you need your data back send it to a professional. If you want to learn
about disks and don't care about the data then go for it.

 

[Winey]

It was the SA 1008. Noisey as hell. HOT as hell in operation too. The
SA1004 was a 4Meg unit, but RS never sold that, just the 8Meg. Until
they went with a redesigned controller and went to the 5-1/4" drives.

Most people I know of with the things eventually replaced the drive
with an 80meg unit (forget the manufacturer at the moment) of which

Probably Quantum Corporation. Quantum was formed about 1981 or so by
Dave Brown and some other execs from Shugart Associates. One of the
many, many disk drive companies that got started with ex-Shugart
people. Maxtor was one of the more memorable ones. Most of others
disappeared into the bit bucket only a few years after they got
started.

Once 5 1/4 drives started to gain in popularity, no one kept building
8" drives. At one time I had two Maxtor 1140 (or 2190 - can't recall
it was so long ago), which could actually yield 256 MB each, if you
replaced the MFM controller with an RLL controller, and WOW! I thought
I had a big honking system with 2 x 256 MB drives. For a Win 3.1
system, that WAS big.

the RS system would use 64Meg. It stopped being an office heater
when I replaced the drive.

Well, you're dealing with the phony math that all the drive vendors
used. 80 MB was the absolute number of bits in the drive. But bits
had to be organized into sectors, and sectors had header and trailer
bytes, which are not useable by the OS and therefore the user doesn't
see them.

n

 

[Winey]

Then you'd have two non-working drives ?

If you're thinking about recovering data, I don't think
you've thought this through.

But even if the Op could recover the data on the drives, would it be
in any kind of useable form? And an old Radio Shack system? Which
OS? TRS-80? CP/M? And the apps to read/write the data? Are we
talking VisiCalc or SuperCalc here? Wordstar anyone?