Replacing platters in a WD800BB hard drive.

[msr]

I was moving a WD800BB hard drive to a new case a few weeks ago, and
upon booting up the drive started tickiking like a woodpecker.

I bought an identical drive and tried swapping the PLATTERS into the
new drive.

It spun up fine, and was even recognized by the BIOS, but when Windows
XP loaded it did not recognize the drive.

Is there something I must do with the alignment or something to get it
working enough to back up the data?

I have it set up as a slave drive to try and get the data from the
drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[yak]

I was moving a WD800BB hard drive to a new case a few weeks ago, and
upon booting up the drive started tickiking like a woodpecker.

I bought an identical drive and tried swapping the PLATTERS into the
new drive.

It spun up fine, and was even recognized by the BIOS, but when Windows
XP loaded it did not recognize the drive.

Is there something I must do with the alignment or something to get it
working enough to back up the data?

I have it set up as a slave drive to try and get the data from the
drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

I hope you did all this in a "clean room" with a tyvek suit and a face
sheild on. Short of that, you've ruined not one, but two drives,
congratulations.

A question if I may: Why on earth would you buy a NEW drive and then
take it apart to fix an identical drive? Kinda stupid.

 

[Michael Culley]

A question if I may: Why on earth would you buy a NEW drive and then
take it apart to fix an identical drive? Kinda stupid.

Well obviously the data had more value than the 2 drives, which isn't difficult with the price of a drive these days. However, I
would have to say swapping platters would have to be the *absolute* last resort.

 

[Michael Culley]

would have to say swapping platters would have to be the *absolute* last resort.

With the chance of success being about zero if there is more than one platter, there would be no way to get all of them rotated to
the correct position against each other.

 

[kony]

I was moving a WD800BB hard drive to a new case a few weeks ago, and
upon booting up the drive started tickiking like a woodpecker.

I bought an identical drive and tried swapping the PLATTERS into the
new drive.

Did you use a comb to lift the heads or flex them manually and/or
drag them across the plattters, causing damage?

It spun up fine, and was even recognized by the BIOS, but when Windows
XP loaded it did not recognize the drive.

Did you run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on it?
That would certainly be the first thing to do after powering on
the drive.

Is there something I must do with the alignment or something to get it
working enough to back up the data?

What would you do to "align" it?

I have it set up as a slave drive to try and get the data from the
drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

It's probably too late, best attempt wouldn't been putting drive
in freezer, swapping PCBs, or sending it to a data recovery firm.
At this point all you could hope is that running manufacturer's
diagnostics could help, but I doubt it.

 

[Cyde Weys]

Sounds like this guy should've asked the newsfroup BEFORE attempting to do
something so risky as replacing his hard drive's platters.

 

[msr]

Did you use a comb to lift the heads or flex them manually and/or
drag them across the plattters, causing damage?

I was able to manually move the whole arm off the platters without
scratching them or causing any damage.

What would you do to "align" it?

That is EXACTLY what I'm asking!! Is there any way to align the two
platters with each other again? I'm thinking that must be the issue.

It's probably too late, best attempt wouldn't been putting drive
in freezer, swapping PCBs, or sending it to a data recovery firm.
At this point all you could hope is that running manufacturer's
diagnostics could help, but I doubt it.

Yes, unfortunately I did not learn the "freezer trick" until after I
had already removed the platters from the original drive. I thought
this would be my best effort at trying to do it by myself, but
afterwards I realized that the alignment of the two platters was
probably of utmost importance - unfortunately it's too late for that
also. So I'm thinking unless I can get the two aligned again there's
no way I'll get the data off the discs?

 

[msr]

With the chance of success being about zero if there is more than one platter, there would be no way to get all of them rotated to
the correct position against each other.

That's my issue at this point. In taking out the two platters from
the dead drive, I didn't realize that it was important to keep them
aligned together. Is there ANY WAY to align the two platters to make
them readable again?

 

[yak]

That's my issue at this point. In taking out the two platters from
the dead drive, I didn't realize that it was important to keep them
aligned together. Is there ANY WAY to align the two platters to make
them readable again?

I bet a data recovery company could do it, if the data is that valuable.

 

[Michael Culley]

That's my issue at this point. In taking out the two platters from
the dead drive, I didn't realize that it was important to keep them
aligned together. Is there ANY WAY to align the two platters to make
them readable again?

NO!!! Basically you are ****ed, the precision in alignment would so great you would have zero chance of achieving it. And that's
assuming you would have some way to work out what the alignment should be. Give up, your data has been lost (sorry to be so harsh
but that's the reality of it .

Out of interest, did you try any other techniques to retrieve your data, or did you go straight to removing the platters?

 

[Noozer]

I bought an identical drive and tried swapping the PLATTERS into the

I was able to manually move the whole arm off the platters without
scratching them or causing any damage.

What power microscope did you use to determine this?

That is EXACTLY what I'm asking!! Is there any way to align the two
platters with each other again? I'm thinking that must be the issue.

You do know that they assemble the drives and THEN format them. You can't
align heads to the magnetic tracks that already exist.

afterwards I realized that the alignment of the two platters was
probably of utmost importance - unfortunately it's too late for that
also. So I'm thinking unless I can get the two aligned again there's
no way I'll get the data off the discs?

You guessed right.

 

[Michael Culley]

You do know that they assemble the drives and THEN format them. You can't
align heads to the magnetic tracks that already exist.

So it's fairly likely that not even the manufacturer could align the disks.

 

[kony]

So it's fairly likely that not even the manufacturer could align the disks.

.... but it's pretty likely they could read the data off of one at
a time if the surface was still intact & clean.

 

[Michael Culley]

... but it's pretty likely they could read the data off of one at
a time if the surface was still intact & clean.

You could write a program yourself to do this I guess and then re-assemble the data but it would be a big project. Depends how much
the data on the drive is worth.

BTW, I suspect the original post might be the work of a troll.

 

[Manny]

I bought an identical drive and tried swapping the
PLATTERS into the new drive.

I don't mean to beat on you further but why were you
so confident of your ability to repair the drive? In
my experience, the more assured someone is, the lower
the quality of his work.

What other repairs have you attempted in the past,
both with computers and other things?

And why didn't you first try the utterly sensible
idea of swapping circuit boards instead of platters?

OnTrack may be able to recover the data for under
$3,000. Be skeptical of other companies, especially
local ones that can't read the platters by themselves.

 

[Michael Culley]

I don't mean to beat on you further but why were you
so confident of your ability to repair the drive? In
my experience, the more assured someone is, the lower
the quality of his work.

Hey?

 

[patrick]

Did you use a comb to lift the heads or flex them manually and/or
drag them across the plattters, causing damage?





Did you run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on it?
That would certainly be the first thing to do after powering on
the drive.





What would you do to "align" it?




It's probably too late, best attempt wouldn't been putting drive
in freezer, swapping PCBs, or sending it to a data recovery firm.
At this point all you could hope is that running manufacturer's
diagnostics could help, but I doubt it.

Some of us come here simply for the entertainment value! The time to
have asked these questions was BEFORE the drives were opened up!!!
I repair these drives, up to swapping out the electronics board, but,
let the RMA cover anything higher...


ROFLMAO!!!