"FFFSSCCCHHLLLRRMMcc"

[pkw111]

That is the noise one of our hard drives started making the other day whenever we try to boot it up. It is making a new noise that I have never heard before. After making that noise a few times, the BIOS reports a 'disk error'. FECK.

I really want to rescue all the music and photo's we have organized on there. It's a Maxtor 160 GB drive. I bought two of the same model at the same time from Newegg like 4 years ago. I have been toying with the idea of physically swapping the platters from the broken drive to the other one.

It's risky for sure! I have no faith in the remaining 160GB drive, so I don't care about destroying it. If I succeed, I get bragging rights for a long time. If I fail, then no big deal as it was kind of obvious I would fail, right?

What are my chances of success?

Probably better if posted in the correct forum. - Moderator Rubycon

 

[TuxDave]

What are my chances of success?

0%

 

[Crusty]

Do you have a clean room?

 

[pkw111]

I can make one

I only need to get to the data once, for a single copy.

 

[Billb2]

Have you tried the freezer trick?

 

[imported_D3v]

Would you pay $1,000 or more for the data on that drive? Cause you might have to. If it's that important, DON'T spin it up, and send it to a pro data recovery; any power-ons can wreck the platters. Or throw it away.

 

[Qbah]

A clean room isn't your room cleaned! A clean room is a laboratory-type of place where people wear special suits, hats, gloves, there are very expensive filters for the air, people can't move fast, talk a lot, sneeze, fart and the air circulates in a special way. Can you make one?

As for your small experiment, hell, no way you can succeed. But you can take one drive apart just of curiosity, to see how it looks inside You could recover the data at a special company, but it costs major $$$.

 

[Rubycon]

If it's making strange noises keep the drive powered off until it can be serviced by a pro. That is if you value its contents!

This is what happened to a Deskstar left running making a screeching noise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhMsCG5uj_g

There is no recovering data from the platter in the clear section! :Q