Is it possible to swap platters from drive A to drive B?

[bmacd]

I have two identical hard drives. One is brand new, never mounted, and the other is a nearly full drive that keeps resetting. There is a set of four platters in both drives. Is it possible to swap the platters to recover the data? I would only keep the drives long enough to recover the data and don't plan on using them hereafter.

-=bmacd=-

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Maybe in theory, but I doubt that it would work in practice. Dust, magnets, scratches - all the bane of data security.

Just use the freezer trick and slave it to the new one.

- M4H

 

[Gunbuster]

Try with an old junk HDD, it is HARD to get the platters out while not scratching them with the drive heads

 

[corkyg]

Not unless you have a sterile clean room to do it in as well as the proper tools. The platters and heads have a clearance so tight that a piece of house dust would act like a boulder in the road. There's an easier way to try and recover the data - mount both drives aas Master and Slave, then use DriveCopy 4.0's DOS boot diskettes. It will copy one drive to the other - as long as the source drive holds out.

 

[Acanthus]

i wouldnt reccomend even trying it.

 

[buleyb]

Originally posted by: corky-g
Not unless you have a sterile clean room to do it in as well as the proper tools. The platters and heads have a clearance so tight that a piece of house dust would act like a boulder in the road. There's an easier way to try and recover the data - mount both drives aas Master and Slave, then use DriveCopy 4.0's DOS boot diskettes. It will copy one drive to the other - as long as the source drive holds out.

Agreed, the clearance is so tight a fingerprint is 5 or so times bigger than the gap between head and surface...and using a clean cloth to clean the platters off can deposit fragrence from laundry deturgent...my point, don't try this method, use the freezer trick 🙂

 

[jjyiz28]

you COULD swap out the IDE controller card since the HD's are the same. but this only helps if you know that the culprit of your HD problem stems from the card rather than actual harddrive platters or the mechanical devices in the HD

 

[Heisenberg]

As others have said, it's impossible without the proper tools and environment. Just do a disk image.

 

[vortix]

http://www.dtidata.com - they will recover your data for "only" $1050. I have used them for a client before, and they recovered the data off a 20GB laptop drive with crashing heads. Other places typically charge around $2500 for this service, and it can go up to $5000.

I agree that your best bet is to try to get that data copied to the working drive ASAP. I usually use Norton Ghost to do that, but you can use whatever software you can get your hands on. Otherwise, if you have a "clean room", the proper tools, experience, and a steady hand, you can swap the platters. If you don't have all that going for you, your only other option is to pay a data recovery company lotsa cash to do it for you (which may or may not be worth the price depending on the data you have on your drive).