Comments on: Hard Drive Data Recovery – Western Digital Head Swap

By: acsdata

acsdata — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:16:12 +0000

Just curious….when you are saving “your 1000 Dollars+ fees”, how are you realigning the heads? What are you matching in order to maintain parts compatibility? How are you making a proper diagnosis that the heads are actually bad, and it’s not just a firmware or electronics issue?

Yes, the process itself is not that difficult, but we get at least 10 drives a week where people have tried to do this themselves, and in most cases they have made the situation much much worse.

By: acsdata

acsdata — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:17:28 +0000

We use a variety of equipment. That just happens to be a product from ACE labs.

By: shorty5352

shorty5352 — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:47:06 +0000

Hey i got a question. i had a same hard drive like that and one day i started my computer it started fine and it was at the home screen then i started hearing clicking and then the hard drive would crash and would restart all normal again and then five min later it would do the same. So what would it be the problem

By: Peterpancase

Peterpancase — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:18:39 +0000

Realigning heads if needed. Check that all the screws are in the midde of the holes of the cover when putting them back. Accationally one have to clone the cover open and do realigning with a guidance of screw driver. WD:s have “loose axel for actuator arm” that makes it abit hard to get the head stuck in to correct position. It needs some testing.. cover of and on couple of times and some time …. Macthing of the donor and symtoms of bad heads you said on the video. You do not watch them?

By: Grillzor

Grillzor — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:47:10 +0000

On the sides of hard drives, what are the holes for that are covered by silver stickers? Are these holes used to suck out all the air, then covered with stickers? Also, what is the purpose of the hole found on top of the hard drive that usually says “Do not cover”. Are hard drives air tight?

By: Peterpancase

Peterpancase — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:48:09 +0000

@Grillzor The stickers normally for covering screws (warranty void if opened)or some of them one can look on surface of the lowest platter. If there is a big one on the side it is for factory servo writer (to write tracks at the first time to the platters in factory) Do not cover hole is that air can go inside the disk. There are very small air filters inside the disk so they are not air tight.

By: Grillzor

Grillzor — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:04:28 +0000

Thanks.