In message , Ryan Underwood
writes
Hello.

I have a click-of-death 4-platter Maxtor drive. It failed clicky while
running. So I believe that this is not a firmware issue or an issue with the
hidden data on the drive, nor simply due to bad sectors. By process of
elimination, it seems to be either the electronics, the heads or the head
amplifier. I obtained an identical drive and swapped the board, which did not
change things. So now I am thinking about trying to replace the head assembly.
I have attempted this before, on a Toshiba 2.5" drive with 5 platters, and met
with no success.
I most certainly wouldn't like to try and replace the whole head
assembly, but it might be possible to replace the head amplifier
chip.... You'd need some way of making sure the fumes from whatever
soldering process you use don't hit the platters but it should be
possible to do provided you can get the chip. I *have* replaced heads
and head assemblies before but a long time ago when drives didn't have
an embedded servo. You might have some success if you had a drive with
only one platter but I believe the tolerances on a multi-platter drive
would make this nigh on impossible without having to re-write the servo
tracks, destroying any chance of recovering the data.
The other problem was that when I slid the heads off the platters, they slapped
together. I believe this may have instantly destroyed them, but I'm not
certain. It seems like I need some kind of "comb" type thing to keep the heads
separated while off the platters. Anyone have any bright ideas?
Ummm, a comb? We used to call it a spragging tool but I'm not sure if
that's even a word, let alone one that's commonly used to describe the
tool. We made them out of perspex strips with a lot of care, you need to
be very careful with such a tool as the arms the heads are mounted on
are extremely delicate and any distortion will cause an instant crash.

Thanks.

Final words, if the data is important, send it for data recovery, you're
not going to get it back and risk destroying all hope of anyone getting
it back. If you're doing this for the experience, go for it, if you're
doing it to gain a drive, then go out and buy one, you'd never be able
to trust it with any data you wanted to keep.

Good luck.
--
Clint Sharp