On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 11:13:24 +0800, "Ben Galvin" wrote:

Hi,

I'm trying to repair my crashed 200Gb Western Digital hard disk (WD2000JB).
A few days ago it started making a strange buzzing noise, then about 10
minutes later died completely. Naturally, I had forgotten to backup the
contents of the drive (lesson learned). I tried a few hard drive recovery
services but they were all quoting about $2500 for recovery of a hard disk
with a mechanical fault - a bit steep for me.

Ok, so I figured I may as well have a go myself - nothing to lose. I setup
up a 'clean room' in my bathroom (cleaned it out, used an ion generator and
the hot steam from the shower to temporarily settle the dust down). I know
its nothing compared to a professional one, but it's the best I can do. I
opened the hard drive for about 30 seconds, enough to determine that the
platters couldn't be moved around by hand.

The only chance you have is to try to free the stuck motor by hand.
It might spin up if you give it a push start. Sometimes the heads
stick to the platters and prevent the motor from starting, but once
broken free it will work. There's no chance a platter swap will work.
If you get the drive to spin up, copy the files quickly starting with
the important ones. It probably won't work long enough to copy the
whole drive. If you can't live without the data, then spend the
$2500. Anything you do will render the drive completely
unrecoverable.

Andy Cuffe

-- Use this address until 12/31/2005

-- Use this address after 12/31/2005