Hard Drive Repair

[printmonger]

I have a Maxtor, 10GB hard drive in need of repair to retrieve critical data. Has anyone taken one of these things apart and swapped components to another working hard drive?

Thanks,
Mark

[mattbeals]

If it's "critical" then send it to Drivesavers. If it's not then "tinker" with it. I would seriously advise you to **NOT** mess with a drive that contains critical data. Anything you do may make it more difficult to recover the data. Drivesavers won't be cheap (I don't know how much it will be) but I'm sure it will be less expensive than recreating the data if it is even possible to recreate or completely loose.

[PrePress Guru]

Matt is correct. Hard drives are precision devices. As an example, the read/write heads hoover over the disk platter on a cushion of air. I forget the exact spacing but its measured in micrometers.

Almost all hard drives are different. Even from the same manufacturing line. Firmware is changed between runs and components are upgraded.
In most cases you cant swap out components. And if you break the seal on the drive and your not in a clean room, any minute dust particle will destroy the disk platters.

I would call Drive Savers. They are the best in the business. For a 10gb drive, the cost shouldn't be that bad.

A nice primer on hd and failures is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk


Good luck,
Ian