I'm thinking that there is a way to pull platters and seat them into functioning drive cases. I'd imagine the cases would have to be of the same line. Anyway, what I think isn't likely to be a big issue in the long run. I'd like to learn how it's done and in what environment. Gotta start somewhere right?

I think if a person could make themselves a clean room and build a large collection of good used hard drives to cover most makes, they could remove platters and transplant to known working drives and recover data. But I'm sure it would require specialized equipment to pull data from damaged platters. Tempus that would be a fun career. Good luck man!:) Let us know how it turns out.

I don't think it's got much to do with 'makes' as it does exact models.

You can take a controller board off a Western Digital 80gb drive but it's not going to work with a 40gb or 120gb drive.

I'd even feel comfortable saying that two same model western digital 80gb drives, with two different revision numbers, probably won't work either.

I've tried it a couple of times with no success.

I think there's a lot more to it than just swapping platters. Could be wrong but it's easy enough to test.

I have a box of old drives at work most of them the same manufacturer and model. Anyone have a clean room? :)

You are right Andy. Hard drives have to be the same; every single model number, firmware version and anything else has to be the exact or it wont work; sometimes you can get lucky and it'll work if you have a different firmware version, but not always.

Just for testing purposes, you don't really need a clean room. Just make sure you are in a "clean" location, use gloves and have a can of pure compressed air. Just for testing purposes, it'll work at least once. Though it might not last very long, but you can still just check to see if it'll work. Just don't expect them to work afterward.

Especially if it's just controller boards as you don't expose anything inside the drive.

I have an awesome data recovery program, but, if the drives dead then your basically screwed ( yeah I lost a drive with 50 gigs of pics and stuff that could never be replaced and was quoted $600 to recover it, like Leroy said, in a clean room, blah blah blah. Cant afford that :( ) Maxtor sux.....

My program also works on reformatted drives, gets about 85%. Not bad.

I paid $6.99 for Adroit Data Recovery when I was on the road with my 'dead' compact flash 4gb memory card. It worked like a charm.

I've also used Virtuallabs Data Recovery but it has a very limited 'free' feature and it requires you to buy 'quota' credits that let you recover different amounts of data. It's $199 unlimited / single computer and $350 for unlimited recovery / unlimited computers.

It's a good program but I don't like the quota stuff.

What sux is, Andy, the drive doesn't spin anylonger. All it does and chirp and make clunking noises ( thus its tryin to spin but.... ):mad: So, unless it was set into another working drive, like Leroy was sayin, I dont have a prayer to recover any of it....

I bought 2 300 gig maxtor's 2 years ago. Maxtor says the warrentte's ( sp? ) were run out before I even owned them. REFIRBISHED and sold at Price Watch. They never said shit......

I lost so much stuff :(


ohhhh, ther other drive's screwed too.......

In a case like this, I would make the effort to do whatever I could, find a like drive and try a new controller board.

I agree, Andy. Thing is, dont they have to be set in the same or simular drives? The only other 2 Maxtors I have are 20 gig, and dead as well.:(