I think we covered that above... your mileage my vary.

Roger that........:mad:

I did find some info here and there about getting data off of drives and the previous suggestion of building up a collection of common drives to swap platters from seems to be often repeated. Apparently a lot of these guys can make equipment of their own that they can adapt to different situations. Time will tell... :cool:

You mean pricewatch.com?
They don't don't sell, they direct you to a company to buy from with the best price/value/etc.
I would try to recover my money from that company.

I've been about 80% successful at data recovery using various methods.
Several hundred attempts at 80% so that's not to shabby.
Good luck B.

Bah. I'm saying 40% for me. I don't try that hard.

Well guys, either way im screwed.

Never, EVER, will I own a Maxtor again......

You do realize Maxtor is owned by Seagate now, right?

Prior to that merger, I swore by Maxtor drives. Though now I only buy Hitachi drives now. Never liked Seagate's drives or Western Digital.

So your only choice in drives now is Hitachi, WD or some no name company.

This is what I would attempt to do as well, though finding an identical drive could prove to be time consuming. Just search Ebay for people selling 300G Maxtor drives and get them to give you all the numbers on drive, if most of the numbers match up; I'd give it a shot. You don't really need a clean room in a case like this. Just make sure you wear gloves (latex non powered), turn off fans/ac so the dust isn't circulating around. Swap the platters, then move the data (if it works) to another drive immediately. I would also try to find a can of PURE compressed air. Most compressed air cans these days have retardant in it to discourage people from inhaling it, which can leave a residue on the platters. Not to mention leave a bad taste in your mouth if you use it a lot in close proximity.

I generally buy only WD drives now.

Never had much of a problem with Fujitsu drives and who ever manufactures IBM deskstar drives, I think it's Hitachi, does a good job.

Not to mention leave a bad taste in your mouth if you use it a lot in close proximity.

Even if you spray that shit in your keyboard, hours or days later, the residue will stick to your fingers so it makes your lunch taste like ass.

Pretty sure most hard drive failures are software related, therefore just placing the drive into another computer will allow you to extract anything not damaged. a smaller percent is hardware problem. If i remember correctly, if there is one platter it can be switched into a like model case, as was mentioned. if it has multiple platters your SOL. and in most cases i think the heads are switched and not the platters.
I have heard there is some company that can emulate any hdd controller long as one thats working is available or already programmed. again tho i dont think a drive with multiple platters can be saved.
so if ur looking into data recovery, most cases will simply be putting the drive into a working system and extracting data through dos,windows,linux etc. or some fancy softwares.