Attempt to Recover Barracuda 7200.11 Hard Drive wth Click of death

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charles.allen

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Oct 10, 2017
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I overlooked a hard drive for some time and lost it to the click of death. It is not worth paying 1000's to recover data. I happen to have another drive of the same model and firmware that was purchased at the same time and is no longer used and sitting on a shelf. I have access to a clean hood and have a moderate level of technical know how. I can get a head comb for around $80 for this model hard drive. What are the chances if I were actually able to pull off the exchange of the heads successfully that this would fix the drive? I've already switched pcb's and it did the same thing so it's obviously now a head issue as the drive spins up and the heads aren't reading anything. What do you think? Think these drives are compatible? I'm I overlooking software issues in the drives?

Details: Patient Drive
Barracuda 7200.11
S/N: 9VS0BRR4
P/N 9JU138-301
Firmware: CC1G
Date Code: 09214
Site code: TK

Donating Drive
Barracuda 7200.11
S/N: 9VS04MZH
P/N: 9JU138-301
Firmware: CC1G
Date Code: 09214
Site code: TK

 
Solution
D
The two drives are likely a match. But, a head change is not as simple as you might think...even with head combs and a clean hood.

1. moving the PCB will result in the drive clicking, even if the heads are healthy, unless you transferred the ROM from the patient PCB to the donor PCB
2. before you proceed, it might be helpful to have more data before diagnosing damaged heads. Can you provide the terminal log when you power the drive on?
3. if this is your first time doing a head change, you may want to buy another couple working drives to practice with. Run a full scan and test every sector on a drive. Completely remove the heads and then put them back in. Run the test again and verify that your methods work.

Personally, I don't...
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DR_Luke

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Dec 1, 2016
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11,160
The two drives are likely a match. But, a head change is not as simple as you might think...even with head combs and a clean hood.

1. moving the PCB will result in the drive clicking, even if the heads are healthy, unless you transferred the ROM from the patient PCB to the donor PCB
2. before you proceed, it might be helpful to have more data before diagnosing damaged heads. Can you provide the terminal log when you power the drive on?
3. if this is your first time doing a head change, you may want to buy another couple working drives to practice with. Run a full scan and test every sector on a drive. Completely remove the heads and then put them back in. Run the test again and verify that your methods work.

Personally, I don't see a positive outcome on your attempt. But, if you don't care about losing your data and the can afford the parts and tools for the exercise, knock your socks off. But, if and when you fail to success, it will be too late for professional data recovery services. At the very least, you will have probably doubled their costs.

Also, it should be noted that not all labs charge thousands of dollars for professional data recovery services...just the few larger labs who need to pay for their huge marketing budgets. Before you mess with it, it may even be a less complicated recovery for around $300 USD, but could also be completely unrecoverable already, which is the case for most of these drives I'm seeing these days.

If you'd like some recommendations for some more affordable labs, let me know. Of course, if you do decide to give it a try and to it yourself, please do take the time to report back and let us know how you made out.
 
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Solution
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charles.allen

Prominent
Oct 10, 2017
3
0
510
Appreciate your responses. Yes, I have a bunch of non functioning and functioning drives that I can practice on. I've already taken apart several of the seagates that I have just to get use to the internals and the layout. Once I get the comb in I will try on some of the functioning drives. Truth be told most of the data I'm trying to recover is going to be family videos that I've spent the last year digitizing. I had already dispersed half of the videos to family and made back ups so I'm really just talking about 60 hours of video. I can "recover" that from the original medium. Everything else on the drive is backed up on other PC's and in the cloud. I figured I would give this a try first since it's not really going to cost much and I really enjoy a challenge.

I'm guessing the drive is already toast. I'm guessing one of the heads has come loose from the arm and has scratched up one of the plates. We will see. I'll be sure to come back here and let you all know how it went.
 
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charles.allen

Prominent
Oct 10, 2017
3
0
510


How can I pull the terminal log? I've not gotten that far yet.
 
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