Hard Drive Data Recovery - Western Digital Head Swap

https://acsdata.com/data-recovery/ ~~~WARNING~~~ ****THIS IS NOT AN INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO**** There are key steps and some proprietary information that has been edited out. This is also only a 10 minute video, where just the head swap alone can take well over an hour depending on the drive. We also don't show our method for aligning the heads on this particular model.

This video was originally produced because many of our customers were simply curious, or ill informed about what is done to physically repair a hard drive for recovery. This video is not intended to make you think swapping heads is easy. This video is not intended to make you think you can do it yourself. In 99% of this cases, if you attempt this on your own, even within a clean room environment, you will probably lose your data for good.

Also, just because your drive is clicking, does not necessarily mean the heads are bad. Proper diagnosis is key with doing data recovery correctly. Most lower level companies will just try to swap the heads, when it may be a PCB or firmware issue. When the head swap doesn't work, they will say your data is unrecoverable. We get drives like that in every week, where a customer has been told the heads are bad, when they weren't. So just because your drive is clicking, there maybe something more to it, but you won't have the proper equipment needed to verify this or not and neither will a lower end data recovery firm.

The simple message here is, if your data is critical, make absolutely sure you let a professional data recovery firm do the recovery. Even if you have no desire at all to send a hard drive to us for recovery, PLEASE shop around, do your homework on the industry and ask for solid references from the company you do choose. If they are local, maybe even stop by their offices just to check them out first. There are literally thousands of companies out there that say they do this type of work, but VERY few actually do. If they say they can do a physical recovery for $199, you might want to keep shopping. The parts alone can be more than that. In most cases, a physical recovery is going to run anywhere from $600 to $1,500+ depending on the size of the drive, and the type of failure that has occurred.

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Closed Caption:

okay here we have a 80 gig western
digital hard drive they came for
recovery
custom report of the drivers clicking
how we did go through and test drive
it's definitely a bad set of heads we've
there's a few tests that we can run on
the drive in order to verify for sure if
that's indeed what the problem is
sometimes it can be an issue with the
system here to drive but everything
seems to to check out well there i'll go
ahead and start the drive just so you
hear exactly what it is it may be
something that you've heard before with
your own drive but here is what we're
getting from this one
here that steady clicking and what these
drives will typically do those power
down spin down just a little bit after a
few clicks and spin back up and start
clicking again and I'm going to power
that off and that's pretty common with
western digital hard drives
so what this is going to require is for
us to go into a clean room and swap the
heads with another parts drive and see
if we get the data that way
so that's what we're going to do ok so
we have our 80 gig hard drive here got
in the clean room
got a good parts match here basically we
would need to do and that's parts here
we need to definitely get the same model
number drive and with western digital
something over ones
we need to match this DCM as best we can
to typically with the fourth and fifth
letter alpha numeric within that code
and even some of the bigger drive so you
definitely need to have a complete match
on them
we also try to get them pretty close to
the same manufacturing date as well so
we will go through and start the process
of disassembling the drive is bad
first thing we typically do is go
through
if you get your drive back you may
notice that there's an X on the back
that just make sure that we keep this
logic board intact with the original
drive
there's actually
memory stored on this drive as it
contains adaptive that are unique to
this particular drive so we need to make
sure that we keep this Taylor
as you may have watched on our one of
our other videos
the noise you hear in the background is
actually the air rushing through our
clean room environment here
and that is a
that's the noise you hear in the
background
these drugs are very fragile
and you have to be really careful how
you do some of this stuff
the office problem
we need to do is remove the heads off of
parking area
just slightly so that we can move this
limiter was removing this limit will
actually allow us to be able to
slide the hands off the platter
ok now we have the head to remove from
the platters and
go ahead
screw you
it's the heads
yeah
always
the heads off of the
now we'll start disassembling our hearts
drive
basically go through the same
exact process again with described as we
get the original try sleeping strap beds
and again we just repeat the process
magnet
the hits just out of the parking area
school we can
the limiter
typically when you hear it dries
quickening
you're hearing is
the armature slapping against that
better
way or the other but typically it's it's
just not against that limiters what it's
doing
come inside the drive is just ahead
sweeping back and forth back and forth
back and forth back and forth
trying to find
some people called the zero track
basically was trying to do is find the
information needs within the system area
the drive in order to allow it to
calibrate properly
that's why sometimes want to drive as
clicking it's not necessarily mechanical
problem is ur is some
corruption within the system marion so
let's keep in the dr functioning
it's very important when doing a head
swap not to let the heads come in
contact with each other
we have ways to avoid that
heads
now we reverse the process of putting
the drive back together
then we can load the heads on
place the top magnet
asthmatics are extremely strong
be really careful
can't you
they come together but
also damaged
kids if you're not careful
there's a certain area they just have to
snap down in to see if we really cost
studies do that
that's that the internal components for
driver reget symbol
at this point i'll go ahead and replace
the case cover
place the logic board
test it out and start imaging probably
ok we have our western digital hard
drive we assembled it's the one on the
left there we have it set up on our
imaging station
basically what we're going to do is
everything works right where you're
going to go through and power the drive
up and clone it onto the drive there on
the right so we're going to plug power
to the drive
almost there is a no more clicking at
this point
and right now i'm just watching on our
screen here waiting for the dr to come
ready shown is busy right now
sometimes we need to replace the heads
actually it takes a little while
sometimes the drive will actually
function and somewhat of a degraded
state especially with these drives where
the head alignment might be not exactly
like it was before
ok it's shown ready now and we'll go
through and rescan all the drives
connected and see if it shows up and it
does
there is our 888 drive and from this
point we will go through and clone it on
to our destination drive and then do the
recovery for customer from there
I want to thank you for taking the time
to watch this video and if you have any
questions about our services you can
give us call 107 1789 74 or you can
visit us on our website
it's a www.actstudent.org com
we do not charging evaluation fees to
look at drais and we do not charge
anything if the data is not recoverable
and we also don't charge anything
additional for any parts or labor
anything like that it's a flat rate
pricing depending on the size of the
drive the type of failure
so if you have any questions or you lost
some data feel free to give us a call
and we'll be happy to help you have a
great day