HD Data Recovery - WD Caviar SE16

[merlocka]

Hello,

A friend has asked me to take a look at a drive which has failed. There are significant family photos which didn't get backed up. They originally went to bestbuy, who basically said the drive died and quoted megabucks for recovery.

This drive is a WD5000AAKB, which, after reading through Newegg, sounds like this failure isn't uncommon. The symptom is that the drive spins up, but is not detected in BIOS. Actually, the BIOS does detect *something* as it updates from "not installed" to " " (blank), but nothing else happens.

I'm gonna try to see if SMART will tell me anything. I'm just wondering if anyone successfully recovered one of these drives. My next plan would be to buy a working drive and try swapping PCB's, but if the disk is spinning I doubt the PCB swap would be successful.

Any other thoughts?

 

[mpilchfamily]

A PCB swap is about all you can do otherwise they will have to spend the money if they really want that information.

 

[bruceb]

Do you have a way to connect it externally such as a Bytec BT-300 or similar which goes USB to IDE or SATA thru a cable ? ?
That would be the easiest way to connect it and see if it can be accessed. Otherwise, as said, try to swap the drive circuit board with one you know is ok.

 

[Atheus]

Is it possible to swap platters successfully without a cleanroom?

 

[MadAmos]

Originally posted by: Atheus
Is it possible to swap platters successfully without a cleanroom?

If the information is important I would not try to swap the platters you have a very high chance of damaging the information permanently. If spinright won't see the drive then professional help is the safest bet the reputable ones will charge a no or small fee to see what they can recover before you have to pay, I used these guys for a client once and they saved all his data and for 1/2 of the better known recovery experts.

 

[RebateMonger]

Watch some of the presentations at MyHardDriveDied.com . The Toorcon 2006 presentation is good. He explains how it's done and what the issues are.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Watch some of the presentations at http://myharddrivedied.com/presentations . The Toorcon 2006 presentation is good. He explains how it's done and what the issues are.

404 not found?

I'll look it up though, sounds interesing.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Watch some of the presentations at http://myharddrivedied.com/presentations . The Toorcon 2006 presentation is good. He explains how it's done and what the issues are.

404 not found?

Sorry. I usually test my links. But I didn't test that one. I've fixed it. I find Scott Mouton's presentations very informative. He does a LOT of hard drive work, both forensic and data recovery.

MyHardDriveDied.com