replacing platters in a crashed hdd

[McSHEEN]

I have a crashed wd hdd.

I need to recover the information on the platters.

The motor and access arm has the malfunction.

I have another hdd and intend to swap platters.

Has anyone ever done this and if so what can I expect.

Cheers

[Bill_S · Accepted solution]

A completely destroyed hard drive if you do it yourself.  You need a clean room to open that drive up.  One particle of dust is about 100 times the size of a head that reads the data on the platters.  You need to send it to a data recovery specialist if you really want to get the data off the drive.

[fzabkar]

My understanding is that removing the cover alone is enough to disturb the head stack alignment, rendering the drive inoperable.

Swapping the platters is a MAJOR job -- you need a special tool to keep the platters from moving relative to each other.

Head Stack Replacement: Questions and Answers:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articles/2006.02.17-Changing-headstack-Q-and-A/

Head replacement and platter swap demo:
http://www.datarecoverytools.co.uk/2010/06/22/head-replacement-and-platter-swap-demo/

[McSHEEN]

Just carry this forward.

I was in the position with other similar unwanted working hdd's to manually attempt this allbeit against the advice of the two contributors on my problem which is greatly appreciated.

THEY WERE BOTH RIGHT.

Many thanks for your support.

Doug