hard drive in trouble

[dannyalarms]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone can answer a difficult question, about a difficult situation. I own a laptop, Toshiba with a 40 GB hard drive. I saw I was having difficulties with it and was about to back up some CRITICAL data but it was too late. At this point my on screen startup info was telling me to check the cable to the HD. I could only get into the BIOS. So I tried to repair windows with the windows cd. After a minute the computer gets me to a screen where it says there was no HD detected, so I ordered a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter cable, and connect it to my home computer, it does not detect the second HD no matter how I connect it. I was told it's hopeless so I took the drive apart. I connected it to the last connector of one IDE cable and connected the other hard drive to the end connector of the other IDE cable, with no other drives connected. When I turned on the computer it the read heads of the laptop HD were moving all over the place (probably normal) really quickly, but definitely to a pattern. I noticed that there was an awful lot of activity, I delicately moved the assemblies mechanism which jammed the read head assembly in the middle of the disc so I turned the computer off then back on and saw no activity. I carefully moved the assembly and it spins and moves, the drive shows up in the startup screen. So I try to copy the drive to my C drive but it doesn't work, (it did show the correct space available on the drive).I disconnect the pc hard drive and boot windows on the laptops hard drive, A Okay. That is the last time the hard drive was detected in the startup screen. The pc does not see the drive at this point. So I recently bought a similar laptop drive to potentially take apart and probably ruin (hopefully not).The questions are: Can I use a jumper on the laptop HD help access the drive? Is it possible to use the case and electronics of the smaller drive (10GB same # of sectors), & each drive has two discs and the discs inside the drive are not attached to each other so they will move during the transplant. Will this be possible? If not is there anything out there that could read the info on the 2 discs. Thank you.

 

[Blujacket]

By removing the cover the platters and read/write heads were exposed to minute dust. Most likely the drive is beyond help. [The drives are assembled in a 'clean room' to avoid any contamination.] The data may have been recoverable by a firm that specializes in it but doubtful now. It's also possible that moving the arms holding the heads caused the heads to touch the platters [not good] which will damage the data, whether the platters get visibly scratched or not.

 

[dannyalarms]

I am sure it was somewhat poor judgement to open the drive, but it was done carefully under delicate conditions in the cleanest room available no dust, even temp,med humidity in order to provide the best chance of recovering the info without dust contamination.Would really like to find out more about the importance of the position relationship of the two discs, if one of the discs was rotated would the data be recoverable,or is the data read from both at the same time. Even if I was to recover part of the data it would be great.Thanks again.Dan

 

[zeitghost]

A data recovery company might be able to help you.

Opening disk drives is a *really* bad idea.

rgds
Zeit.

 

[dannyalarms]

Thank you for the info, I was wondering if a smaller drive with a single disc and same info on sticker could be used to extract the data. I imagine the read heads suffered more if there was sufficient contamination, than the discs themselves, there will probably be no other way to replace the data other to get it from this hard drive. So I am willing to purchase a used drive and be super careful and try it. If it's possible. Would be totally happy even if I lost both drives, just to get a copy of the info. I'm not sure who would have such information, but I appreciate any help I can get. Thanks