Swap HDD Platters

S

SulSeeker

Gawd
Joined
Dec 16, 2002
Messages
574
I have two 2.5 inch hard drives I'm attempting to swap platters on. Yes, I've already voided the warranties and took them apart. :) But the problem I'm having is how to stop the platter from turning when taking it off the spindle. Around the screw are 4 holes that I can use as a stop, I don't have anything small enough to fit in there. I was hoping someone on the boards would have a link to a tool that would help in this situation.

Reason I'm doing this is one of the hard drives had a contoller failure. They're identical, and swapping the PCB on the bottom did no help. This, while extreme, seems to be my only option to recovering data on the drive.

The good news is the donar drive has been opened and sealed back up, and windows installed fine on it. So... in theroy.. this should work. And in theory, communism works. Hupefully, I'm more secussful than communism.

Helpful pictures to be posted soon.
 
while i cant help, i want to chime in to say that i hope you're doing this in a cleanroom.
 
Wow I never heard of anybody swapping platters from harddrive to harddrive, I'm extremely interested in this.
 
FanZ said:
while i cant help, i want to chime in to say that i hope you're doing this in a cleanroom.
Click to expand...

.....and I would like to add that I hope there is no valuable data on either one of those drives.

But, if your successful, you probably have a future in the data recovery biz!
 
Have fun getting those platters off man, i would get scrap drive and test getting them off first. I took them out of a 3.5" one and needless to say you're probably going to ruin them. Once i got the screws loose the platter dropped onto the other one and the ring that holds the platter needs to be stablized or held in place or you're going to scrap the crap out of the platter. Even if you are successful you have to worry about getting the drive heads spread apart and onto the new platter, probably damaging the drive heads and then if it isn't exactly level your going to have the drive heads scrapping aganist the platter.

If you get this done and working i want pictures. I was just playing around with some older drives to get the magnets out, well not too old, 120 gig drive and a 160gig drive. Anyway good luck.
 
MUST HAVE PICS!! Seriously dude, the clearances between the read/write head and the platters the way they are, unless you're doing this in a cleanroom (or a "cleaned" room), you've got a guaranteed mechanical failure on your hands in the near future. I know of only a couple people over the years that have managed to pull this off (and they weren't hoping to recover data or anything, it was just for show.

Please take pics if you can!!!!
 
Wow, didn't know I'd get this much interest in something like this. But I'm obligated to keep you updated now. :)

I've done all the precautions I could while attempting this. so I'll let you guys know how I did it.

I'm using vinyl powder free gloves, as opposed to latex. Couldn't find the powder free at the pcave I went to find gloves. No biggie tho. The room I'm in is clean as possible, air conditioned and ionized (not sure if good or bad) with a grounding strap on at all times.

(I wish I had the pics he took earlier to explain, but someone forgot to bring the digital camera to work, and all I had was a cell phone camera... and no cord. DO'H!!!)

Drives are identical Toshiba 30 Gig 2.5" Tavelstars. Nothing special about them. They read/write heads park themselves off of the platter. The only thing interfearing from completely lifting the platters out of the casing are A) The platter screw and B) The plastic head guide.

As I stated earlier, I already opened one to see how hard it would be to swap guts, and after closing the lid on it, it took an OS load flawlessly. *shrug* So I did something right. Only time will tell if this will actually work tho.

Digital_Exhaust: Yes, I'm doing this in preparation for data recovery on two different idential drives. So this is a proof of concept to see if it works.

Oplin: There's only one platter on these drives. I know two would things 10 times more complecated, but if I can keep them from touching anything, I should be fine.

JMRoberts70: I know the clearance on Desktop drives are like 1/10 of a human hair!!!! (Last i heard, might be smaller now.) I'm not so sure on laptop drives tho... may be a little bigger... tho still not enough to make a difference. But I know they take FAR more rotational shock then a desktop drive by sheer design, considering their environment.
 
Well please keep us posted on how this goes. From what I've heard in the past, you can clean a room easier if it's a bathroom. First you use the shower to fill the room with steam and then shut the door and allow all the steam to cool and drift to the floor. This removes a great deal of the floating dust particles that are just about everywhere we live in the world. Just ionizing the air doesn't do it from what I understand (although it probably helps). Once again, I'm impressed with your attempt to do this so keep it up and I hope it goes well!
 
They're either Toshibas or Hitachis. Toshiba doesn't make the Travelstar line, because that's a Hitachi model.

Is the failed drive spinning?
 
Hands down, guaranteed, once done, you will end up with a clicking hard drive in the end, and no data.
 
I apologize, the Travelstars are the drives the customer brought in, I'm working on toshiba MK3021GAS drives.

As for how it went...

Swapped platters between the drives.

No Operating system found.

Well... since I started this post this morning. I'll make a long story short. Both drives have crahed heads. Dunno why that is, but it is. After the platters were swapped, neither one found the operating system. Switching the platters back loaded the OS, but both drives made noise that got worse as it got to the desktop. Rebooting and reinstalling the drives failed.

So all in all... I'm frustrated but have some insight as to how to do it again.
 
plater are easy to get out, or at least my experience, i just undid the 4 or 6 screws on the plate above each platter and they slid right off.
 
what exactly is the failed drive model you need data from and what exactly is it doing?
 
I posted a similar question a few weeks ago. I swapped the PCB and it was the motor. Seagate told me it has to be done in a dust proof environment and if not, it would only work for 1 sec.

So assuming that is true, the right thing to do is:

Connect the 2.5" drive to a USB 3.5" driver convertor bay, in which this USB driver convertor box is connected to a desktop.

Boot up the desktop w/ the 2.5" as a data drive.

The moment you get the OS to recognize the drive, immediately go to My document and copied all the data to the desktop harddrive.
 
SulSeeker said:
So all in all... I'm frustrated but have some insight as to how to do it again.
Click to expand...

The insight you should have learned was to not do it again, and leave data recovery to the professionals.


Happy Hopping, you're spreading misinformation; I don't care what you say "Seagate said."
 
dude are U crazy? chances are you already messed up your HD for good! changing the PCB is the way to go if the problem is not mechanical, say an electrostatic discharge, if you really want to recover your pr0n collection then you let the pros handle it, go to drivesavers.com or harddriverecovery.org
 
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