Can I move a hard disk platter to another hard drive?

Question

My hard disk just started making a ticking sound, and then it stopped spinning. I checked the inside and saw that the r/w head is broken.

Can I just move the platter to another hard drive or will it destroy my other drive? Do you have any solution for this? My main goal is to get the data inside the new disk.

Solution 1

Opening a drive does not permanently make it unusable. While it's not a particularly great idea, hard drives can function fine even in a disassembled state.

You could swap your platters over to another drive and it would physically work, but in reality the chances of recovering anything yourself are very poor because of electronic compatibility.

Dust, in reality, is a non-issue. Hard drive platters are fairly robust, and a modern drive platter can experience close to 2,000 G of acceleration, which basically clears off any dust that isn't glued to the platter. You can run a drive with the lid removed for days, in an ordinary office, and still be able to read 99.999999% of the disk just fine. If dust does get stuck to the platter, the grease that's causing it to stick there is a bigger problem than the dust itself.

The biggest problem with trying to restore the drive however is electronics compatibility. You would have to find a drive with identical, or near identical model and revision. You would need to also move the PCB, but even then the firmware on each individual drive is calibrated to the specific set of heads it's shipped with. Depending on the drive and firmware, there may be some level of tolerance to the new heads, but the chances of it "just working" without firmware modifications are slim.

Solution 2

If you have to ask, the answer is, with 99.9% certainty, you will fail.

Opening the hard drive up to see the platters outside of a Clean Room will usually damage the platters enough that the data is not available anymore, with the air and contaminates that are around us.

I'd suggest, if it's not taken apart already, contacting a Data Recovery service, one that offers to tell you what it can recover before shelling out lots of money.

Comments

[Ramhound]

The minute you checked inside you made the drive permanently unusable. The drive at this point cannot be repair since it was exposed outside of a clean room. If given to a service, there is a chance, something could be done but unlikely. Please don't your other HDD outside of a clean room.

[Fiasco Labs]

A human hair is the equivalent of hitting Mount Everest at the distances heads fly above the platter, finger prints and common house dust is like running into the Rocky Mountain range. These devices are worked on in clean rooms with air filtration and humans clad in bunny suits. It's all over with, smack it with a hammer.

[Ronald Sumbayak]

@FiascoLabs You know, I watched some video on yo*tube, and, well, I see their hard disk can be used again, at last they can recover their data. But when I see mine, the head is like broken, so I think even if I do the same I don't think it would be fixed, and end up asking here. What do you think abou that?

[Thalys]

I've watched videos of people operating high performance aircraft. That dosen't make me capable of flying a plane. Its generally a good idea to ask for advice before doing something like this. Data recovery is non trivial, and well, this is why folk are charged the big bucks for this.

[Ramhound]

@RonaldAndrean - What can we say. Your primary problem is that your head is broken, that can't be fixed by you, but could have been solved if the HDD exposed to the environment outside of a clean room. I don't entirely agree with an answer that says that dust is a non-issue, if it wasn't an issue, then HDDs wouldn't be sealed and there wouldn't be a huge industry for data recovery.

[Ronald Sumbayak]

So, there will be a chance that the data can be read if I move it to another head, right? Even if it only 1%. But if, in the worst case, I move the platter, and want to put back the platter to the original head, will it be affected and something happen with the disk or the platter, or will it just work as if there is nothing happen with them?