Hi All,
The good news is I've found a way to open up the 320GB hard drive, swap the head and only lose 3% of the data. Ten times less than the the experiment previously performed. Method, templates and diagrams below.
Firstly again do please practise on a test hard drive before you open up your own in case some or all of these methods apply. For example, I've heard for some models of western digital hard drives, opening the case will ruin the head alignment and this can only be fixed with a very expensive tool Luckily my seagate does not seem to have this issue.
Anywho the technique below is performed on a brand new working 320GB seagate hard drive (bought another one on ebay), exactly the same model as my own dead one. The reason for this is I wanted a clean bench mark result from this procedure. The experiment is designed to test how much better data integrity is preserved for opening up your hard drive in a non clean-room environment, when you make an effort to shield the platters. We're going to build a platter "shield", using no special tools or equipment except house hold items. Here's how I did it:
Step 1: Filled brand new working hard drive full of 197GB (Just copied large folders across and it came to this amount) of various media, ebooks, mp3s, movies etc
Step 2: When you buy a spindle of CD's or DVD's or any disc, you should get what looks like a plastic spacer disc that usually sits on top of the spindle. This will be our platter shield.
Step 3: Used a permanent marker to draw an outline of how I wanted my shield design. I wanted it so it protected the platter but gave me adequate access for a head replacement. Template enclosed below.
Step 4: This plastic is far too brittle and so decided not to saw it, so scored the outline with a stanley knife blade and just snapped the pieces off. This is far from the best technique and I nearly snapped through the shield a few times, but it's quick. Made two shields, they took 10 minutes to make in total.
Step 5: Clean the underside of the shield by polishing it. I used a cloth that came with my camera. I'm not sure what it's called but it doesnt seem to leave any fibres behind and it feels quite silky.
Step 6: Opened up the brand new hard drive and covered the platter with the shield immediately. If you do this quickly, the platter is exposed for about a second. From this point onward, the platter is then only exposed to the underside of your shield which hopefully is cleaner than the surrounding air. Optionally you can also drill mounting holes onto your shield so that you can allow it to sit just right. The reason I used the Plastic CD instead of a complete layer of plastic (like say the plastic cover of a CD Jewel case) is because I wanted to make sure once I placed the shield on top of the platter (which if you made it correctly should not touch it, but be about 1mm above it) it would still turn. So once I placed the shield over the platter, I placed a paperclip into the spindle holes to check the underlying platters were still rotating. This is the kind of freedom you want, dont let the platter shield touch the platter. I also used cellotape wrapped over the top of the shield and down behind the hard drive (on to the PCB) to hold it in place.
Step 7: Left the hard drive exposed like this, for 6 minutes. A time I think is more than respectable for any internal maintenance. During this time, personally, I removed the head carefully and put it back, as practice for when I do the real thing on my own hard drive again in future. Picture below taken with the platter shield in place and the head removed.
Step 8: Removed the cellotape on the shield, lifted it off and covered with reattached the hard drive lid (which had been kept on a dry clean surface face down). Again be quick, do not expose the platters for any longer than you have to.
Step 9: Reconnected hard drive back up to windows and performed data integrity test. I made sure the hard drive was upside down for this, as any debris which might have made it on the platter hopefully would have been shaken loose and due to gravity would have been swept away internally into one of the filters, thereby reducing the effects of those debris.
Results: 192GB recovered, 5GB lost in CRC check errors. Result = 97% DIY recovery!
So again, had this particular hard drive suffered from a failure which resulted in a damaged head (symptoms: clicking, beeping, clunking), I would have been able to recover all but 5GB of data from this drive (obviously assuming the head in this case had not caused damage to the platter). This is in a non clean room environment in which the hard drive lid was off for 6 minutes. The conclusion here is if you decide to take your hard drive lid off to repair it, the best thing you can do is take some measure to protect the platter from airbourne debris. The last time I performed this experiment with no such protection, I lost about 35% of data. Compare this to the 2% lost this time around with a simple shield.
Anyway, enclosed are the diagrams and templates you need if you decide to do this yourself! I'll be going in to depth with a head swap procedure next which I've done about 30-40 times now on the practise drive. Ultimately then I'll finally go ahead and do it on my own dead drive and we'll see if this fixes my particular hard drive's problem or if I need to go one step further and transfer the adaptive memory on the logic board to a new PCB donor. In the end the whole experiment might end up being an epic fail, but at least the data here if anyone wishes to try (or improve upon) my shoddy methods
Regards,
Megamox