drive repair tips?

[Jules Richardson]

On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 00:45 +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
> 1) You will probably have to remove the platters and heads. Apart from 
> the obvious problem of contamination, you also need to keep the alignment 
> precise. This is something that's not necessary when the drive is first 
> assmebled, it's assembled, and _then_ it's low-level formatted. But you 
> need to be able to read the existing data on the drive, right?

And even if you don't want the data and just want the drive working
again, as it's a modern unit you'll have to find the right LLF utility
for that specific drive - which may be easier said than done!

It'd be interesting to know what data recovery companies do when they
get a drive with ruined bearings (or spindle motor) and need to get the
data off. Maybe that's the point where it gets *really* tricky and they
have to sample data from each surface seperately and assemble by hand /
in software...

cheers

Jules