Has someone ever tried to repair a HDD with success?

[va!n]

I own two old HDDs where no recovery software is able to repair/recover any files! One of the HDDs will be detected by windows and BIOS correctly but no tool can access it... The other HDD is an old HDD i have send to a special expensive HDD-Recovery company in the past, due fact of very important documents at that time...

Today i thought about a experiement myself, by trying to the same HDDs models at ebay and trying to open both models and replace the electronic, so maybe i can restore some files of one of the HDDs!

Has someone ever tried with success to put an old HDD into a working HDD (same model?) I never done it before and i really think that all datas are for ever lost... So i dont worry when this experience has no success ^^

Btw, is there something i have no notice? Ofcourse same HDD typ/model... But does both models need the same P/N number to be compatible? Same to firmware or can i just replace with even anohter firmware?

Thanks for any infos, esp from ppl tried this and had success... I will report you about my experience how it ends

german: "Seagate - Sie geht... oder sie geht nicht!"  (i lost a lot of seagate HDDs over the last years.. for me, never again seagate)

[LittleWhite]

I am a bit lost ... you want to open HDD ? But you know, around the disks, there is nothing (even no air) ... and if you are opening it ... it will not work longer (because of dust / particles / air )
Or maybe you wanted to replace the electronical interface ... ... but do you know what is going wrong ?

In all cases, let us know how you are progressing ... but I really doubt about faisability

[va!n]

First i will try to replace just only the electronical interface... If there is no success to access the HDD, i will try to place the magnetical disks from the damaged case into the old but working case... I know this is very danger and i am not really sure if there is something special i have to notice about probaly different hardware revisions and different firmwares.

Yes, its well known that opening a HDD on normal air with tiny dust particles kills your hdd for ever... But i have heared rumours, if you do this in a normal way (no cleaning room), you can recover some stuff... as longer as you waits, yet more i get in danger to loose all datas for ever.... (btw, in my eyes all the datas are lost for ever since years, when the drives gaved up)

[LittleWhite]

I heard also strange things like putting the HDD in a fridge can help to get it working for some time (the time to get datas)
So, good luck and tell us, I am really curious about this

[Jim]

Replacing the electronics or the platters into another drive can work.

Also, the freezer trick definitely works and if you freeze your drive for a few hours you may be able to access it for a few minutes while you copy off important stuff before it warms up again.

Jim

[staticgerbil]

I do this kind of thing regularly enough in my work and as Jim said, changing the electronics and the freezer trick both could work for you.

If you can see the drive in the BIOS then

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
or
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

may give you some tools to mount / repair the drives data.  They are both full of really useful pc repair tools.

Good luck