Hello to you all
I have a wee bit of a sticky problem
I have a Seagate 7200-7, model: ST380011A HDD that I removed from our desktop computer that 'blew up' about 18 months ago. I tried this HDD in another computer, and it wouldn't boot up any further than the windows bar graph. I pondered over this for a long time as to what the most economical thing to do would be.
I recently thought that I could locate another HDD and swap the circuit boards over, so I managed to locate one on Trade Me and bought it. It arrived today, and I swapped the pcb's over, and tried it again, but it still wouldn't boot any further than before. I pondered further, and I felt reasonably confident that I could dismantle the drives further, and swap the platter from the bad drive to the good drive. Unfortunately, I damaged the write head as I tried to do this, so that was a lost cause.
Now, I'm wondering if there is anyone 'out there' who works in data recovery who would be keen enough to try and help me further with this. Three data recovery companies have told me that they won't even try to help me, as I have opened up the unit. I do understand their reasons, but I'm hoping that there may be someone who's a wee bit more compassionate. I will (or I can try) to obtain another Seagate HDD of the same model number as the crook one, so that it's electronics and read heads will probably be in working order, but I don't seem to have the ability to change over the platter without damaging something. I sort of believe that the old platter may be able to be cleaned in some way to avoid getting dust in the clean room, but I don't know anything about how to.
This drive has photos and other data that my kids made when they were little on it that I would be keen to recover.
I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that someone may be able to help me on this problem
Thank you in advance
Peter W