Finding correct donor heads:
It can be difficult to find the right donor heads for the failed hard drive. All read/write heads are not created equal. Heads change from manufacturer to manufacturer and from model to model. Modern hard drives are so sophisticated and tightly calibrated that the heads from two drives made one after the other on the production line may not be compatible with one another.There are two key factors that make Gillware very successful when it comes to replacing read/write heads. First, we have thousands of hard drives in our parts inventory that we can take donor heads from. The more parts we have in our inventory the more likely it is that we will find heads that closely resemble the heads we are looking to replace.Second, we have sophisticated techniques for tricking the patient drive (the drive from which we want to recover data) into accepting the heads form the donor drive. As we have already covered, just because we have a drive of the same make and model does not mean that the drive will accept and operate with the new donor heads.Just like the human body can reject a new organ, a hard drive can reject new components. Doctors get around this by administering anti-rejection drugs to the patient. Gillware can’t use drugs, but we CAN manipulate the hard drive’s firmware to accept the new parts. It may not like it and the performance will certainly be degraded, but when executed properly, data can be read and recovered.
Damage to other components:
If in the process of the heads failing there is damage to other parts of the drive (platter damage, electrical failures, motor failure) recovery can be made even more difficult. Especially in the case of platter damage, unless the damage is cleaned up or repaired, the replacement donor heads will inevitably meet the same fate as the original heads. They will be instantly killed.
Risk of contaminants on platters:
This is something to consider any time a hard drive is opened. Since the heads float just a few nanometers above the surface of the platters, even a single speck of dust or a fingerprint on the platters can have catastrophic results. Any invasive mechanical data recovery should be performed by reputable professionals in a dust-free ISO 5, Class 100 cleanroom facility.
To learn more…
In the posts to come, you’ll learn more about the different hard drive components we discussed in this post (electrical components, firmware and spindle motor) and how they work together to create a fully functioning hard drive. Additionally, we’ll show you what can go wrong with each of these components and how Gillware recovers data from different situations of hard drive failure.