www.deadharddrive.com

[frankienap]

I have an IBM travelstar hard drive, 40gb capacity. 3 weeks ago I had an encounter with the dreaded clicking sound, very bad. My BIOS would not even recognize the drive. I tried everything I could and then sent the drive off to VioPlex, which sent it back, informing me that they couldn't find a replacement drive with the same circuit board # to use to operate with. Somewhat miffed, I spent the last few weeks trying to track down a replacement drive. I finally got one, switched the logic board, and Vwa La! the drive now spins and is recognized (although not mounted) in Windows. Problem, when I opened the drive I mistakenly first unscrewed the top portion of the drive. Seeing the plates I screamed (inwardly) and quickly put the top back on. After which I proceeded to switch the boards. Now upon recovery, I can't seem to find more than a few (about 4 mb worth of) files. Is this possibly because I exposed the drive platter?!?! If so, is there anything I can do short of sending this off to a data recovery company again (if that would even work)?
-Frank

[nev]

My guesses - it could be :
- due to the platter exposure
- or slightly diffferent firmware
- or when the first logic board died it stuffed up the data somehow

There are probably some programs you could try that look at the low level data on drives. The data recovery companies would certainly have a good chance of getting something back now that you have a new logic board.

[Guest]

you wont have damaged it by having the platters exposed
its more likely not the right logic board and it can not find where to start of and where the information is stored etc.