When a drive has to be opened
Most recoveries never require opening a drive. But when the failure is inside the sealed housing — seized bearings, damaged read/write heads, a head crash that has scored the platters — the only route to the data runs through opening the unit, and that cannot be done on a workbench.
The reason is scale. The read/write head of a modern drive flies a few nanometres above a platter spinning at several thousand revolutions per minute. A particle of household dust is orders of magnitude larger than that gap. Open a drive in an ordinary room and the contamination alone will destroy the surface the moment it spins up.
How these cases are handled
- A full assessment first, to confirm the damage really is mechanical and to judge the prospects honestly
- Work carried out in a dedicated clean environment, with filtered air and controlled handling
- Where heads have failed, replacement with a matched donor set from an identical drive
- Imaging the platters immediately — a repaired drive is only expected to run long enough to be copied, not to be used again
- Reconstructing the file system from that image and verifying what came back
Prospects, stated honestly
Mechanical recovery is the hardest category and the one where outcomes vary most. A drive with failed heads but undamaged platters usually recovers well. A drive that ran for hours after a head crash, grinding its own surface, may be beyond anyone. We will tell you which of those you are looking at after the assessment, rather than after taking your money.
The one thing that makes it worse
Continuing to power on a drive that is clicking, grinding or failing to spin. Every attempt does more mechanical damage. If a drive sounds wrong, switch it off and leave it off.