Hard Disk Repair

Each hard drive has electronics that controls mechanical parts and provides an interface to the computer. There are many electronic components that can fail. In some cases the electronics board can be repaired. You need SMD soldering station, replacement components and experience. Finding the faulty component is not always easy and sometimes there is no way to determine which chip is not working properly. In such cases professional recovery companies replace the whole electronics with a new one. This sounds simple but needs special attention because in some cases there are ROM chips with data belonging to the failed drive.

The motor spins the platters. The speeds can go up to 15 000 rotations per minute. In addition to high rotational speed the rotation itself needs to precise and very stable. Hard drive motors usually use fluid bearings. To replace the motor you need to open the hard drive first. This needs to be done in a clean room to prevent any dust coming into the disk drive. Once the drive is opened you need to carefully remove heads and the platters. Only then you can replace the failed disk motor. Of course, you need special tools for this.

Heads write and read the data from the platters. They are placed on one end of an arm which moves from the disk edge to its center. Replacing of failed head is possible but in addition to clean room it requires special non-magnetic tools to prevent damage to the magnetic coating of the platters. Additional important fact is that the hard drive heads hover above the platter. The gap is only few micro meters wide. Any wrong mounting can physically damage the disk.

This is special software and data that the drive needs to operate. Usually it is located in a hidden part of the disk. You can not access this area without special tools. Here is also information about bad sectors. This data is crucial for the disk to reliably save the data. Any damage here and the disk data will be inaccessible.

Now it is evident why hard drive data recovery is so expensive. You need clean environment, spare parts, expensive tools, trained engineers and knowledge. This is not a job for hobby electronics enthusiasts. To prevent lost files and expensive recovery services make sure you regularly backup your files. Using own backup is the cheapest data recovery.