Hitachi Deskstar Hard Drive Recovery IC35L120AVV207-1 (Heads Stuck, improper shutdown)

Hard Drive Recovery Home Page

Configuration: Standard desktop computer with 1 Hitachi Deskstar 120GB hard drive

OS / File System: Windows 2000 Professionel

Failure: Heads stuck to platter surface during a power failure, 1 broken head.

Hard Drive Recovery Procedure

step 1: Locate an identical drive: Hitachi Deskstar IC35L120AVV207-1 MLC H69205

List of suppliers:

step 2: You must replace the head assembly in a class 100 clean room enviornment.
step 3: Replacing the heads are tricky, use the bad heads to test your procedure, better to screw up the bad heads.
step 4: Close up the hard drive and start cloning using COPYHD.exe from Data Recovery, Inc.
step 5: During the improper shutdown, the heads stopped in the middle of the platters. There is no protection on the surfaces so that when the the hard drive slowed down, the heads came in direct contact with the platter surface creating a minor shid mark like scratch. You must avoid this area or risk loosing the new heads and causing further damage.
step 6: Start cloning the hard drive at sector 0 being very careful to avoid the damaged area. You will notice that the hard drive cloning will begin slowing down at some point.
step 7: At the first sign of bad sector(s) start reverse cloning from the last sector, this should give you as much of the hard drive data as you dare without killing the heads.
step 8: Make a copy of the cloned hard drive for safe keeping.
step 9: Using data recovery software, recover as much data as you can and transfer all data to an external USB hard drive.

Additional help can be found at Data Recovery Labs, inc.