Click of Death - Head Stack Replacement / Swap How-to

Author: Jeremy Martin
34310 View
11m 21s Lenght
125 Rating

Good morning. Welcome to another episode of Cyber Secrets. In this episode, we will cover the basics of a head stack replacement after a hard drive has crashed. What you need before attempting this on a mission critical system is practice, a clean room, and more practice. Data recovery has been needed since man started to write things down. Why? Because what ever medium they tried to store the data on, it has always been susceptible to destruction. From earthquakes versus wall paintings to fire versus the library of Alexandria to head crashes versus your corporate file server. There has always been a weakness in how we have stored our information. While the risk mitigation to that sounds easy (back it up), the reality of the matter is that data loss happens all the time. When it does, there are 2 methods of data recovery. 1.)Physical recovery -- Make sure the physical medium is functional 2.)Logical Recovery -- Once the physical works, get the data The data recovery process has 4 basic steps. 1.)Physical repair 2.)Image the device 3.)Recover the data 4.)Fix the data Now to put this in perspective, the first method and the first step go together hand in hand. The second method is more of a software recovery that takes steps 2-4. Most people can do logical recovery with relatively inexpensive tools such as getdataback, rstudios, or even most of the forensic suites out there today. Physical recovery is an entirely different issue. It takes time, patience, a steady hand, practice, a clean room, the proper equipment, and an almost identical donor to use as a parts replacement cadaver. It is just like surgery and the donor needs to be compatible with the recipient if there needs to be an organ transplant. Just like the human body, the internals or organs of a hard drive are very fragile when not in the most ideal of environments. Platter based hard drives have more moving parts than a Solid State Drive (SSD), but the difficulty is still there. Just as in a normal transplant example, you need to understand that there is never a 100% guarantee that the recipient will come out of the surgery and recover. You can just hope and pray that the hard drive comes out and lives long enough to transfer the data to a secondary host so you can perform a logical recovery. What causes the Click-o-Death? It is because the SA cannot be read. You can have 4 main reasons (and a possible combination of them) for this to happen: 1.) Heads are dead 2.) Preamp is dead 3.) SA corrupted or scratched 4.) Firmware on the PCB This is a video of a head stack replacement. There is a donor drive and a recipient drive. As luck would have it, there is only half a head, so the replacement was very fast with minimal risk to the donor head stack. Enjoy the video! http://youtu.be/DDWXZJPgbHM As for the logical recovery, here are a couple more videos: Imaging: http://youtu.be/3gFT2_u_6cI Data Carving: http://youtu.be/X2sfxqSmerM --- If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to fire away.

Comments

  1. i think i destroyed head of hdd bt i have no another dead hard disk.i want to recover my all data files sir plss help can i found this heads on online shooping sites?
  2. What about Hitachi hard drives??I replaced head rack assembly but clicking sound still intact,seems that something have to do with magnet system,heads unable to travel of center area,heads return back than forward until certain position but not further and sounds like it attempt scanning but not completes full travel...I also removed heads from another drive and than installed back and it also started clicking despites that all parts original..Anyone know answers for Hitachi hard drives problem??
  3. I assume that the heads were destroyed. They touch each other and it is game over. There is no way that this worked.
  4. so much emphasis on using the same drive as a doner, why not just replace the pcb as well? as long as its the same model and internally its the same. whats the harm? why bother a exact doner. when after replacing the headstacks change out the pcb on the back as it prolly wont matter as long as their identical. so only a small thing to get the same. a doner pcb, their cheap $50USD

    anyway i have a 2tb barracuda that just died. i dont much care for the data. at this point im just learning what i can. i have 2 same model drives, n dont much care for them too. So mostly everything except the obvious into the dead drive? chance of success is????
  5. same issue i m having the "clicking" soun need to fix my hard drive.. is there any no on which I can contact ??
  6. Thank you so much I need to replace the head of the disk reading
    Model: WD5000BPKT-75HXZT1
    What do I search for a donor drive
    the DCM must to adjust all?
  7. Thanx to share!
  8. great video
  9. DId it myself, data recovery industry is a racket.
  10. Good video and play by play explanation. Get's right to the point without too much of a preamble. Definitely gave it a thumbs up.
  11. I need a head replacement.It has been diagnosed. Need it done as cheap as possible.
  12. Where did you get those finger condoms?
  13. Great video man!
  14. interesting
  15. 'simptom' ?  really??
    Besides that error, it was an informative video.