Recovering the data from the hard drive, which has a stuck spindle motor

Advanced data recovery on Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320820AS and Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3100524AS

One of the most frequent problems of modern hard drives is spindle engine shaft jamming. There are especially many Seagate hard discs, so popular in the United States that come to my lab for data recovery because of this failure.
This particular case is about a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320820AS 320 GB SATA drive from which the customer needed only a quick books database recovered, of about 97Mb in size.

When you power on the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320820AS HDD or Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3100524AS it starts to buzz in the hermetical zone and it is not recognized by BIOS. A problem like this can be the result of a mechanical failure in the hard drive (a strike, a fall etc.) or a factory defect of the hard drive.

The bearing seizing is often aggravated by the burned-out chip, as it tries to accelerate the motor and causes an overload resulting in temperature rise and chip failure. Replacement of the printed circuit board from a serviceable drive in this case may result in another burned-out chip.

A donor disc is needed for data recovery to install platters of the defective HDD into its hermetical zone. The operation is complicated as it demands posterior plate centering because any shaft micro shift can interfere with the heads being correctly positioned on the servo marking.

HDD hermetical zone with the spindle engine shaft jamming

In 30% of the cases we are able to use one of our prototype tools that we designed especially for this particular Seagate model. We also have for sale different tools for different models of hard drives for $349 per tool (patent  pending).

In about 70% of the cases we have to remove the platters, magnets, heads and logical board from a donor hard drive to a patient hard drive. Be aware that this operation has to be done in a clean room environment (class 100) and the process is very delicate due to the fact that the alignment between the platters must be maintained.
The heads can never touch each other (head slap). The use of a head removal tool is absolutely recommended to maintain the distance between the heads.
Also you need a special tool that is able to read the bad sectors because most likely you will have a large number of bad sectors (pc 000 Udma – data recovery experts know what I am talking about ☺)
Be careful at the spacers between the platters; you don’t want to cause any additional damage to the platters.
Make sure that the donor hard drive is compatible with the patient, otherwise the transplant will not be successful.  First attempt is your best chance, you don’t want to keep trying with  different donors.

Good luck in your attempt (don’t try this at home) unless the data is not important.
Disclosure: this article is for reference only. The name of some tools and also some of the important steps are maintained confidential.
If the data is critical, send it to the experts www.emandatarecovery.com phone: (425) 347-3732.
In this particular case the data was successfully recovered for the price of $500.
Many thanks to our partner who recommended the customer to our shop.
We pay a 10% spiff to you for any recommendation of our service to any of your customer.
If you want to become a partner please visit our site and click on the Partner tab.
Copyright: Eman Data Recovery LLC
We also recover data from:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3100524AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380819AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3400320AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3160023AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3160812A
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3640623AS
Seagate Barracuda ES ST3750640NS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500620AS
Data recovery Seattle Wa.