Hard Drive Recovery Service?

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

Maybe you guys will get a kick out of my stupidity here in various forms...

About a year ago, I had an external USB drive, to which I backed up
some important data (pictures, documents, etc).  Now, after i moved to
my new apartment, I mis-identified the power adapter and plugged in
one with an incorrect amperage/voltage.  I only noticed this after I
found that I was unable to access the drive.  I checked the power, and
I saw the mistake I made.  I found the real power supply, but even now
the power would not light the USB drive LED.  So, I thought maybe
something in the USB enclosure got fried.

I decided to remove the internal hard drive, a Seagate 160 GB, and pop
it into my desktop machine via the IDE interface.  Interestingly, the
PC would hang at detecting the disk after the BIOS boot.  So, damn,
did I fry the electronics in the drive itself?  Being of an
inquisitive nature, I prodded further.

I went so far as to track down and identical model drive on Froogle
and ordered it.  I hypothesized that the drive electronics had failed
somehow.  So, a few weeks later and I had the new drive,  However, I
procrastinated, and just tonight, I got around to going further.  I
looked at the drives, and indeed they had the same model number, but
varying firmware revisions.  However, the external circuitry on the
bottom of the drive seemed identical in terms of all part layouts and
circuit traces.  So, I thought no big deal.

I first attempted to swap the external electronics piece (a 4 x 4 in
piece) to the old drive, which did not work, so I eliminated that
possibility.  Further I went.  This was going to suck, but I needed to
actually remove the platters and swap them!  I have never done this
before, and I always hear people saying "YOU CAN'T DO THAT, THE
PLATTERS WILL BE DESTROYED!!!".  Well, I rendered an attempt.  So,
after about an hour of figuring out how to disassemble the drive
properly and exactly, with all moving parts, I figured I had it.  I
took the two platters out from the new drive, opened the old drive,
and dropped in the old platters.  After a little futzing around and
reassembly attempts, I hooked up the drive.

"Damn, the actuator is clicking!" ... clicks plastic guard into place ... reboot

"Oh, the actuator is now moving!!!" ... gets excited

So everything was going OK.  On power-on, the actuator goes to the
center and then to the middle of the disk, where it hangs at the same
place "Detecting IDE drives...".  If I power-off, the head swiftly
returns to near the center.  All appears in order.

Now, what I want to know is if anyone here knows what the actual steps
are that is happening during this phase of "Detecting IDE drives..."
and if I can fool it somehow or force it to get past this snag.  Any
ideas?  Just to let you know, I have tried this drive on four
computers now, all with similar effects.  Additionally, I tried
manually setting the IDE drive to PIO mode 0 in the BIOS, to no avail.
 So, if anyone knows the hard disk physical boot process, please let
me know!!

Also, if this is futile, who can you recommend that I send the drive
to in its current state?  Will they accept a drive that have had the
platters removed and messed with?  What is the approximate cost?  has
anyone even tried this before?!?!  Thanks, and yes, I know I am
insane...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen

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