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I just dropped my disk and it doesn't spin anymore when connecting.

Unlucky me - it's a backup disk - and I need the data.

I did try to find a service but they are really expensive and outside my financial reach.

I am wondering if there is a way to somehow disassemble the disk and mount the spinning metal magnetic disk's into some kind of "recovery drive" ?

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  • Umm...no. If you're unable to access the data using third party utilities and if you can't afford to pay a data recovery firm then unfortunately you're out of luck.
    – joeqwerty
    Mar 26, 2014 at 22:10
  • The equipment you're describing is what the expensive recovery services have. You can either pay them thousands for them to use their equipment (which you don't know how to do) or you can pay hundreds of thousands for equipment that you don't know how to use.
    – user201262
    Mar 28, 2014 at 18:20

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While I do agree with the previous answer, there ARE tools available to preform this sort of work, but you really need to know what you are doing in order to be successful. It really all depends on what component has failed inside of the disk. It could be the motor, the circuit board, the power circuitry, etc. Unless you can pinpoint what subsystem has failed, I would just chalk up loosing whatever data you are wanting to recover and realize that having 1 backup of your data is not sufficient. For really important data like irreplaceable photos, artwork, music you have recorded or other things you cannot simply purchase from somewhere online you need to have a physical onsite backup as well as some sort of cloud storage solution (or some form of offsite storage) for situations like the one you are in. In addition, I also regularly take all of my irreplaceable data and make periodic copies to hard drives and have friends or relatives hold onto them (preferably in other states or countries). I learned a very similar lesson when I lost 6 years worth of art and music I had created due to a hard drive failure.

If you are interested, check out http://hddsurgery.com/

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I am wondering if there is a way to somehow disasemble the disk and mount the spinning metal magnetic disk's into some kind of "recovery drive" ?

Hard drives are sealed in an airtight container because the head floats microns above the platter's surface during operation. Any dust or particles, such as those in normal unfiltered air, will damage it when it spins up next. In hard drive manufacturing facilities and recovery labs they have clean areas that filter out particulates. Doing this yourself outside of such a facility is virtually guaranteed to make your issues worse.

NEVER keep important data on anything less than three disks in two geographically separate locations.

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