A Hard Drive Data Recovery That Was No Fun

USB Bridge Removal and SATA Conversion

The drive arrived as an external USB enclosure. Before any recovery work can happen, the USB bridge controller must be desoldered from the PCB so the drive can talk directly to PC-3000 over SATA. The video walks through removing test points E71, E72, E73, and E75 and prepping the pins for direct connection.

The customer had already attempted recovery with DD Rescue, which failed because the drive had hardware problems that software tools cannot address.

Multiple Actuator Arm Failures

Once mounted in PC-3000, the real problems became visible. The head stack assembly had damage at multiple points: worn transducers, fractured solder joints between the heads and the preamplifier, and evidence of a prior repair attempt that left glue residue and broken component fragments inside the drive.

The technician attempted a head stack transplant from a donor drive. Finding a compatible donor for a Spyglass 2 is not straightforward; even drives from the same production batch can have different preamp versions and calibration parameters.

After the transplant, the drive began clicking on power-up, indicating the replacement heads were sticking to the platter surface. Each click drags the heads across the magnetic coating, destroying sectors. The technician limited power cycles to preserve what was left.

Partial Recovery: ~1TB from a ~2.3TB Drive

The replacement heads could not reach all platter regions, and areas that had been dragged during clicking were unreadable. The final result was roughly 1TB of extracted data. Not a complete recovery, but not nothing either.

This case shows what happens when multiple problems stack: USB bridge complexity, prior repair damage, actuator failure across several components, and clicking after the transplant. Each layer reduces the odds. The prior DIY attempt with DD Rescue and the unknown earlier repair made a hard case harder.