^^^^^
I would definitely second that. The platters are all but useless.
Even if you could somehow locate a logic board from the same lot of hard drives that was manufactured over ten years ago it still wouldn't work.
The best way i can think to explain it is that every hard drive is like a snowflake. No two are exactly the same. There are a specific set of instructions of how the controller is supposed to operate that particular drive. That set of instructions is stored in permanent memory on a memory chip on the board.
In order to transplant a new logic board onto the drive, and have it work, you also have to transfer that firmware from the old board to the new board. That's doable with the right lab equipment but if the original board is missing just one tiny SMD it raises the level of difficulty significantly.
I kinda dumbed it down to make it understandable but that would be the easiest case scenario. It gets worse from there. You're looking at at least a thousand dollars to have a data recovery lab collect data from a non-functional hard drive.
Let's say that you whacked with a hammer and bent the platters 1/1000 th. of an inch out of true ??? That's a hard call ... might not be able to recover the data at all.
If the platters were removed and a data recovery specialist had no idea of where they came from ??? Maybe .... but i couldn't imagine what the costs would be.
I guess the point i'm trying to make is that the whole thing becomes an absurd concern once you understand the technical difficulty and the costs involved in recovering data from a drive that's been intentionally damaged.
The OP is just a guy that came across a few old computer parts. Doesn't know what he's got and is wondering if they might have some value. The simple answer is that for him .... there just isn't very much value there. The hard drives are actually a liability cause once you own them ... you have the responsibility to do the right thing with em'.
That's an easy two second fix with a BFH or a pocket knife.
Bookmarks