Previously Odie Ferrous wrote:
bealoid wrote:

On 10 Apr, 16:41, "jmDesktop" wrote:
On Apr 10, 9:39 am, "bealoid" wrote:

On 10 Apr, 02:51, "jmDesktop" wrote:

Drive spins and continues to spin. When I first put power to it I
hear a momentary click or some physical movement inside the drive, but
not after that.

Drives often have a hardware latch to "park" the heads outside the
disk platters, or on the inside of the disk platters. Sometimes the
latch fails, so the drive spins up but the heads can't move.

If you must get data from the disk you can take the lid off, and tape
the latch open, and use recovery software to get data off the disc.
Obviously, the disc is trashed after this. :-)

What do you mean "tape the latch open?"

Have a look at some of the pictures on this website:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/articl...stack-Q-and-A/

Looking at the head stacks you'll see a delicate end, over the
platters. Then there's a pivot. Then you'll see a chunky metal end.
This has big magnets, coils, ribbon cables, and maybe a plastic latch
thing.

Sometimes the electronics that open the latch break. This means that
the heads can't swing out over the platters. You can take the lid off
the drive, and open the latch, and hold it open by a piece of tape,
then connect the drive to a pc and power it up.

This is a last ditch effort to get data off the drive. You'll
probably need data recovery software.

I've only done this once. I was lucky, I got my data back. I learnt
that back ups are always easier. :-)

Sorry - you have totally lost me on this one.

Me too. The drives I opened (broken or not needed anymore)
had no ''electronics that open the latch''. Maybe a WD
invention? I never opened (or owned) one of those...

Arno