I have a customers Hard Drive a 30 gig laptop drive and i know its broken.

I hooked it up to my laptop sled and it would not even read, it makes a scraping noise so i think something is wrong with the platters themselves

Is there ANYTHING i could have done i already called and said there was a extremely low chance of me doing anything to retrieve data, but he could ship it to a special center for data recovery and they could do it.

What i really mean is there some sort of hook up device i don't know about that can retrieve data or does ANYONE know how the data companies actually would get the data off? would they need a special machine that you put the platters on or something? any input would be great thanks.There's the old zip LOCK bag and freezer trick USED
sometimes.

Leave it in the freezer overnight.You must avoid
moisture and condensation so,think what your doing.

I have know idea if it works but, it's mentioned a lot in
google searches.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=freeze+hard+driveProfessional data recovery is VERY expensive.

THe freezer trick does work sometimes, but a scraping sound does not sound encouraging.A friend of mine works in forensic data recovery. There are a number of specialised machines that they use. One technique is indeed to extract the platters and then strip the data from them, then advanced software is used to try and piece together the data (it can be spread over a number of platters) to recover complete files.

The platters have to be removed in a clean room as any dust particles can destroy the surface.

It's less likely to be the platters that are the problem and more likely to be the read/write arm, it could be stuck, it could have become dislodged (it could have knackered the platters totally)ok i will try the freezer trick on other HDD (he took his machine back)

i am interested as to what these advanced programs are and what these machines are, if you could give me any more info on that, that would be awesome

thanks again for all these tips ans please tell me any more you know of i am new to data recovery i mean i know the hook ups and what not but i would have never tried a freezerI wonder why my reply to this thread disappeared...Did it get placed in the freezer?Quote

Did it get placed in the freezer?